"Mad Joy is one of the riskiest, most innovative and sophisticated pieces of original theater I've seen in Chicago in the last three years."
- Gabrielle Kaplan, Chicago Reader April 12, 1996

By Gabrielle Kaplan
PerformInk: December 19, 1996

Looking over my list of favorite plays form the past year, I admit to having a certain bias: I really love exceptional productions of original work. As a playwright, I'm constantly impressed when I see my contemporaries create new theater pieces that have both the craft and the innovation to make a moving, memorable theatrical experience, and I am equally stirred when a director, designers and ensembles of actors take the risk of embracing new work and playing out its author's vision.

While I reluctantly admit that I've seen a number of productions this past year in which the playwright might have been wiser to revise his/her work before professionally staging it, I also saw a significant number of original plays that should become a part of our contemporary canon. First and foremost, kudos go to TeenStreet Theater, a program that employs city teenagers to write and act in original works, through Free Street Theater. This past year's group created Mad Joy, an explosively poetic, both gritty and fantastical text about Mecca, a woman whose life begins with a peaceful old age and who then ages into her birth, which comes with the promise of everlasting life. This utterly complex concept worked extremely well under Ron Bieganski's direction and with writing guidance from Bryn Magnus, as the teenage artists used an eclectic source of music and dance, as well as words, to convey their story about life and death, set against the intense backdrop of present-day inner-city life.

TeenStreet performed Mad Joy at the Free Street Theater at Pulaski Park last spring, and was then invited by Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey to bring the show to the Steppenwolf Studio, where it was also well-received this past autumn.

Another original play, making its Chicago debut, which stands out in my memory was Latino Chicago's production of Migdalia Cruz's exploration of sailor myths and archetypes in her very steamy Cigarettes and Moby Dick.. . . . .