The Chicago Tribune’s Kerry Reid has weighed in and as expected the reviews for Provision Theater’s “Beast on the Moon” are excellent:

‘Beast on the Moon’

A bittersweet, affecting and beautifully acted tale of immigrant life, Provision Theater’s production of Richard Kalinoski’s “Beast on the Moon” is well worth the trip to the Irish American Heritage Center. Set in Milwaukee during a span from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, the story traces the troubled relationship between Aram Tomasian, a photographer, and his “picture bride,” Seta. Armenians who survived the Turkish genocide a few years earlier and now striving to have their own child, Seta and Aram have chosen very different ways of dealing with their lingering grief.

Tim Gregory gracefully directs their fumbling attempts to create a real marriage out of those differences. Tiffany Scott delivers one of the most effortlessly engaging and moving performances I’ve seen so far this year as Seta, and her shifts from a terrified bride to self-possessed young housewife unfold with subtle grace and poignant truthfulness. Levi Holloway captures the hollow-eyed grief and rage of Aram, a good man paralyzed by his past. Kalinoski’s decision to include a grownup narrator feels unnecessary to the insular world of the play, but this small distraction doesn’t detract from this charming and sometimes heartbreaking production.

Through April 29 at Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox Ave (MAP)    Tickets are $25 at 773-506- 4429.

Park Community Church is about to launch a four week series called: Missional Living, where we will look at what we are called to as we live here in the city. It is going to be an excellent series…come check it out!

This prompted me to put up this video from Tim Keller.  I love to listen to Tim Keller and his views on being missional in the city. Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian (PCA) is “one of Manhattan’s most vital congregations,” according to Christianity Today. He gets it and is committed to the church planting movement and missional living — ‘entering the culture’s stories and retelling them with the gospel’.”

Here he talks about key characteristics of a missional church.

As our church begin to look at church planting and multi-site options here in Chicago, I came across this enterprising company out of the UK that offers an inflatable church building. Now, once you have picked out the perfect wedding site, you just turn on the blowers and you are ready to have your wedding. This cracks me up!

From the site: This fantastic air-filled building is 47ft long by 25ft wide & 47ft high. The attention to detail is heavenly complete with plastic “stained glass” windows, airbrush artwork which replicates the traditional church. Inside it has an inflatable organ, altar, pulpit, pews, candles and a gold cross. Even the doors are flanked by air-filled angels. The church can be unloaded, filled with air and operational in three hours and dissassembled in less than two. It costs about $30,000 to own and about $3,000 per day to rent.

Rick McKinley, Lead Pastor at Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon has broken down and joined the blogosphere. He is the pastor of this young church, and author of “Jesus in the Margins” and “This Beautiful Mess: Conversations on the Kingdom.” Imago Dei is a great church that has grown in seven years from 50 to 1,500. Check them out here. Some readers will also recognize this as the home church of Blue Like Jazz author Donald Miller, another favorite of twenty-somethings.

Rick is an excellent thinker and he stated that the main reason he is doing it though is to connect with his congregation and let them in on his life, faith and dreams. Now that Imago is bigger, it is harder to know and be known as the main leader and he sees this as a key communications vehicle.  Put this guy on your blogrolls and check him out regularly.

If it is April, it must be time for another Provision Theater production. This time, this award-nominated troupe is putting on ” Beast on the Moon”. Written by Richard Kalinoski, a man personally familiar with the difficulties associated with growing up in a post-genocide Armenian community, this play examines the trials of a young couple, having survived the genocide themselves, in their effort to start a family of their own. THIS PLAY HAS BEEN RECOMMENDED by the Jeff Awards Committee.

Here is a brief description of the play:

“When his teenage mail-order bride arrives in Milwaukee in 1921, young Aram believes his future can finally begin. His sole desire is for a large family – a family to replace the one ripped from him in the recent Armenian genocide. But when the affects of the atrocities begin to surface for and Seta, their hopes for children are dashed. Can the present heal the past? The desperate couple finds out with the help of an unlikely young stranger.” [Read more...]

The Museum of Hoaxes (really, there is a site — check it out!)  puts out a Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of All Time.  Check it out here.

My favorite? #77: MIT-key Mouse

On April 1, 1998 the homepage of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced some startling news: the prestigious university was to be sold to Walt Disney Co. for $6.9 billion. A photograph of the university’s famous dome outfitted with a pair of mouse ears accompanied the news. The press release explained that the university was to be dismantled and transported to Orlando where new schools would be added to the campus including the School of Imagineering, the Scrooge McDuck School of Management, and the Donald Duck Department of Linguistics. The fact that the announcement appeared on MIT’s homepage added official credibility to it. But in fact, the announcement was the work of students who had hacked into the school’s central server and replaced the school’s real web page with a phony one.