Review of Red Theater Chicago's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. It was by Kristoffer Diaz and it was directed by Jeremy Aluma. It was about a man named Mace (Alejandro Tey) who was a wrestler. He was trying to make his name known and call attention to the social injustice in the wrestling world, while still trying to keep his job. The wrestling world is dominated by everyone's favorite wrestler, Chad Deity (Semaj Miller), and is run by EKO (Mickey O'Sullivan). Mace invites a person his brother and his other brother played basketball with, VP (Priyank Thakkar) to audition to be a wrestler because VP is so great at self-promotion and seems like he can get anything he wants. It is about justice, being the guy in the background who always gets defeated, and fame. I think this is a really great show. It is a great concept with fluid dialogue and beautiful acting. I loved it.

This show has really good direct address. It is not just there for no reason. The audience is a character. Mace is talking to someone and is trying to get his point across. He is talking to the audience as a person. He is the narrator but he is also part of the story which I think is a very important thing you need when you want to do direct address. I liked how he had the power to bend time and step in and out of the story. Like when he is fighting with Chad Deity, he speaks about how he is feeling and how they are helping each other. There is also one part where VP steps in and says I am going to do the talking for Mace over here really quick because he is sort of busy doing this fight, which shows that it is not just Mace that has all of the power. It is more of a communal thing, which is more interesting to watch because you get to see multiple people's perspectives on what is happening in the story in the moment.

I really loved the way the play started and how they kept coming back to the same story. The story was about Mace's brother and other brother and how they all used to watch wrestling together. They had these dolls that didn't really move at all and they would eat soggy knock-off cereal. They kept coming back to this story because it was an important image in his mind; it is why he got into wrestling. He would study the moves. Wrestling is an escape from reality for him: that he is eating soggy knock-off cereal and he had the immovable doll wrestling guys. Even though the dolls look awesome, they are not fun to play with. He doesn't want to be a wrestling guy in a permanent pose; he would rather be fun to play with and movable. Even though he doesn't really like being the one who never wins even though he is more talented, he enjoys other aspects of his job, like being in one of the most popular wrestling shows at the time. He becomes a different person throughout the play; he sees wrestling not just as a dream job but as a job that has a bunch of problems. That kind of relates to the dolls, because he becomes aware of the world around him. He is not one of those stuck in a strong guy pose. He is responsive.

I think the fights (by fight director Kyle Encinas) were really accurate and cool. They reminded me of the channels I usually skip past on tv because wrestling usually grosses me out, but I didn't want to skip past this channel. I thought it was super intriguing. It reminded me a lot of the actual sort-of-stagey fights they do in professional wrestling; I think they translate well to the stage because they are already so theatrical. I really liked how the play wasn't trying to glorify wrestling. It was showing the good parts and the flaws. Wrestling is used to talk about social injustice instead of just being there for the fighting aspects. That doesn't mean the fighting itself wasn't amazing, it just gave it more depth and more reason for it to be there. I really liked when Mace was showing everyone how he and Chad Deity would fight. It all seemed super dramatic but then when he was telling us how it all actually happened, it seemed a lot less painful because he showed how he was acting and how he was not getting really physically hurt. Chad Deity was protecting him in the ring. And he gives Chad Deity all the glory even though he is not as good of a wrestler. Just because Chad Deity is more of an American Hero to people means that he has to win everything because the American fans want the American to win. Mace and VP are also American, but they have to pretend that they are not so there is a motivation for fans to hate them. Wrestling basically uses racism and xenophobia to make it so all the fans are rooting for the same person. Wrestling in this play seems to have more villains than heroes, which I don't think is a really good worldview. It is too simple because in the real world there are very few people who are totally evil. But the play isn't simple because it calls attention to these problems in wrestling and has a lot of people who do good things, like Chad Deity, Mace, and VP. But nobody's perfect. EKO is the villain but that is because he is representing what is wrong with wrestling: the racism, willful ignorance, crassness, and how money is the whole reason it exists.

People who would like this show are people who like amazing fights, flexible strong guys, and soggy knock-off cereal. I think people should definitely go see this show. It was a beautiful story and made me see wrestling in a new way. It made me think a lot about how the world is consuming racism and all these things they say they are against and not even noticing it. I really loved this show.

Photos: M. Freer Photography