Second Place // Review
as presented at PAC/Edge Performance Festival / Performing Arts Chicago, 2004
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• conceived by Charlie Levin
• created and performed by Charlie Levin and Natalie Brewster Nguyen
• with additional voices by Nilofer Ahsan, Hilary Mac Austin, Mo Burroughs, Tina M. Howell, Tanera Marshall and Lisa Tejero
• recorded and mixed by Monica Ryan

Second Place
reviewed by John Beer
New City (Chicago), March 2004

Top Pick of the Week
“The world would be a better place if we were all more like Charlie Levin. Second Place, conceived by Levin and created and performed by her with Natalie Brewster Nguyen, inquires into the mythic and philosophical roots of contemporary dislocation. A voiceover informs us about the plight of refugees, the etymology of ‘hegira,’ and revisionist readings of Yahweh’s ‘I am that I am.’ Meanwhile, Levin and Nguyen, like nymphs out of Kafka, sport festoons of bureaucratic paperwork and interrupt the flow of information with fractured questioning and fragmentary dialogue. The performance’s good intentions are relentless. Even its most striking moments, when the performers invite audience members into their space or confront them with shifting configurations of Levin’s remarkable painted cabinets, never push beyond the limits of polite engagement. I left feeling like I’d visited a more advanced culture, where complex and difficult issues could be meditated upon in an atmosphere of mutual respect, and where intolerance is the only form of sin. Especially on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, few messages could be more timely. So why, when I got home, did I rush for my copy of Appetite for Destruction?”