2016
"This new version transports Dickens' narrative with a specificity and theatricality that is truly exciting-and yet 90% of the dialogue comes directly from the novel," comments Remy Bumppo Producing Artistic Director Nick Sandys.
Read MoreTrust Silk Road Rising to make its very first holiday show – Christmas at Christine’s -- not only multi-cultural but free of schmaltz and glitter too.
Read MoreJourney from California to Chicago to the Philippines to a Catholic-Jewish household, as Christine sings her way through the holiday songbook and a lifetime of yuletide memories.
Read More[Singer and actor Christine Bunuan] invites audiences into her world and shares a lifetime of touching holiday memories, from stories about seeing her husband perform in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" to a time when she had to celebrate Christmas in Florida while on tour.
Read MoreTrue to holiday cabaret tradition, Chicago actor and singer Christine Bunuan fills her solo-show stocking with songs ranging from naughty to nice, sardonic to sentimental. But what Bunuan also offers in Christmas at Christine's, the first holiday show at Silk Road Rising, is her perspective as a child of Filipino immigrants.
Read MoreThis sweet, lighthearted holiday cabaret, written and performed by Christine Bunuan, weaves together holiday songs, some familiar, some not, with Bunuan’s recollections of Christmases past. Bunuan has a lovely voice and a winning onstage rapport with her laconic accompanist, Ryan Brewster, and her song selection, though mild, is diverting (a Jewish parody of “Santa Baby,” called “Moishe Baby,” is one the high points) . But it’s her deceptively simple stories about life in theater or visiting her extended family in the Philippines that make this show a cut above your average holiday revue. It helps that Bunuan has a very likable, relaxed stage presence and a born raconteur’s ability to make even the most mundane tale riveting.
Read MoreThe poet and musician Ziryab was one of the luminaries of southern Spain’s medieval Islamic period, particularly when it came to playing the lutelike oud. In this solo show from Silk Road Rising, writer-performer Ronnie Malley argues that the flowering of Ziryab’s art came about in part due to the confluence of cultures—Islamic, Christian, and Jewish—he encountered in ninth-century Andalusia. Malley, the child of Palestinian immigrants, links that earlier example of multiculturalism to his own upbringing on the city’s southwest side. The show’s first-person accounts are stirring and Malley is a skillful musician; in addition to singing and strumming the oud, he plays percussion and the electric guitar.
Read MoreMalley leavens a potentially death-riddled mystery with an insouciant approach to anecdotes that anchors his performance in the earth of Chicago’s standup roots.
Read MoreMalley’s performances on the oud and its descendants, the lute and the guitar, certainly drive home his point about music’s universal reach.
Read MoreMalley richly regales us with songs that are both time trips and travelogues. His avocation is as religious as artistic. It links him in tolerance to the Abrahamic god of three religions and countless cultures. Malley connects us too. The result is wonderful.
Read MoreWhere politicians and diplomats fail, artists and storytellers may yet succeed. Not in ratifying a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine, but in building the sort of social and political connectivity that enables resolution...
Read MoreThis new holiday musical revue puts a Silk Road spin on the Christmas season. Chicago favorite Christine Bunuan invites you into her world with Christmas at Christine's. Journey from California to Chicago to the Philippines to a Catholic-Jewish household as Christine sings her way through the holiday songbook and a lifetime of yuletide memories.
Read MoreSo he won the election. Shock, fear, and anger morph into responses, both coherent and otherwise. And yet, while heartbreak overwhelms, clarity and renewed focus emerge as its natural counterweights...
Read MoreFacing daily presumptions of guilt that demand constant proofs of innocence (and not just at airports), Usman has developed a survival philosophy, a self-detachment that doubles as a plea for tolerance or at least sanity.
Read MoreSilk Road Rising is doing something unique and exciting on the Chicago theater landscape.
Read More...It’s calculated: How he moves his eyes, the stool, the mike. Every accent and syllable walks the line between entertainment and disclosure. Recommended!
Read MoreFamed comedian, Azhar Usman, takes to the stage with this brutally honest, unflinching one-man show exploring the tensions and paradoxes surrounding the double consciousness of American Muslims living in an ever-polarizing modern world.
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