We’d like to tell you that we were long aware of the plight of the members of Belarus Free Theatre, suffering life-threatening oppression in pursuit of their art in their home country, but it wasn’t until a coalition of Chicago theater folk led by the Goodman, Chicago Shakespeare and Northwestern stitched together a one-month Chicago engagement that we’d ever heard of them. The move bought them time after a New York performance to suss out their next step, since going home to possible imprisonment was not a very good option. But after seeing them perform their original pastiche of the works and words of Harold Pinter in their own language on the Goodman stage opening night, where their performance gave new meaning to the power of art to change the world, we’ll never forget them. Or the benevolence of Chicago’s theater community, either.
Fine Arts Building Staff Profile: Stationary Engineer on the Move The term “stationary engineer” goes back to the days when sawmills, power plants, and factories were powered by steam engines mounted to the floor. In the 1800s, before safety was standard, a boiler blew up somewhere in the United States every thirty-six hours.
