Cindy Caponera was so moved by a talk she once had with her aunt, that she wrapped an entire one-woman show around it.
“The Debutante Ball” is about a group of women who attend a pot-luck dinner. Caponera, an actress who currently serves as a writer for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” plays several characters in the piece, but the central character is based on her Aunt Joan.
“I started it from a conversation that she and I had in her kitchen, where she was showing me pots and pans,” says Caponera, 34, the sister of popular standup comic John Caponera. “It was kind of like you had to read between the lines to get what she was really saying. But it was so theatrical in that moment, because I kept looking at her going `God, this is unbelievable.’ “
Caponera says her aunt was “trying to hide her feelings of her concern about her husband’s illness.” In the play, the character of Joan has a one-sided conversation with her husband, a cancer patient.
“The Debutante Ball,” Caponera’s second one-woman show (the first was “Against the Grain”), is running through Sunday at the Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. (call 773-871-3000 for more information). The South Side native appeared in Second City and other theaters in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1993. She’s coming up on her third season as a writer on “SNL.”
Because her family is here to see it, Caponera was nervous bringing “The Debutante Ball” to Chicago. (The title is a reference to the characters, women who Caponera says will never “have the kind of life where they would have a debutante ball.”)
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“But it’s okay,” she says. “It’s a very loving depiction, and I couldn’t (play Aunt Joan) if I didn’t love her. Plus, everybody has an aunt like that.”
Caponera says her “SNL” responsibilities will determine if she will be able to perform the play in New York City, but she’s hoping to do it in the spring.
Ripping for a good cause
The seventh annual “Funny Money” comedy fundraiser is upon us, but you wouldn’t know it by the format this year.
The event, created by local comics Harry Teinowitz and Spike Manton to raise money to combat child abuse, has in past years been held at the Park West and featured a top headliner and several local acts.
But this year Teinowitz changed the show. Quite frankly, he couldn’t get a popular enough national act to perform for charity.
“It was disappointing to see how many national headliners wouldn’t come in and do a show for free. They all wanted money,” he says, adding that one popular act had agreed to appear but that his agent later called to get him out of the date.
“As great as it’s been to make money the last six years, we feel like we’ve just haven’t made enough,” says Teinowitz, a constant on-air sports presence on WMVP (AM-1000).
So Teinowitz decided to transform the format into a celebrity roast. He called a person he knew would be a draw, and whom he could get with relative ease: Chicago Bulls and White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
The timing couldn’t be better.
Reinsdorf isn’t one of the most popular men in the city these days. He’s credited with throwing in the towel on the Sox’s pennant race, trading away several key players, including designated hitter Harold Baines and pitchers Wilson Alvarez and Roberto Hernandez, and getting only minor leaguers or players to be named later in return.
And Bulls fans are still ticked at how contract negotiations dragged out between the team and coach Phil Jackson, before he eventually re-signed for another season and at the reported attempts to trade Scottie Pippen before this year’s draft.
“Oh, (Reinsdorf is) giving us so much material. I appreciate it,” says Teinowitz, 36.
Proceeds from “Funny Money,” which includes a dinner, silent auction and raffle, go to Child Abuse Prevention Services. The event is Monday at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. Tickets are $150 apiece, with several price ranges if one wants to buy a table. Call 312-409-9030 for more information.