Otherworld's "Down the Rocky Road and All the Way to Bedlam"

Hey readers, you may have noticed that Positron has been pretty quiet lately—moving offices and lots of disruptions in my normal routine. But! There's lots of good stuff going on in Chicago, and I would be remiss not to direct you to go check out Otherworld Theatre's Down the Rocky Road and all the Way to Bedlam in its final weekend.

Podcast #4- The Hugo Novels

Our new podcast is live, just in time for us to load our bikes up and head to Wiscon! This episode, we talk about some more science fiction & fantasy theater in Chicago, then launch into a brief discussion of all 6 Hugo novels on the 2017 shortlist.

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• 0- Introduction & What We've Been Reading (Hugo Nominations & C.J. Cherryh's Rimrunners)
• 4:00- Upcoming Events
• 6:18- What we're looking forward to at Wiscon & BikeCon
• 10:55- Theatrical Discussion: Lifeline's A Wrinkle in Time, Edge of Orion's Illyria, and a bit more discussion of New Millennium's The Incredible Hank and Otherworld's The Rogue Aviator
• 16:27- Hugo overview & voting mechanics
• 20:51- Novel discussion!
• Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning
• N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate
• Cixin Liu's Death's End
• Charlie Jane Ander's All the Birds in the Sky
• Becky Chamber's A Closed and Common Orbit
• Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit
• 43:51- Overall Hugo thoughts
• 53:52- Credits

(Extended show notes after we return from Wiscon!)

Thanks to our events reader this episode, Chelsea Fiddyment from Unreal.

Our music is provided by Pelafina. Check them out on Facebook and Bandcamp!

Hope you like the show! Questions, comments? Sound off in the comments, or drop us a line at positronchicago@gmail.com.

Otherworld's "The Rogue Aviator"

This weekend I saw the opening night of The Rogue Aviator, the newest production from Otherworld Theatre. Written by Nick Izzo and directed by Tiffany Keane-Schaefer, the play brings a tale of dieselpunk aerial adventures to the stage.

Set in an alt-history version of the 1920s, the story revolves around the flying city of Olympus, a supposed techno-utopia threatened by sky pirates and its own descent into an oppressive military tyranny. The eponymous Rogue Aviator is Ellie McCloud (Moira Begale), a nobly-motivated bounty hunter with ties on both side of the conflict.

I'm continually impressed by Otherworld's project of bringing complex science fiction and fantasy stories to the medium of theater, and this was a fun show. Brief thoughts below:

New Millennium Theatre's "The Incredible Hank"

The New Millennium Theatre Company focuses on "new or non-traditional" plays with an eye towards bringing in new audiences; previous endeavors have included Tolkien/action movie mashup Old Hobbits Die Hard and recurring Christmas special Silent Night of the Living Dead, if that gives you any idea.

Their newest production is The Incredible Hank, a farcical super-hero tale written & directed by Alex B. Reynolds. Set in a super-hero saturated metropolis, it follows a file clerk (Mike Movido) with incredible strength who is drawn, against his will, into the world of super-crime and vigilante justice.

A fast, loud show with broad humor, The Incredible Hank had the audience erupting in laughter at every other line. Some quick thoughts below:

Quick Thoughts on "Illyria: A Shakespearean Fantasy"

Just got back from the first night of Illyria: A Shakespearean Fantasy, produced by EDGE theatre.

This was so much fun! I fear I can't put together a particularly coherent review at this hour, but it's such a limited run that I wanted to get down some impressions and encourage you to check it out.

Structured primarily around Twelfth Night (shipwrecked separated twins, cross-dressing shenanigans), Illyria also draws on A Midsummer Night's Dream (rom-com escapades in fairy-controlled woods) and The Tempest (magic & supernatural beings). Illyria plays up the fantastic elements to good effect and, perhaps more impressively, strips downs and blends some fairly tangled plots—the resulting script is lively and more consistently humorous than many straight adaptations of Shakespearean comedies I have seen, while maintaining the kind of multi-thread madcap quality that makes his comedies so enduring.

Thoughts on Otherworld Theatre's "A Princess of Mars"

Disclaimer: Positron received press passes to see this production. We'd totally tell you if we didn't like it anyway, though. Fortunately, it's really good.

Otherworld Theatre has just launched its second run of A Princess of Mars, their stage adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 tale. Directed by Tiffany Keane Schaefer, adapted by Schaefer and Nick Izzo, the play is a rollicking adventure featuring inventive effects and stage combat.

Following the general outline of Burroughs' story—with some extremely effective changes that I'll get into below—A Princess of Mars is the story of John Carter of Virginia, a veteran of the Civil War mysteriously transported to Mars. In Burroughs' version of the red planet, it's a dying but habitable world populated by a wild assortment of alien cultures and creatures. Carter is quickly caught up in a variety of conflicts and escapades, eventually following in love with the titular damsel in distress.

Frank E. Schoonover's
1917 cover.

Burroughs' tales of "Barsoom", as the Martians name their planet, are violent and rather silly, plagued by racism and sexism that are absolutely wince-inducing to read today—Burroughs, of course, is also the creator of such culturally-insensitive works as the Tarzan series. After acknowledging their faults, however, the Barsoom tales are also undeniably fun—exuberant, free-wheeling, and almost childishly imaginative and melodramatic, with Carter a kind of superman thrown up against bizarre monstrosities and enemies. Barsoom has also had an immense impact on science fiction and fantasy: as an important ingredient in "sword & sorcery" and "science fantasy" genre development, and as a direct influence on writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and countless others.

But that's Burroughs, and, while this play is true to the broad outline of his work, it's very much its own creature.

Otherworld's production is, without reservation, a delight. I hadn't made it to any of their productions before—after seeing the House Theatre's production of Diamond Dogs, I'm belatedly kicking myself for not seeking out more of the SF/F performance art in Chicago—so I really wasn't sure what was in store. A Princess of Mars exceeded all my expectations: entertaining through and through, with a memorable cast, great costumes, tech, and stage combat, and a really delightful script.

Think Galactic- Diamond Dogs Outing

This past Saturday, I joined some other members of Think Galactic for a theatrical outing—The House Theatre of Chicago's performance of Diamond Dogs at the Chopin Theater.

Diamond Dogs is a stage adaptation of the Alastair Reynolds novella of the same name: a kind of horror-survival story set in the far future, transhuman space opera world of Reynolds' Revelation Space universe. Saturday's production also featured a pre-show discussion with Reynolds himself, as well as playwright Althos Low (pen name for Steve Pickering & others) and director Nathan Allen.

I've been meaning to see more of the SFF-allied theater in Chicago, and I am *so glad* I made it out to see this—really quite a spectacle, not shying away even slightly from the science-fictional elements, and with some pretty brilliant tech—props, costumes, puppetry, light & sound—it pulled them off surprisingly well.

More discussion, and possible spoilers, below: