Beats

“…Among the best of the smaller companies this year … Michael Halberstam’s tiny Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe offered an original tribute to the Beat Generation [adapted by Marilyn Campbell] as well as traditional British fare, most notably a scintillating revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” --“Theaters in starring role” by Andrew Patner, 12/28/97, Chicago Sun Times

“The Beats” was first produced at Writer’s Theatre in 1997 with David Cromer as Allen Ginsberg. See reviews below.  Ann Filmer was an Assistant Director on that project working along side the fabulous Kate Buckley. 

Now, 14 years later Ms. Filmer is the Artistic  Director of her own theater in Berwyn, IL and has decided to open her season with the radical voices of the Beat Generation.  “The Beats” opens at 16th Street Theater on January 13, 2011 and runs for 16 performances.  Closes February 5.  For more information please visit:

www.16thstreettheater.org

Honorable Mention
(top productions of 1997):
The Beats
Writers’ Theater-Chicago
--“The best and worst of the theater year ‘97” by Lawrence Bommer, 12/25/97, Windy City Times

“Glencoe troupe goes Beat crazy” “…Campbell has selected and sculpted her texts superbly, with such classic works as Ginsberg’s “Howl,” given enviable interpretation by David Cromer. But her arrangements also make the case for Gregory Corso, whose “Bomb” opens this two-hour party of words … An assiduous researcher, Campbell restores the voices of female poets to what is often seen as an all-male movement. And LeRoi Jones … is a presence here, too. … One would have to go back to the glory days of Arnold Aprill and City Lit Theatre for story-theater performances and direction as invigorating as these. Rick Paul’s design transforms the boutique performance space into a period coffee house, and Joe Cerqua’s sound lays down just the right amounts of Brubeck and Miles.” --Andrew Patner, 4/30/87, Chicago Sun-Times

“… Marilyn Campbell’s supple anthology warmly interweaves, among other neon writings, the impassioned, bardic wailing of the late Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac’s neo-Whitmanesque epiphanies, Neal Cassady’s wondering letters and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s still potent “I Am Waiting.” What emerges is a rhapsodic vision seen from all angles. … Kate Buckley’s cast creates their own “rebirth of wonder,” with David Cromer magnetic as Ginsberg in full flight.”
-- Lawrence Bommer, 5/22/97, Chicago Tribune

NOTE: Marilyn Campbell has made it her business to memorize the Beat poets and is available for spoken-word performances. Since 1997, she has been heard around the Chicago area in various venues including the Subterraean (with local band Milk Baby), Wild Hare, Old Town School of Folk Music, Harold Washington Library, Heartland Cafe and Estrogen Fest, to name a few. Her current repertoire includes a THE BOMB, by Gregory Corso, RANT by Diane di Prima and a 12-minute cutting of HOWL.

"I saw the best minds of my generation starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix ... what sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! The heavy judger of men! Moloch the crossbone, soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!" -- Allen Ginsberg, HOWL

"The only WAR that matters is the WAR against the imagination, all other WARS are subsummed in it. There is no way out of the spiritual battle. The WAR is the WAR against the human imagination. You can't sign up as a consciencious objector! The WAR is the WAR for the human imagination and no one can fight it but you and no one can fight it for you. The imagination is not only Holy it is precise, it is not fierce it is practical, men die every day for the lack of it!!"
-- Diane di Prima, RANT

Copyright 2007 Marilyn R Campbell presents Parlor Productions.  All rights reserved.