As we sit down for lunch at Navy Pier's Riva restaurant, Chicago Shakespeare Theater director and founder Barbara Gaines glows with the slightly flustered enthusiasm of a parent about to send her only child off to a highly competitive college.
The company's production of "Henry IV, Parts One and Two," is about to move from Chicago, where it has run for five weeks, to England, where it will be performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's prestigious Complete Works festival. The logistics of moving a play -- including all of its sets, its cast and technical elements like its lighting design -- across an ocean are daunting. But the challenge is well worth it, says Gaines, because of what it means to have the company perform on Shakespeare's home ground at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Once the company arrives in England, Gaines says she plans to take them all for a walk, along the River Avon to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was christened and buried. There, she says, they can all "say our own thank yous, privately, to the old man who started it all."
Though Gaines is no elitist -- there's hardly room for snobbery at Navy Pier -- she is willing to say, that, yes, "I do believe that Shakespeare is a civilizing influence."
"As artists, we are involved in trying to clarify the human condition," she says, managing not to seem self-conscious about it.
No need to elaborate
The Henry plays, in particular, she says, have an important resonance for a modern world in turmoil.
"The real 'gasp' line for contemporary audiences comes when the prince [Hal, son of Henry IV] is advised 'to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.'" She says, "Basically, they're setting up a phony war in France to distract people from a civil war at home."
Pausing to take a bite of her Caesar salad with well-done salmon, Gaines doesn't elaborate. She clearly doesn't feel she needs to.
But later in our meal, she returns to a similar theme, recalling the scene when Prince Hal worries to Falstaff that his ragged army seems to be composed only of poor men, and Falstaff answers, "Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better [men.]"
"When you think about all the leaders who have sent men into battle as food for [gun] powder," she muses, "Expendable. ..."
A conversation with Gaines is something of a mental roller coaster ride. Though she describes her approach to theater, and to Shakespeare in particular, as "not what you call 'intellectual'; it's very visceral," she is obviously a sophisticated and subtle thinker, one incredibly well-versed in the texts with which she works. But Gaines, 59, also waxes poetic about her love for shopping at Target and how being awarded an OBE (the Order of the British Empire, an honor granted by Queen Elizabeth) didn't change how she does her laundry or cleans up after her dog.
'That money was gone'
Gaines' striking humility -- some have characterized it as frailty -- is rooted in the experiences that led her to found Chicago Shakespeare. After spending four relatively successful years acting in New York, in 1980 she returned to Chicago (a city she'd fallen in love with as a Northwestern student) and soon found herself unable to work, limping around on a badly injured knee.
"All the money I'd made in New York, after two years of being unemployed, that money was gone," she recalled.
So, with $1,000 left to her name, she started giving actors' workshops on Shakespeare, her favorite college subject, and hoped that something might somehow change.
"I thought my life was over," she says now. "O-V-E-R."
Those workshops led to Gaines' first Chicago production: a creatively staged "Henry V," held on the roof of Lincoln Park's Red Lion pub.
That was exactly 20 years ago. And it's hard for Gaines to decide whether it's too long or too short a time to be believed.
She smiles brilliantly at the thought of moving from the rented rooftop to Stratford-Upon-Avon -- and doing it largely on her own terms. Enthusiasm seems to spill out from her tiny frame.
"You never know how the British critics will receive these plays," says Gaines, who is much-loved by Chicago audiences and generally well thought of by local critics. "But for me, that's almost beside the point. For me, the miracle is that we're there together."
[In fact, the British reviews do later turn out to be rather mixed, with the Chicago actors' faux-English diction coming in for particular criticism. There often seems to be an essential Catch-22 for Americans doing Shakespeare in Britain: they're either too American to get it or trying too hard to be English.]
Chicago Shakespeare approach
But Gaines' opinion of her cast is already solid. She describes herself as having been a "good actress," in contrast to the "great ones" whom she directs today.
"When I say, 'Chicago's finest actors,'" she says, "that's synonymous with this country's finest actors."
And she proudly contrasts the Chicago Shakespeare approach -- employing largely local actors, producing lesser-known works along with the traditional blockbusters -- with what she calls "the New York approach," featuring high-profile TV and movie actors in in-the-park productions of the old favorites.
"I lean toward the complex [Shakespeare plays]," she says. "The 'problem' plays are only problems because they expose our own issues."
For the rest of the afternoon, Gaines' issues will consist mainly of figuring out how to manage her company's biggest-ever road show. But for now, she is happy to sit still for a moment and to enjoy the view from Navy Pier.
Friday's column: Does this hiring scandal make us look fat?
Must we now pretend to take seriously the city's campaign to land the 2016 Olympics? Is that really what we've come to?
This week's news that we beat out Houston and Philadelphia to make the top three finalists for a potential U.S. bid to host the Games was not exactly earth-shattering. (It is, after all, hard to imagine being a less-attractive summer destination than Houston.)
But we got all puffed up and celebratory about it anyway. Because, frankly, we've been feeling a little desperate lately.
It was not so long ago that it seemed like people loved us, well, just for us. Sure, it was slightly condescending, the way they affected such genuine surprise when remarking on our vibrant cultural life, our clean streets and our fabulous restaurants, like they expected our standards to be permanently stuck in "No fries, chips!" mode.
But, still, they fawned and fussed over us. They featured us in fancy, glossy magazines.
And we got used to it.
The Kirstie Alley effect
There's nothing quite like those first days after you've been on a big diet and made your debut in your new, skinny clothes. Everyone tells you how great you look. They all want to know how you did it. All the attention goes to your head and, without realizing it, you're prancing down the hallways of your office building and grinning flirtatiously with strangers on the street.
Then, in far, far less time than it took you to lose the weight, people stop noticing. And those super-expensive jeans you bought aren't looking quite as cute as they did originally, anyway. Without the blinding glow of positive reinforcement, you start to notice certain things that you'd been blocking from your mind: like how low-fat muffins taste like cardboard.
From there, it's a slippery slide into a needy kind of paranoia. You want people to notice how great you look, but you're also convinced they've begun to pick up on how, in ever-so-subtle ways, you've started to let yourself go.
Chicago's urban renaissance has followed the same pattern. We worked hard on ourselves. We got really beautiful. And even though we swore we were doing it for ourselves, that it didn't matter what other cities thought, that it was all about making positive changes, not just meeting some socially mandated aesthetic standard, we still loved the way it felt to be so suddenly glamorous.
We felt a little sorry, really, for Seattle, trying so hard to hang on to that whole '90s grunge and coffee thing, when it was clear that the fickle finger of trendiness had moved on. We promised ourselves we'd be more graceful about it when the time came for us to pass the torch to some other city. Of course, that sort of thing was easy to say when Boeing was hightailing it out of there to make its new corporate home here.
We're not quite so blithe about it now.
Now we find it newsworthy when some big organization -- the National Restaurant Association convention, United Airlines -- decides to stay here.
A cute slogan is probably next
It's making us feel a little anxious, the way we have to get all gussied up just to hold people's attention anymore. We've been furtively checking out those keep-the-spark-alive books, thinking about trying out some new seduction tricks, like maybe wrapping ourselves in Saran Wrap. (What is Christo doing these days, anyway?)
And we've begun to suspect that other cities might see through all this elaborate posturing.
"Hosting the Gay Games," we told them, with some swagger, "was practically the same thing as having the Olympics."
Was it just our imagination, or did the other two U.S. Olympic finalists, Los Angeles and San Francisco, roll their eyes at that one when they thought we weren't looking? Philadelphia said they did, but that was probably just sour grapes.
We've been trotting out every achievement we can find -- our airport is even busier than Atlanta's! -- but the fact is that people just don't seem as impressed with us as they once were.
Look, we're not naive. We can see how it's partly our fault. You get comfortable; let things slip a little. The tulips on Michigan Avenue probably weren't as impressive as they might have been this year.
But just because some of the magic's faded a little, that's no reason to dump us for some flashy young tart like Austin.
We'll admit we've been a little distracted lately, getting caught up in petty fights over goose livers and how best to express our contempt for Wal-Mart. And we've been losing sleep -- just a little -- over some of this corruption stuff, which seems not only morally hazardous but also tacky.
But, listen, we can change. Just tell us what you want.
Collapsible stadium? Absolutely.
Private money to pay for all the overhead costs? Not a problem.
Civic pride? Sure. We feel great about ourselves. Really.
Seen in Lincoln Park lately: this Container Store market tote, which is basically a high-end, personal version of the baskets that you pick up in the grocery store when you are not getting enough stuff to justify a shopping cart.
When I first started seeing them, my pathetically baby-centric brain assumed that they must be some sort of infant carrier.
But, as they've proliferated, it's become clear that they are used for toting around multiple errand purchases and farmer's market buys.
This strikes me as somewhat bizarre, since I've always hated the ones you can get in the grocery store (if you happen to be buying, let's say, orange juice and milk, the thing quickly becomes absurdly heavy and awkward) and I can't imagine deciding that I need to have one of my very own.
Aren't backpacks and shoulder bags infinitely easier to carry around?
Still, as a serious neat freak, my devotion to the Container Store (a place I approach with reverence) remains such that I can't completely dismiss the market tote. I keep thinking that it must have some virtue that I'm missing.
I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong on these things -- the Crocs are really comfortable, dammit -- so I am open to being educated about the benefits of paying $30 for what is, essentially, an open picnic basket made of canvas.
Yet another reason to be creeped out by the new 9/11 movie
Every time I see a commercial for Oliver Stone's new movie, World Trade Center, I ask, "Who would want to see that?"
It's really hard for me to imagine that people would be interested in re-living the destruction of the World Trade Center as a paid entertainment experience. Honestly, to my mind, if you can't remember what it was like to watch it fall, you have some serious attention deficit issues.
I do understand, however, that my reactions to these things are generally not representative of the public at large. First, I am incredibly squeamish about movie death and violence in general -- not, oddly, because blood and gore bother me, but because I have a weirdly over-empathetic reaction to seeing people in pain (even fake pain). Second, I readily acknowledge that my status as East-Coaster-in-exile might make the whole deal a lot more visceral and real for me than for someone who never set foot in the Trade Center or didn't know anyone there.
But still . . . .
There's just something unspeakably weird about our impulse to quickly translate actual tragedy into entertainment. And, if you happen to share my utterly liberal and biased view of the world, you can feel affirmed in sensing that weirdness. Because The Washington Times, newspaper bastion of conservatives everywhere, is heartily endorsing Stone's movie, as are lots of other conservative pundits.
More pregnant ramblings to drive Steve Rhodes crazy
Broadsheet, the women's issues-oriented blog at Salon.com, has posted a whole host of pregnancy-related links, including one to this New Yorker article about research into preeclampsia.
The piece, written by author and Harvard medical school professor Jerome Groopman, touches upon some of the big themes I've been (much less articulately than Groopman) wrestling with in the last few weeks, including the strange dearth of serious research into pregnancy-related medical conditions and health risks, and the circumstances in which the best interests of a woman (health-wise) and those of the unborn baby she carries are directly opposed to one another.
There's also a link to the "Shape of a Mother" blog, something which, I must admit, I had a really hard time looking at. The photos of the round, pregnant bellies are one thing, but the stretch-marked and deflated post-partum abdomens are something else entirely. Rationally, of course, I understand that my body is not going to instantly snap back into its old form. But, somehow (probably we've been so trained to hide our "flab" from one another), I hadn't fully processed how much of a transition we're talking about. It seems totally shallow and vain to worry about such a thing, since, obviously, having a healthy baby is the most important thing, etc. etc. But, still . . . there's something disconcerting about the incredible length of time when your physical body just isn't you.
Personally, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that I can feel and see my belly move (quite the future soccer player I'm carrying, thanks) and know that it's not me moving . . . it's a whole (or mostly whole at this point) other person. When you see pregnant women on TV or in the movies, they're always all, "Come here, honey, the baby's kicking," and misty-eyed husband comes and places his hand there to feel it. None of them seem at all weirded out by the whole Alien-esque quality of the experience.
In a certain way, it does, I imagine, begin to prepare you for the thrill ride that is parenthood. Any illusion that you are comepletely in control is pretty much out the window when you are, say, just about to fall alseep and your kid-to-be decides it's an excellent time to practice some of the latest in-utero dance moves.
I think then whole idea that there is soon going to be another person living in our home is still somewhat surreal/theoretical for R. (Honestly, it's only starting to be seem totally plausible to me.)
There's all this stuff that we probably should be doing, like starting to clear out our home office so that we can start converting it into a nursery, that we just don't seem to begin. It's a little embarassing that people keep asking about what we're doing to get ready (the term "layette" is thrown around with some frequency, which seems terrifyingly Victorian). Because, except for the Pack n' Play we bought so our friends' baby Charlotte would have a place to sleep when they visited, we haven't gotten a thing.
I've been trying to read the Consumer Reports Guide and Baby Bargains books (is it wrong to try to cheap out on some of this stuff?), but, seriously, it's confusing and sleep-inducing. (In all honesty, though, almost everything is sleep inducing at this point, at least when it's 90 degrees out.)
I guess, in some ways, I'm still holding on to the fantasy that the baby is not going to take up a lot of room in our lives, literally or metaphorically speaking. (I decided to actually write that sentence rather than just thinking it, as I have been, so that I can really laugh at myself a few months from now.)
Fortunately for me, my best friend is several months ahead of me on the motherhood curve and her experiences are offering something of a primer in what to expect (short, trite answer: the unexpected).
When you're as ignorant as I feel now (and reading all the books, which, being a serious study nerd, I am, of course doing, only makes me feel more clueless), a few weeks of experience looks an awful lot like serious wisdom.
Her message, she says, is that you can overcome any obstacle. But what I've learned, in an afternoon with "success coach" and author Aleta St. James, is that, sometimes, being self-centered and slightly clueless can really work out well for a person.
St. James has arrived in Chicago for an engagement at a new age-y alternative medicine conference at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. Despite having a reservation at a hotel adjacent to O'Hare Airport, she has flown in to Midway. And she has made no arrangements to get from one place to another.
She has taken a cab from Midway to our lunch appointment, at Transitions Bookplace on North Avenue, where she has been killing time, enlisting the staff's help in storing her bags and setting up a work space in the bookstore's small cafe. She has been here for more than an hour by the time I arrive, early, for our interview.
"How can I get from here to the Sofitel?" she asks me, referring to her suburban hotel.
And, while it's tempting to suggest to St. James, a self-described "intuitive," that she figure it out for herself, I find myself offering to give her a ride to Rosemont after we eat. She is one of those women who, although she is nearly 60 years old, projects a certain youthful helplessness. I have, for reasons I can't fully explain, the distinct sense that she will never make it to the suburbs without me and that dropping her off at a Blue Line stop would only result in disaster. I am also fairly certain that she has never had to carry her own suitcase. Anywhere.
'I was born intuitive'
St. James -- a stage name, changed from the less glamorous and more ethnic Sliwa -- began her adult life as an actress. And, while she achieved some success in the world of theater -- the height of her fame was a run as the lead in an Amsterdam production of "Hair" -- she became best-known, on the New York acting scene, as a coach/therapist for her fellow actors.
"I was born intuitive," she explains, over vegan gazpacho and chicken salad, "so I could understand what people were thinking or feeling in their subconscious."
She supplemented these natural abilities by studying various philosophies and techniques, including actualism, primal scream therapy and massage.
"I probably went to medical school three times with everything I studied," she tells me earnestly.
And, indeed, while she might not have an M.D. next to her name, St. James has managed to use her studies quite profitably. Coaching sessions with St. James run $300 for the first hour and $200 for each additional hour. For the money, her clients get a reading of where their energy "blocks" are -- "I've been 100 percent accurate in terms of being able to read people, even over the phone," she says -- plus a "healing," in which she lays her hands over the "blocked" area, and a plan for how to change their lives, which generally includes books, tapes, exercises and positive-thinking mantras.
Seminars in 'ageless living'
St. James says she gets most of her clients by word-of-mouth, but she openly acknowledges that business really took off in 2004 when, just three days shy of her 57th birthday, she gave birth to healthy twins in a New York hospital.
"I did something everyone said was impossible," she says.
The enormous media attention that surrounded the birth -- at the time, she was said to be the oldest woman in North America to give birth to twins -- launched St. James into the new age guru equivalent of superstardom.
The twins, Gian and Francesca, now 19 months old, were conceived using donor sperm, a donor egg and implanted in St. James' womb via an IVF procedure. She is raising them as a single parent.
When I begin to ask practical questions, like about the grave health risks faced by both St. James and her children as a result of the late-in-life pregnancy, she shrugs them off. This was, she says, "absolutely the right thing" for her to do. It was "meant to be."
While adoption is certainly the right path for some, she says, it was not for her.
Interested in the logistics of how she cares for the twins, who she has left at home in New York this weekend as she attends the Rosemont convention, I ask how she found her nanny.
"Oh," she says casually, "I just prayed for her." (Stupidly, I've been relying on Craig's List.)
St. James seems not to be bothered by those who point to her decision to have children so late in life as somehow selfish. Instead of answering their criticisms, she rightly points out the sexual double standard that had the late night talk show hosts joking about her advanced age when the story first emerged in the New York tabloid press.
"David Letterman was talking about me being in Depends," she says, "How old was he when he had his son? No one jokes about men being in diapers at 57. They're all out on the golf course."
Thoroughly enjoying the last laugh, St. James has built an entire enterprise out of her age-defying pregnancy. She's giving seminars on "ageless living" and has just published a new book, Life Shift (Fireside, 247 pages, $24), that offers tips to readers of all ages on how to "let go and live your dream," no matter what it might be.
After finishing her salad, St. James is ready to head out to her hotel.
"I hope you know where we're going," she tells me, handing me a slip of paper with the address on it. "Because I don't."
Friday's column: War wrecks wedding dreams, but love and life go on
Amira and Karim wanted their wedding to be memorable.
They planned a week-long series of events for their families and friends -- 300 guests in total -- that was to culminate, Saturday night, with a lavish ceremony and black-tie reception.
Now, instead, they will -- if they're lucky -- be spending Saturday night in transit, somewhere between the Middle East and Chicago.
Amira and Karim were supposed to get married in Beirut.
Amira, a first generation American who grew up on the East Coast but spent many of her childhood summers with her extended family in Lebanon, and Karim, a Lebanese national who is completing his medical studies in Chicago, have been in Lebanon all month. They had arranged for a few dozen of their American friends to join them there last weekend. But, before their friends could arrive, Hezbollah fighters breached Lebanon's border with Israel, taking two soldiers captive, and Israel retaliated with a series of attacks, including the bombing of Beirut's airport.
Last Wednesday night, Amira and Karim sent an urgent e-mail message to their invited guests, reporting that "things are very tense here, but we are safe."
They wrote that they were leaving Beirut to stay with relatives in the mountains and apologized that they would not be able to host everyone as planned.
"It was the apology that really got me," says Wendy Sternberg, a Chicago physician who read the e-mail in Paris, where she was to have boarded a flight for Beirut to join the wedding party. "These are two people who are really proud of where they come from and they were so looking forward to sharing their country with all of us."
'Rising from the ashes'
The elaborate itinerary Amira and Karim had prepared for their American friends, about a third of whom were traveling from Chicago, included tours of the Bekaa Valley, home to vineyards and ancient Roman ruins, and a hike among the famed Cedars of Lebanon. They also planned several days in Beirut, which they described as the "heart of the Middle East" and a city that is "rising from the ashes" of a devastating civil war.
Those plans, of course, are all cancelled now.
But surrounded by their parents and all the local relatives and friends who fled Beirut to join them in the (for now) more peaceful mountain region, Amira and Karim went ahead with their plans to have a wedding.
They sent an e-mail to their friends on Tuesday, reporting the happy news that they'd be married the next day. And that they'd managed to arrange safe passage back to the U.S., via Jordan, for this weekend.
It's an ironic sort of honeymoon trip, especially for Amira, a city employee who is planning to pursue a Ph.D. in conflict resolution or international relations. And, while the newlyweds will return to their downtown apartment with a great sense of relief, an unshakable anxiety also will follow them home.
Though they say they appreciate the outpouring of love and concern that has flooded their voice-mail and e-mail boxes, Amira and Karim don't want their friends in Chicago to make a fuss. They asked, in fact, that their full names not be shared with anyone outside their immediate circle, because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves.
They also did not want to make political statements or create problems for their relatives still in Lebanon. So their e-mails and phone calls have remained strikingly neutral, avoiding everything beyond the indisputable facts of their situation: They are unhurt, they are getting married, they are coming back.
For the would-have-been wedding guests, this clarity is both inspiring and confounding. The story of the latest violent crisis in the Middle East is now, for them, personal. But it makes even less sense than it did before.
And, for Amira and Karim, Arab Christians who hope for an independent Lebanon, one democratically governed and free from Syrian influence, the situation is heart-breaking. They don't know when they will be able to go back or what will be left of the brilliant sights they hoped to share with their friends.
The best-laid plans
There was supposed to be a wedding at St. Elie Church in Beirut on Saturday. Beautifully restored after being damaged in the civil war, it sits at the western edge of downtown and is graced by a statue of Pope John Paul II, who visited there in 1997.
Instead, the church will stand empty.
So, too, will a banquet room at the luxurious Casino du Liban, where there was supposed to be a reception.
The 300 guests who were supposed to be there will remain scattered, clustered in distant corners of the globe, as an evening that was supposed to be full of joy passes quietly.
Nothing is turning out the way it was supposed to.
But Amira and Karim are unhurt. They are married. They are coming home.
I always have strangely mixed feelings when I read an article, printed elsewhere, that I had really intended to write. It's weirdly affirming, first of all, since it seems officially approved as a good idea. And I'm generally happy to be able to take something off my "to do" list, even when it's been done by someone else.
But I also feel like kicking myself. Because I really should have gotten around to it.
I'd been meaning to write about urbanbaby.com's New York message boards ever since my best friend told me about the raging debate that had popped up there about whether it was OK to leave your sleeping baby alone in your apartment while you went to the laundry room. (The site also has Chicago-specific content, but it's nowhere near as angst-ridden. Hooray for the well-adjusted Midwest!)
Anyway, Emily Nussbaum has totally beaten me to it, with this amazing feature, just out in New York Magazine.
Now, if someone else would just hurry up and write that 3,000 word ode to the Snoogle pillow I've been planning, I might be able to squeeze in one last vacation before my maternity leave.
"The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it's inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He's one of them."
-- White House spokesman Tony Snow
OK, so here's it played out today. First, upon hearing that the Cook County Democratic Committee officially nominated Todd Stroger to run for Board President in his father's stead, I decided that, come November, I will, for the first time in my life, vote for a Republican. Tony Peraica doesn't seem like a super guy, but I'd rather vote for him than endorse this nonsense.
Then, just hours later, as I was coming to terms with my own creeping moderate-ism, I listened to highlights (if you can call them that) of the Senate debate on stem cell research.
Yes, I tried to remind myself, thinking people can disagree on this subject. It's a big ethical question. Etc., etc.
But, really, I just don't believe that. For me, it is, like gay marriage, a complete no-brainer. Harms no one, could benefit many.
I do recognize that it's the "harms no one" that is up for debate in the stem cell research question. The President, along with Rick Santorum and lots of other religious conservatives, believes that the use of an embryo in a lab for research purposes is, in fact, harmful to the point of murderousness.
(I have my doubts about whether Bush really, really believes that or if he's just playing to his base, but let's leave that paranoia aside for the moment and take the man at his word.)
If the roughly half a million frozen embryos locked up in labs right now are all people in a state of "suspended life," isn't their routine disposal the equivalent of a holocaust?
And if that's going on, why aren't these passionate advocates of life doing everything they can to "save" those babies? They should be recruiting thousands of women to carry these embryos to term. Hell, the Bush daughters are of child-bearing age, surely they could each take a year off to save a human life.
Thus ended my brief flirtation with bipartisanship.
