Theatre

Fences

Playcrafters Barn Theatre

Friday, July 9, through Sunday, July 18

So let's say you watched this year's Tony Awards ceremony, saw that the August Wilson drama Fences received awards for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor in a Play (Denzel Washington), and Best Actress in a Play (Viola Davis), and said to yourselves, "Wow, I'd really like to catch that show someday."

You currently have two options: (1) Book a flight to New York, and cross your fingers that the Broadway production still has a few premium-seat tickets available for $376.50 a pop. Or (2) Drive a few miles and see Fences at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, with tickets going for $10 each.

I'm presuming you'd like to hear more about the second option?

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

At roughly the halfway point in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - the third of four books (and eventually five movies) in author Stephenie Meyer's frighteningly popular series - we're given a flashback that details the vampiristic recruitment of Rosalie (Nikki Reed), a character constricted to the sidelines in previous Twilight installments. Set in what looks to be 1920s or '30s America, the brief sequence finds this pretty blond-turned-bloodsucker exacting revenge on her hateful fiancé while sporting a wedding gown and a nightmarish grin, and it's a total kick; several scenes later, another enjoyable flashback shows us how the similarly undeveloped figure of Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) joined the ranks of the undead while performing a heroic service during the Civil War.

The numerous plaudits for singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster include O magazine calling her "a blues powerhouse" and Paste magazine raving, "There's no denying the power of Foster's monstrous voice," and she received a 2009 Grammy Award nomination for her CD The Truth According to Ruthie Foster -- which is about as confident a title as one could imagine.

Yet during our recent phone interview, the Austin, Texas-based musician admits that power and confidence were by no means inherent traits.

"I knew early on that I wanted to be in music doing something," says Foster of her professional goals, "but being a singer out front was not my idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be support. For anyone. I was kind of shy, so I didn't really see myself doing what I'm doing now.

"So yeah, I wanted to be in music, but to this capacity?" she continues. "I just kind of learned how to be out in front of people and how to entertain. You know, you just keep saying 'yes,' and all these opportunities come up."

"I started gravitating toward the blues in about 1969," says 60-year-old vocalist Shirley King. "What happened was I'd moved to Chicago from California -- I'd been staying with my dad and came back to stay with my mom -- and I was supposed to be getting married to a boyfriend I'd been liking ever since I was small. So I pretty much followed him here to Chicago to get married ... and he decided he'd had a change of mind, and wanted to marry my girlfriend.

"So I think that must've pushed me over to the blues!" exclaims King, with a deep laugh, during our recent phone interview. "Because, man, I got it then!"

Did she ever. For nearly 20 years now, the Chicago-based King has been a staple at area blues clubs; a popular touring artist who has performed in Canada, Italy, France, and even Iceland; and a darling of blues fans and critics, with Prevue magazine describing her as "a musical gem" and the Web site MNBlues.com lauding, "King sings with passion, energy, and power."

But what's surprising about King's reminiscence is that she didn't get the blues before that heartbreak of her youth, considering that her dad is the King of the Blues himself -- B.B. King.