Chicago Human Rhythm Project announced yesterday that body-banging Brazilian troupe Barbatuques did not get visas from the Sao Paolo U.S. Consulate in time for its upcoming performances here. Cancelled: the high-profile "Global Rhythms" shows at the Harris Theater November 28-30, plus gigs at the University of Chicago’s International House November 22 and the Old Town School of Folk Music November 26. For refunds from the Harris, call the box office at 312-334-7777.

It would have been Barbatuques’ North American debut and the fourth annual “Global Rhythms” event. CHRP is hoping to reschedule Barbatuques, a feel-good Stomp-style group. In another loss, there will be no ticket revenues to share with some 50 nonprofits through a Thanks 4 Giving program that generated $22,000 for participants in 2006 and $32,000 in 2007. 

This weekend Links Hall presents Charged Bodies--the first fruit of its visiting-artist mentorship program, in which emerging artists develop and present new solo works under the  guidance an experienced professional. For this maiden effort, three mentees--Sentell Harper, Rebecca Kling, and Awilda Rodriguez Lora--were teamed with gay California-based performance artist and teacher Tim Miller, who visited Chicago to work with them and also viewed their works-in-progress over YouTube. Each mentee received ten hours worth of access to studio space at the Center on Halsted, a stipend, and other professional support.

The three young artists are "self-identified as queer" or "address queer themes in their work," according to a press release. But "queer" covers a lot of ground, and Harper, Kling, and Lora are a diverse lot. Lora, 31, is a Latina lesbian trained in modern dance. Harper, 27, is a gay African-American actor. And Kling is a white 24-year-old transitioning from male to female. Their autobiographical pieces, which I saw in rehearsal at the Center on Halsted last month, are innovative, engaging, and sometimes provocative blends of art, therapy, and activism.

Lora arrived on the U.S. mainland from Puerto Rico ten years ago to be with her mother in Florida. After graduating from Hunter College in New York with a BA in dance, she came to Chicago to attend Columbia College, where she is currently completing a master's degree in arts management. Her piece, I Wanted to Be a Cheerleader But My Country Didn't Have It, combines dance, storytelling, and visual art to chronicle her emotional and sexual self-discovery and her relationship with her father, whom she views as psychologically abusive. "My goal is to say, 'This happened to me, and maybe you can relate to this and maybe you can't, but you're hearing the experience of a Puerto Rican queer woman from the mouth and the body of that woman," she says.

Harper is a native of Arlington, Virginia, and holds a BA in theater from the University of Pittsburgh. Inspired by the 90s gay black performance trio Pomo Afro Homos, he earned an MFA in performance from Arizona State University, where he first studied with Miller. "Tim is very fearless, and I've learned that you have to go really deep into yourself," says Harper. He does just that in You're Worth Keeping, which relates how his mother--who abandoned him as a child--stole his identity, opening bank and credit card accounts, and even having a male friend buy her a car, in her son's name. Harper mines humor from the contrast between his real domestic situation and his ideal fantasy family--the Huxtables.

A graduate of the performance studies program at Northwestern University, Kling  grew up and still lives in Evanston. She works there, too, teaching at the Piven Theatre Workshop and serving as general manager of The Actors Gymnasium. "I got involved with this project because I'd been looking for a way to access queer identity," she says. "Transitioning [from male to female] is a very gradual process. It's partly about changing the way you present yourself to others, but what's probably harder is changing the way I think about myself. Each step of the transition has been me putting my toe in the water and seeing if it feels right. I'm very conscious of trying to find my own voice on a personal level, and trying to process the gender transition through solo performance made a lot of sense to me."

Is there a future for performance art in an environment saturated by the Internet, film, and video? "To have a live art form that allows itself to shift across boundaries and explore questions of what art is, that's still very relevant," says Kling. "I hope it never comes to pass that there's a world where there are no questions about what art is."

Charged Bodies plays Fri-Sat 11/21-11/22, 8 PM, at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield. Tickets are $15. For more information, call 773-281-0824 or visit www.linkshall.org.

Milk, Gus van Sant's new movie about assassinated San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk, features former Chicago actor Denis O'Hare in a key role. O'Hare, a Northwestern University grad, gained prominence here in the 1980s for his performances in two plays presented at the now-defunct Stormfield Theatre: Never the Sinner, a dramatization of the Leopold-Loeb murder case, and Hauptmann, in which O'Hare starred as Bruno Hauptmann, the man convicted of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. (Both were written by John Logan, now a Hollywood screenwriter-producer whose credits include Gladiator, The Aviator, and Sweeney Todd.) O'Hare also appeared in productions at the Goodman, Victory Gardens, and Court theaters before heading off to New York, where he won a best-actor Tony for Take Me Out and also appeared in noted revivals of Cabaret, Assassins, and Sweet Charity.

In Milk--whose release this month coincides with the 30th anniversary of Milk's death--O'Hare plays antigay California politician John Briggs. Several key scenes in the movie find O'Hare facing off against Sean Penn, who plays Milk. Briggs sponsored the infamous Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot initiative restricting homosexuals from teaching in public schools. Leading the successful battle against Prop 6 helped make a national celebrity of Milk. The film's handling of Prop 6 is especially timely in light of the current protests against Proposition 8, the ballot initiative passed earlier this month that bans same-sex marriage in California.

Another erstwhile Chicago performer in the film is Shaun Landry, who plays Democratic activist Gwen Craig. An alum of Dunbar Vocational Career Academy and Columbia College, Landry founded the pioneering comedy group Oui Be Negroes, which she claims is "the original African-American impro/sketch comedy theater company in the United States." (The troupe's revues here in the 1990s included Absolute Negritude and One Drop Is All It Takes.) She also appeared with the Geese Theatre, a Chicago-based ensemble that traveled to prisons, leading theater workshops and creating original performance pieces with inmates. I wrote about the group for the Reader in 1988.

Former Chicago actor Michael Stahl-David has so far been known for more or less serious roles. The youngest person ever to study at The School at Steppenwolf, he appeared here in the About Face Theatre productions of Theater District and One Arm, and the 2003 Chicago premiere of Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? at the Goodman  (he played the gay son of a couple whose marriage is threatened when the husband has an affair with a goat). After graduating from Columbia College--where, full disclosure, he was one of my best students--Stahl-David focused on film and TV. He was featured in the 2007 NBC crime series The Black Donnellys (about an Irish-American gang in New York), then popped up on the big screen in the 2008 horror flick Cloverfield, playing a young man whose going-away party is disrupted by a monster.

Now he's taken steps to display his comic side by starring in his own autobiographical Internet mockumentary, Michael Stahl-David: Behind the Star. Written and directed by Stahl-David and another Columbia alum, Jeremy Beiler, the Web series lampoons a narcissistic young actor's attempts to conquer Hollywood. Though the real Stahl-David is a down-to-earth, hard-working, disciplined young professional, his portrayal of an ambitious, egotistical dick is so on-target that it might be hard to convince the public he's not that guy. Of course, being mistaken for an asshole might be a career-booster--the best way to get himself on the cover of the celebrity tabloids.

Check out Charles Isherwood's profile on Chicago director David Cromer, from Sunday's Times. The headline's a little condescending--"Prolific Director Off Off Off Off Broadway"--but the story itself is admiring toward both Cromer and our city's theater community. In fact, it fawns over our "theater-rich city" about as much as Cromer fawns over their "Emerald City."

Here are our reviews of Cromer's two currently-running shows, Celebrity Row and Picnic.

Broadway singer-actor Karen Mason will appear at Davenport's, 1383 N. Milwaukee, Tue 11/11-Sun 11/16. The gig is part of a tour to promote her new CD, Right Here/Right Now, but it's got a sentimental aspect, too: Mason was the first performer to appear at Davenport's when it opened in 1998; her return appearance is part of the club's 10th anniversary celebration.

Mason, who got her start in the Chicago cabaret scene of the mid-1970s, is currently costarring in Hairspray, now in its seventh year on Broadway. She plays Velma Von Tussel, the bitchy TV station manager and onetime Miss Baltimore Crabs. The drag role of Velma's nemesis, Edna Turnblad, is being played by another ex-Chicagoan--Second City veteran George Wendt.

Mason launched her singing career here in 1976 in partnership with pianist-songwriter Brian Lasser. Her bravura vocals and Lasser's inventive arrangements made the pair a Chicago nightlife favorite before they headed to New York at the end of the '70s. Lasser died of AIDS in 1992, at the age of 40. Mason's Broadway credits also include Mamma Mia!, Sunset Boulevard (she was Glenn Close's standby for the role of Norma Desmond), and Torch Song Trilogy. For information and reservations, call 773-278-1830.

To follow up on our earlier post about the death of Joffrey Ballet cofounder Gerald Arpino: the memorial service has been moved from Joffrey headquarters. In order to accommodate anticipated crowds, it will now be held Mon 11/17, 10 AM, at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, 50 E. Congress.  

Also, don't send flowers. The family asks that you make a contribution instead, to:
The Gerald Arpino Scholarship Fund
Academy of Dance, official school of The Joffrey Ballet
Joffrey Tower
10 East Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60601

For more information, go to the Joffrey Web site .

The presidential campaign got me curious about the extent of political activism in Chicago's theater community, so I put together a 10-question survey and sent it out to about 100 local companies. I got 22 responses, which were collated by crack Reader intern Dave McQuown. I'm not going to reveal the names or affiliations of the respondents because some were worried that their answers might imperil their nonprofit 501(c)3 status--a genuine concern because 501(c)3 requires an organization to stay away from political partisanship--but they offered a good communal sampling, including actors, writers, directors, box officers, a clutch of artistic directors, various types of managers, a techy, a dialect coach, a "casting associate," a choreographer, a translator, and one executive producer. Their theaters ran heavily--though not entirely--to the small and spunky.

Of the 22, nine had already volunteered and another six planned to do so. The nine had mostly done phone-banking, though one gave a detailed account of her campaign work, ending with the comment that she and her fiance "are a political junkie couple." Donations ranged from a high of $4,600 down to "No--I'm perpetually broke." As far as the candidate that attracted their efforts, current or future, it was unanimous: Obama.

The final two questions allowed for opinions, and a little passion here and there:

What issue is most important to you in the current election cycle?
1. Improving Education in this country--fostering all aspects of learning, including the arts.  As an example, my pre-teen nephew had no idea who Shakespeare was. . . .
2. Economy and Health Care
3. Selection of Supreme Court Justices
4. Foreign Policy
5. Economy and Health Issues
6. Health Care
7. Health Care!
8. Stop this unjustified war and end America’s policy of preemptive aggression without forfeiting our civil rights.  Put someone in the White House who understands and supports women’s issues.
9. Economy
10. War
11. War, health care, economy
12. The energy crisis, the economy, the war, and marriage laws.
13. Restoration of checks and balances. Political far-sightedness (seeing beyond the next election, which unfortunately seems impossible in our system.)  “Re-regulation” of Wall Street.  Alternative energy tax credits.  Fixing social security (remove the cap). Withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Get rid of Republicans’ expansion of government (ironic for a Dem to call for smaller gov’t) by eliminating the Department of Homeland Security (return agencies to former departments), all faith-based initiatives, GSEs except FDIC and Federal Reserve (let’s have free markets!), the Task Force on New Americans, and illegal wiretapping (back to FISA!). Increased mass transit funding from federal level. Return to Clinton surplus. Single-payer universal healthcare. No further drilling offshore or in Alaska. Restore line-item veto to deal with pork!  Raise capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, and implement a windfall carbon tax. Lower income taxes on middle and lower classes. Make abortion legal in all cases; defend Roe v. Wade. Make buying a weapon more difficult. Make gay marriages legal, not just “civil unions.” Raise minimum wage. Tax increases on corporations for every job they ship overseas. Get rid of public funding for candidates and replace with licensing requirement for TV and radio networks that states they must give a certain amount of air time to candidates. No more special interest influence.
14. World economy, including the war in Iraq, which affects it considerably
15. education and any effort to lead to more discussion and less bipartisanship
16. Right now, the economy, but also climate change and education
17. Healthcare
18. getting a Democrat in the White House
19. Economy--Iraq War
20. Healthcare
21. so many, not sure where to start but here’s a few, The Wars, Health Care, Education (including arts in education) economy, our lack of respect in this world, I could go on but top three is War, Health Care, Education
22. poverty and the divide between rich and poor. I support [environmentalist] Van Jones for a new deal to create new jobs in the new green industry

Do you feel your political work relates to your work in the theater? If so, how?
1. No opinion here, as I have yet to volunteer. However I will say that I’d like to see more of same volunteerism/grass roots style of support shown for political campaigns, applied to the support for local independent theatre companies.
2. Yes. I write shows that have an undertone of my political views, and that effects the people who experience the shows, and hopefully changes or strengthens their views.
3. Actually, no.
4. No
5. Yes, because I am extremely liberal and free thinking, which reflects the work I like to do in theatre, and how I vote.
6. Political belief relates to my work in the theatre more than political work.  The social dynamics of politics informs so much of my worldview, it’s impossible to imagine that I could do work divorced from that belief.
7. I think that in either capacity you are simply asked to make a connection with another person and you passionately hope to succeed in that challenge.
8. I am someone who wants to communicate with my fellow human beings and shape the world we live in.  Theater, storytelling and politics do all this.
9. Yes. The economy directly impacts our livelihood, either at the box office or at the donation jar.  When it comes to putting food on the table, the arts are very low on people’s priority list.  I also think that tolerance and integrity will play a key role in the campaign and both are explored and expressed (anywhere on their respective spectrum) through the dramatic arts.
10. Political beliefs – slightly
11. Everything about what I do and who I am and where I live relates to my work in the theater.
12. I wish it did more but many of the people I encounter in the theatre both actors and audience members tend to believe in the same sorts of things I do.  I wish more people would come out into the theatre world in order to experience and [sic] new lifestyle and realize that Change really is possible if you open your mind to art, creativity and a new mindset.
13. Yes. The theater is a remarkable laboratory for liberalism.
14. Yes. Good theater makes people think and feel more intensely than usual, and can put us in touch with our best--and sometimes worst--selves.  That creates a certain level of discomfort with the status quo.  We can’t just walk off from those experiences as if we’d played a game of racquetball.  We have to use that energy to help affect the world for the better.
15. Yes, entirely.  My believes about bipartisan discussion fuel my passion for the theatre, and especially for [name of theater]’s work.
16. Not directly, but theater is business, and a down-turning economy is bad for business and also bad for grants.
17. It relates to my happiness as an American, and if I’m unhappy I am not a good actress.
18. Not usually, but it is certainly not unwelcome.
19. Yes, we are all in this together.  We all look forward to a peaceful future for ourselves and our children.  The Arts is an important part of our lives, especially for the future generation.  I will do all I can to keep a focus on the Arts in the political arena.
20. Being in the theatre is about telling the truth. . . in this election truth is on the line.  I can’t bear the thought of 4 more years of Republican lies.  I can’t even bear McCain’s lying campaign.
21. [Name of theater]’s mission is to create sociopolitical theatre, we created a piece about a [soldier], who came back from a Iraq and killed himself, told from the eyes of his sister. . . , not all our work is about the government but “political” we want to engage people and start conversations.  Also, I think being a teaching artist is political in a time were arts in education is not valued, even though according to No Child Left Behind it should be a fully funded program.
22.  Everything is political.  But I am just trying to create relevant and diverse theater for the community in which I live.