Chuck's Choices for the weekend of August 30, 2019

New for Labor Day weekend: a festival of new plays at Stray Dog.

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New This Week:

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Stray Dog Theatre's New Works Lab presents a Short Play Festival Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm, August 29-31. The plays are 50 States That Are United And In America by Christopher Wiley, Florida by Steven Doloff, Open House by Jennifer Bennett, and Play by Laurence Klavan. Performances take place at The Tower Grove Abbey, 2336 Tennessee. For more information, visit straydogtheatre.org or call 314-865-1995.

My take: Want to know what local playwrights are up to? Stray Dog's festival is one of the more reliable outlets for new plays by area authors. Admission is free, but there's a tip jar to which you are encouraged to donate. And they have a very well-stocked bar.

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Held Over:

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Antigone
Photo by Joey Rumpell

Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble and ERA Theatre present Antigone, adapted from the Sophocles tragedy by Lucy Cashion, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm through August 31. " Antigone explores themes of fidelity, citizenship, civil disobedience, and the struggles and consequences the characters within the world of the play encounter as a result of their choices. Antigone's story of fighting civic law to obey divine law became famous in the Classical Greek tragedy Antigone, which premiered in Athens in 441 B.C. Since then, scholars, poets, and playwrights have written their own translations, adaptations, and critiques of the Antigone story, each from a different point of view. The continuation of this tradition resulted in a new version of Antigone, which was performed in October 2017 by SLU theatre majors in St. Louis and then with a performance by PPA participants at WERDCC in March 2018. The collaboration now continues with this ERA/SATE co-production in St. Louis." Performances take place at The Chapel Venue, 6238 Alexander Drive. For more information: slightlyoff.org.

My take: Lucy Cashion has a well-established reputation for doing surprising and often astonishingly creative things with well-known theatrical material. Some of you will remember Moscow! her remarkable one-hour distillation of Chekov's The Three Sisters that was a hit of the St. Lou Fringe in 2015 or her Oedipus Apparatus, which completely re-shaped the playing space at West End Players Guild back in 2017. As Michelle Kenyon writes at her blog, this re-thinking of the Greek tragedy is "both convention-challenging and thought-provoking, showcasing a superb cast of local performers." On a theatre scene dominated by musicals, this show truly stands out.