Bring out your dead

Carol Jackson

A broad view tells us that developments in visual art happened simultaneously to advances in theater. Looking closer you see that the two were actually working together. There was no coincidence. Chicago is a divided city. In addition to race and economic divisions, it seems there are chasms between our art discipline communities. Slow and Sideshow Theatre Company have been making attempts to bring them together.

Last summer slow hosted and Sideshow directed, a staged reading of the play Dirty Crusty set in an installation of artworks made in response to the play. This time, we’re going to their house. Sideshow has produced Antigonick a translation of Sophokles’ Anigone by renowned poet and MacArthur Genius Anne Carson. In the lobby we installed an exhibition of artwork for the audience to view as they enter and exit the play.

Bring out your dead

Speak no ill of the dead. A roundabout way of saying that losing someone broken is still a loss. 

Each of us has a place in a social hierarchy. When someone important dies, the truth of the dying isn’t so important. The return of everything to its rightful order is the task at hand. The person in charge has to be honored because my identity comes from whom I follow. We leave out every indignity in the death of a hero or of a king. When it is the death of an enemy or a criminal we glory in the lurid bits. Punishment is just deserts. This is a group of artworks that directly confront the honorific or shameful remembrances that follow death. Infamy or glory, the songs remain on our lips.

Artwork by Benjamin Zellmer Bellas, Jason Dunda, Jeffrey Grauel, John Henley, Carol Jackson, and Mican Morgan.

March 4 - April 5, 2015
Victory Gardens Theater
2433 N Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60614

Mican Morgan