‘Art Imitates Life’ in Two Chicago Theater Productions. The Goodman and Red Orchid Theatres in Chicago are both offering productions that deal with a problem related to lead contamination that has become endemic in the Chicago area as well as across the country. The city of East Chicago, Indiana, has been dealing with soil contaminated by lead for the past decade. This past summer residents in the West Calumet housing development in East Chicago, Indiana, were told they had to relocate because of lead found in the soil under their homes. In addition the children would have to attend a new school as the lead content in the soil beneath the school was also above EPA limits.
A major question–‘Why didn’t the town do something before this? ‘ Late nineteenth century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in his play “An Enemy of the People” appears to present a response that is as valid today as it was in 1882–POLITICS.
A Red Orchid and The Goodman, two Chicago theaters, are dealing with this question in their February and March 2018 productions respectively. The Goodman is following Ibsen’s script. However, Red Orchid in an adaptation by Brett Nevue comes closer to home and locates the story in a small Illinois town (not too far from East Chicago) instead of Ibsen’s Norwegian location. Moreover, instead of Ibsen’s public bath contaminated by bacteria, Neveu’s problem is a town’s soil contaminated by lead.
Reviews of both plays can be found at my blog chicagonow.com/traveling-professor.
Background on the East Chicago lead contamination problem can be found at various blogs on this site. The site will be updated as new information becomes available.
My article on the communications related to the East Chicago lead contamination debacle provides additional information on this situation along with a discussion of the communications related to the lead found in the water in Newark, New Jersey, schools.