Designers Pauline Olesky (set), Claire Sangster (lights), and Ariel Zetina (sound) have transformed the Center on Halsted’s cozy Hoover-Leppen Theatre into a dance club where pumping music and flashing lights provide a rousing and immersive party atmosphere. “In this ballroom, we give you the chance to be the things the world tells you not to be,” declares the show’s charismatic emcee, self-described “Filipino trans goddess” Angelíca Grace. For 75 intermissionless minutes, the performers offer spoken and sung testimony about their own lives and the lives of those who came before them. As one cast member puts it, “Bearing witness to someone else’s truth is an opportunity to assess our own truth.”
The mood is sometimes elegiac (as when the talk turns to AIDS or suicide) but mostly celebratory. The memories are joyous and painful, humorous and angry, sexy and shy—and always honest and authentic. The dozen cast members are talented and poised. More important, they are brave, curious, intelligent, and eloquent. 20/20 is powerful stuff. v
Through 7/28: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, 773-784-8565, aboutfacetheatre.com, $20 or pay what you can.
