By Elizabeth Harper

The Choir of Man / Panther in the Sky

The Choir of Man
Apollo Theater
https://www.apollochicago.com/project/the-choir-of-man/
Created by Andrew Kay and Nic Doodson
Directed by Nic Doodson
Closed May 26, 2024, but may return in September, 2024

A person I like recommended The Choir of Man enthusiastically. A celebration of pub/bar* culture sounded right up my alley, since I am very pro-bar and pro-drinking and have spent, and continue to spend, a great deal of my time in bars. Drinking improves my personality immensely and I learn a lot from talking to strangers.

Why “The Choir of Man,” I wondered? Does the title The Choir of Man echo/refer to “Brotherhood of Man,” the musical number from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? It does for me somehow, even if that wasn’t the intent. Could be due to my recent watching of The Drew Carey Show reruns on TV, a show featuring drinking beers in bars as a contrast to mundane work culture. Now I’m thinking about the Regal Beagle in Three’s Company. Apparently I have been influenced by the depictions of bars in TV shows. Cheers. Archie Bunker’s Place. Bars are good settings for cozy mystery series too, such as Mack’s Bar Mysteries, by Allyson K. Abbott—a way to introduce a variety of recurring characters, all with their own unique roles to play.

The Choir of Man includes its own cast of characters, referred to by role: Barman, Beast, Bore, Handyman, Hardman, Joker, Maestro, Romantic, and the Poet who serves as narrator, providing the audience with backstories for each member of the group who will be participating in the musical numbers to come.

But why “Man,” specifically? Certainly women go to bars. But maybe including women in the cast would have changed the dynamic, and/or, more importantly, missed out on the opportunity to display non-toxic/non-threatening masculinity—the boisterous enjoyment of music, dance, games, joviality, and commiseration, without the relentless pandering for female attention. While watching, I was imagining it performed by drag kings—there certainly are enough in Chicago to pull it off. Maybe a spoof called “The Choir of Non-Binary, Fluid, Ambiguous, and Polymorphously Adventurous”?

It’s an immersive, audience participation show. The set is made to look like a pub named The Jungle (as in the Guns N’ Roses song “Welcome to the Jungle”) with pictures on the wall, tables and chairs, and an actual bar where audience members can buy beers just before the show. Several female people were recruited from the audience (which I noticed included a large percentage of senior and almost-senior citizens such as myself). In one of a series of musical numbers, the “Beast” character (who was quite pretty and impeccably groomed, as all of the cast were) serenaded an older woman pulled from the audience with Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” She was repeatedly prompted by pantomime (and lyrics such as “When you look at me, just one touch” and “Let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans”) to touch the thigh of her enthralled crooner. She seemed hesitant (or wasn’t getting the hint) so I shouted out, “Go for it!”—a major faux pas, I immediately realized, since there were explicit rules about what kind and degree of audience participation was encouraged, and saying things aloud (or heckling) is definitely grounds for being asked to leave, but no one tapped me on the shoulder and escorted me out, so, phew.

The musical numbers are high-energy and jubilant. I laughed out loud at the pissing at the urinal scene accompanied by Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” lyric: “Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner.” Immediately I thought of golden showers / watersports, because a piss is just a piss if you’re by yourself, but if you have a partner to pee on, then it’s a golden shower, which, if you didn’t know what kink/fetish the term actually referred to, would sound like something elegant and beneficent. Another number that made me laugh out loud was “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” which I remember listening to on AM radio when it came out in 1979. The show includes many other enjoyable, recognizable musical numbers, such as The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” all performed by the very talented, attractive cast. As I watched, I thought, I’m so happy these young men are employed doing something they want to do. It takes so much dedication and effort to be a performer in the type of show people pay money to see. But if it’s what they love, if they love to sing, dance, and act, then I’m happy that’s what they’re doing, as opposed to feeling thwarted, discouraged, or mired in despair.

At one point, the “Poet” narrator comments, “People say, ‘Hell is other people’“ as a contrast to his reflections on the homeyness and camaraderie of the bar culture in which he’s immersed. He doesn’t attribute the quote to Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit. If I was at the bar, I would know the reference immediately, as well as other cultural, literary, philosophical, etc. references. In Sartre's play, hell is other people because of the way the characters feel judged by the others and not seen or understood in the ways they want to be.

The point of the show is to praise and promote pub/bar* culture—a cause I wholeheartedly support. “Pub,” we are informed, is short for “Public House.” But there is also the mourning of losses of people and pubs due to the COVID pandemic and luxury apartments taking up real estate. (But, I thought, there is a housing shortage in the US, and also the UK and Ireland, and other places around the world.) At issue is the sustainability of bars as businesses, or, more generally, the economic sustainability of businesses whose real product/function is community in a community space.

We definitely need apartments, but we need pubs, bars, and other gathering places too. Why is it better to meet in bars than in someone’s apartment? No preparing for (or cleaning up after) guests and other hosting responsibilities. No worrying about people messing up your stuff, like your favorite chair or the quilt made by your grandmother or … Also no access to your bookshelves, computer, porn, medicine cabinet, liquor cabinet, jewelry, emergency cash, or anything else you don’t want people to have access to. But the main advantage is that meeting in a pub doesn’t limit your group to familiar faces. Sure, there are the regulars, but also the chance that someone new will visit—the opportunity to interact with a stranger. Also, these days, a lot of apartments don’t have much space compared to even the coziest of bars.

I applaud the effort and the message of The Choir of Man. I really do. But I can’t help but think these performances are simulacra of people having fun and community in a bar, an imitation of the gloriousness of bar life that doesn’t even get close to the richness of bar experiences. A review of the show from Frank Sennett at Chicago Culture Authority describes the kind of bar experience I’m used to in Chicago—spontaneous, unscripted, unexpected, unplanned conversations and connections with other people.

Go to an actual bar. That is, if you’re not worried about spending too much money or becoming a victim of street crime—and if you’re OK with people who may not be especially well-groomed and/or may be going through tough times and not there just to entertain you.

*The website of a bar in Dublin includes an explanation of the difference between a bar and a pub. I think of a bar as any place that has an actual, physical bar and serves alcohol, so, for me, pubs, bars, taverns, saloons, inns, taprooms, beer halls, even airport and hotel bars, are all bars. But The Choir of Man is originally a UK show with plenty of Irish influence.

Panther in the Sky
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble
https://www.danztheatre.org/panther-in-the-sky.html
Play by Lani T. Montreal
Directed by Mignon McPherson Stewart
Closed May 18, 2024

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to see Panther in the Sky. But tickets were selling out, so I bought one online for fear of missing out. Mothers affected by the death of their sons due to gun violence is a heavy and worthwhile topic. Would it help to see a play? Would I gain new information and insight? Or would it be a relentless repetition of platitudes bemoaning a problem with which I’m already too familiar?

I’m generally supportive of Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble. They’ve put on some innovative productions, using props, costumes, and dancers/performers of varying genders, body types, ages, etc. And they provide arts education and literacy programs for children, causes I like to support. I’m friendly with Ellyzabeth Adler, the Executive Director of CDE, and the playwright Lani T. Montreal, from attending events and through mutual friends.

To be honest, I was tired and loopy by the time I got to the theater, and I wasn’t even drinking alcohol. I tried to cram too many activities and appointments into one day. (By the way, I hate my old age. And as I’m writing this, it occurs to me what an insensitive thing that is to say, given the subject matter. I’m not a mother who has to live with the knowledge that her son was shot and killed in the prime of his life. So I should be grateful that I don’t know that grief and that I actually survived to old age, because some, robbed of their potential experiences and accomplishments, don’t.)

The event was promoted as a spur to activism. Before the performance, I looked at some of the displayed artwork. I was impressed with Cesar Conde’s “In The Hood - Portraits of African American Professionals Wearing a Hoodie.” I couldn’t bring myself to engage in whatever activism there was, which included writing postcards to politicians. It wasn’t only tiredness that dissuaded me from the postcard writing. It’s that I have no confidence in politicians’ abilities to understand problems, much less fix them. Politicians succeed by objectifying their target audiences, pitting them against other groups, pandering to their resentment and fear, and telling people what they think they want to hear. Most politicians are intellectually unsophisticated, dogmatic, and ideologically set in their ways. Those qualities are not going to solve problems.

Also, so often these discussions are anti-gun—focusing on gun control, creating more laws, criminalizing gun possession—none of which are helpful, in my opinion. If someone really wants to hurt other people, they will find ways to do so. If not guns, then knives, bombs, dogs … You’re actually more likely to get hurt by a dog than a gun, though bullets are more likely to actually kill you, while the dog bite will lead to an urgent care or emergency room visit. If guns aren’t legal, then people will find ways to obtain them illegally. No amount of law enforcement is going to keep people from getting guns if they feel that’s what they need to protect themselves and their loved ones. And as crime, or the perception of crime, increases, more and more people (including wealthy liberals, anarchist queers, home owners, urban and suburban preppers, etc.) are interested in owning and learning how to use weapons such as guns. And if it wasn’t guns, it would be machetes or something else. And the country is already overrun with dogs. We are not safe, and politicians can’t make us safe.

We need to change how we treat each other. Empathy. Recognizing the humanity in each other. Not objectifying whole groups of people as other or less than fully human.

To be fair, the foundation that was featured, which I looked up afterwards, is focused on helping with grieving.

And to be fair to politicians, there have been recent changes in how schools are funded in Chicago, aiming to provide more resources and personnel where they’re most needed.

On the other hand, my prior reflections on the issue of mothers and their dead sons were influenced by the work of the organization Unsilence.

Here’s a quote from a long article I found on the Unsilence website:
“In a letter sent to both RNC and DNC leadership ahead of their respective conventions [2016 election], The Brennan Center for Justice and eight other advocacy organizations asked that the committees make criminal justice reform a priority in the official party platforms … ‘Over-incarceration does not reduce crime, instead it ‘takes a deleterious toll on our country – fiscally, socially, and morally.’”

So, as for the actual play: Of course it was uncomfortable. Of course I squirmed in my seat as the mothers plodded their way onto the stage, moaning, weeping, crying out, grieving for their sons, telling their stories. All of the actors did commendable jobs, performed with engaging, dramatic presence. The dead sons interacted with each other on stage, realizing that their mothers couldn’t see them or hear them. Commented to each other on the unfairness, arbitrariness, suddenness of their respective demises. On the disparities among the schools in various neighborhoods in Chicago. Lincoln Park schools have better books and better lunches. Their awareness of racial profiling, discrimination, the unfortunate circumstances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, through no fault of their own. Mothers commented on their hopes for their sons—that they would do better than their parents, go to college, realize their dreams. On how they worked long, late hours to provide for their families, because what else were they supposed to do? How they got off drugs, tried to improve their lives, went to school, stayed employed. Of course it was all heartbreaking, enraging, in the midst of inevitable feelings of impotence, helplessness, and the sense that we’ve heard this many, many times before to no avail, with no solutions. Of course, if it never occurred to you that mothers would feel sad about losing their young adult sons to gun violence, then I suppose the show would be revelatory for you. But really, how could anyone not realize that these boys dying in the streets have mothers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, friends, etc. who will mourn their deaths? Where are the fathers, you might ask? Dead, deported, disabled, debilitated, incarcerated … in some cases, but not all, so fathers mourn too. And daughters and grandchildren die from gun violence as well.

The clever highlight of the show was the game show portion “Who Said What?” in which the onstage actors/contestants were provided with quotes and tried to guess who actually said each one. Was it a politician or a comedian? Hahaha. Laugh until you cry.