The Physical Theater Festival, running through June 9 at Stage 773, is an exciting opportunity to really enjoy theater from around the world.

It overcomes the biggest barrier to shows from abroad – language – by reducing or eliminating the spoken script, subordinating it to broad movement, pantomime, facial expressions - that convey as much or more than words do. It also shows off a performance style that seems to spring from improvisational roots, while drawing the better aspects of mime.

Now in its sixth year, the Physical Theater Festival runs in tandem with workshops by these accomplished global artists,for actors interested in learning the techniques. held in the same Stage 773 location at 1225 W. Belmont. It includes performers from Brazil, India, UK, Canada, Belgium and other countries, with acts that run from 60 to 90 minutes.

We had a chance to catch two of them – Next Door, performed by Out of Balanz, a duo from Finland and Denmark; and Helga: Life of a Diva Extraordinaire, a one-woman show by the Kallo Collective of Finland, performed by Henni Kervinen, a circus artist. It is nearly wordless, and both highly entertaining, and quite distinctive. Helga is performed as a caricature, and exaggerated protrait of an apparently crabby and lonely old woman spending her days reading the paper and drinking bitter expresso. But wait - she ahd a past, a glamorous and exciting past. She dispells our prejudices about her condition by moving onto a trapeze in a spoof of a high wire act. 

Next Door was a poignant telling of the story of a man in Copenhagen, Ivan Hansen, who becomes aware, belatedly, of the death of an elderly man in a neighboring apartment. The two were in close proximity – they were separated by the wall about 18 inches thick between their domiciles – but weren’t close at all.

Ivan learns, about a month after the fact, that his elderly neighbor had collapsed and died just the other side of his bedroom wall, probably while Ivan was standing by inches away. This realization triggers an hour-long depiction of his upbringing in Copenhagen, with reenactments of his best friends enclouters, the apartment in which he was raised with his brother, times with his parents, and his youthful adventures with his buddies.

The digressions are tremendously entertaining, with brief narrative transitions (in English), as the two characters move us to insights into our individual human conditions. It was very powerful. Here's a traler to give you a sense of what a performance is like:

The Festival begain in 2014, when Alice da Cunha and Marc Frost originally launched the Chicago Physical Theater Festival through the Artistic Associate program at Links Hall. The inspiration for the Festival drew upon their combined experience in London as physical theater students at the London International School for the Performing Arts (LISPA). Moving from London to Chicago, they were inspired to start a new festival to promote a more progressive, fresh and physical approach to theater-making in Chicago. Do try to catch one or more of these shows for an exceptional experience. And mark your calendar for the next series in 2020, so you don’t miss it. www.physicalfestival.com