THEATER REVIEW: "Sketchbook Reverb" ★★½ Through March 27 at Flat Iron Arts Building, 1575 N. Milwaukee Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes; Tickets: $18-$25 at 312-226-9633 or www.collaboraction.org

When Collaboraction's Sketchbook Festival first opened just after the turn of the millennium, it made for quite the 21st-century scene. A DJ spun as crowds of cool kids meandered around a cavernous, art-filled space, drinks in hand. Part art installation, part collection of 10-minute plays, and all party, Sketchbook seemed to signal a new kind of off-Loop experience, where the tricked-up dressing was just as important, if not more important, as the dramatic meat.

That said, the short, scripted shows were always cooked up by impressive chefs — the likes of Keith Huff, Rebecca Gilman, Ellen Fairey, Itamar Moses, Adam Rapp, Regina Taylor. Michael Shannon showed up one year as an actor.

These days, Collaboraction has greatly scaled back its ambitions — its new permanent home, a very modest upstairs studio inside the Flat Iron Arts Building seating only around 60, is far simpler and smaller than such old haunts as huge abandoned warehouses, ripe for a wild happening. And although a few pieces of art still line the walls and Collaboraction can still attract a hipster or two, it's nothing quite like the glory days of the early Sketchbooks.

THEATER REVIEW: "1001" ★★½ Through Oct. 9 by Collaboraction at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.; Running time: 2 hours; Tickets: $15-25 at 312-226-9633 or www.collaboraction.org

Scheherazade is best known as a plucky princess who has a tricky date with the murderous Shahriyah, a king whose idea of post-coital pleasure involves lopping off the head of his virgin conquests.

But as you likely know from “The Arabian Nights,” of which she is the heroine, savvy Scheherazade hatches a plot to save her noggin. Perchance Shahriyah could be destracted by stories. Even tyrants like a good yarn. And thus begins 1,001 nights of storytelling — stories unspooling within stories within stories. Wonderous tales of sensuality, morality, fancy, daring. All in service of a princess retaining possession of her head.

But as Mary Zimmerman explored so brilliantly in her singular stagings for Lookingglass Theatre and beyond, those stories are limited only by the imagination of those listening and those telling. Jason Grote, a rising young playwright, takes those notions even further in his impressive play “1001,” allowing Scheherazade to quickly morph into a Palestinian graduate student in New York and Shahriyah to become her contemporary Jewish boyfriend. As these stories leap out of their original context, Scheherazade’s big Arabian-style book converts to a laptop. Osama bin Laden makes a guest appearance, as does Gustave Flaubert (speaking of storytellers), a eunuch and Aladdin. Avec inevitable lamp.

The 15-year-old theater company Collaboraction said Wednesday that it has signed a long-term lease at the historic Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., allowing it to create a new headquarters and its own 90-seat performance space.

The Flat Iron (which shares ownership with the Fine Arts Building downtown) has hosted a variety of performance events and theater companies over the years, and it is home to many studios and galleries.

But this new deal should help bring more theater to Wicker Park and Bucktown. Despite demographics seemingly sympathetic to Off-Loop companies, both neighborhoods have long been light on theaters.

Collaboraction's new space will be on the third floor. Among the initial plans are a long-running, late-night version of Collaboraction's Sketchbook series.

Collaboraction will revive Brett C. Leonard's drama "Guinea Pig Solo," one of the most successful shows in the company's history, during the 2010-11 season.

Also on the slate (which will be performed entirely at the Chopin Theatre) is the Chicago premiere of "1001" by Jason Grote, directed by Seth Buckley. The Collaboraction year will end next summer with the 11th annual Sketchbook Festival.

Meanwhile, the 10th annual Sketchbook Festival opens at the Chopin this weekend.

THEATER REVIEW: "G.I.F.T." ★

There is much computer-aided mumbling about present-giving in "G.I.F.T.," Collaboraction's typically ambitious seasonal offering performed, both indoors and outdoors, in a 7,000-square-foot warehouse space at Firehouse Square on Chicago's West Side. But the greatest gift of all arrives when a big overhead door whirs and opens, revealing that this insufferable show is over. 

Actually, not quite over. "G.I.F.T." ends around a big outdoor bonfire. But some communing around flames is, compared with what has gone before, positively cathartic. 

Collaboraction, which long has favored experimental performances in a variety of urban spaces, always has had a high failure rate. So it goes when you try to do something different. But "G.I.F.T." is surely the worst thing the theater has produced in its 13 years of existence. This piece is so grim, you keep waiting for the actors (who are dressed as slightly funky Pilgrims) to step out of their stark, computer-aided environment (they work in front of projected text) and declare the whole enterprise an elaborate, "Waiting for Guffman"-style parody of bad performance art. Sadly, that moment never arrives.

THEATER REVIEW: "El Grito del Bronx" ★★ Through Aug. 2 by Teatro Vista and Collaboraction at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; Running Time: 2 hours; Price: $18-$30 at 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org. Sandra Delgado is Lulu and Juan Villa is Papo.

In Migdalia Cruz’s typically intense and unstinting drama “El Grito del Bronx,” we meet Lulu and Papo, a nice young woman and her incarcerated, murderous brother. The play, much of which is told through flashback, is partly concerned with how these two siblings came to travel down such wildly divergent paths. But it is mostly about how and if Lulu can get out from under Papo, and her perception that if her brother has gone wrong, then something serious must also be wrong with her.

“People have magnetic fields,” Lula says to the decent young man who wants to marry her. “If I stay with you, I’ll pull you in.”

THEATER REVIEW: "Goldbrick" ★★Through March 1 by Walkabout Theater Company and Collaboraction at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St.; $15-$27.50 at 312-226-9633 and www.collaboraction.org. The multimedia collaboration stars Larry Yando, perfroming the music of Jon Langford.

48 years old and far from the land of his birth, the roots/post-punk musician Jon Langford is clearly at that juncture where the experimental wanderlust of youth has morphed into a bit of a middle-age trap. It feels too late to go back—in Langford’s case to England or Wales—and it’s too late to pretend one is fresh New World meat. You’re just left with dubious, irrevocable, dislocating decisions, writ permanent.

We emigres—a condition that does not necessarily require the crossing of an international boundary—know how he feels.

"Lost on a back road an inch deep in water,” Langford wrote for his solo album “Gold Brick,” “At the end of the day out on a fading horizon/Where the land and the sky are melting together/Somewhere caught in between/All roads lead back to me."

They do, don’t they? Funny how long it takes us to fathom that one out. Funny how it doesn’t entirely seem cause for celebration.

THEATER REVIEW: "Jon" (★★★) Through Dec. 14 at the Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $25 at 312-226-9633 and www.collaboraction.typepad.com.

I remember reading George Saunders’ short story “Jon” in the New Yorker in 2003. In some ways, it read like a spoof of corporate culture in the fashion of “Mad Men” or “The Office.” In other ways, it was a dire warning about the damage marketers are doing to our teenagers.

Saunders, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, invented his own language for the dystopian universe inhabited by the story. That universe is a bit like a rewriting of Anthony Burgess’ classic, “A Clockwork Orange,” except that the kids are compliant, cooped up and dissuaded from violence by endless digital sensations and ample quantities of liberally dispensed pharmaceuticals.

Collaboraction has long had a little niche exploring the intersection of technology with the psyche of American youth. And unlike most of its peers, this ambitious theater company is sufficiently techno-savvy to actually create a credibly intense sci-fi universe in an intimate, live setting.

THEATER REVIEW: “Jon” (★★★) runs through Dec. 14 by Collaboraction at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $25 at 312-226-9633 and http://collaboraction.typepad.com. Starring Lucas Neff, Kelly O'Sullivan and Guy Massey.

I remember reading George Saunders’ short story “Jon” in the New Yorker in 2003. In some ways, it read like a spoof of corporate culture in the fashion of “Mad Men” or “The Office.” In others, it was a dire warning about the damage marketers are doing to our teenagers.

Saunders, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, invented his own language for the dystopian universe inhabited by the story. That universe is a bit like a re-writing of Anthony Burgess’ classic, “A Clockwork Orange,” except that the kids are compliant, cooped up and dissuaded from violence by endless digital sensations and ample quantities of liberally dispensed pharmaceuticals.

Collaboraction has long had a little niche exploring the intersection of technology with the psyche of American youth. And unlike most of its peers, this ambitious theater company is sufficiently techno-savvy to actually create a credibly intense sci-fi universe in an intimate, live setting.

THEATER REVIEW: Wendi Weber as Sunshine and Danny Goldring as Chuck in "Heroes and Villains," directed by Anthony Moseley. Through Sept. 21 at Theatre Building Chicago, 1221 W. Belmont Ave.; $18-25 at 773-327-5252.

Fresh from the role of Grumpy in “The Dark Knight,” the grizzled veteran actor Danny Goldring is now playing Chuck, a bullet-stopping, car-lifting superhero who passes his days quietly in a combination beauty shop and saloon.

Or is Chuck really who he pretends to be?

That’s the central question of Daniel Janoff’s “Heroes and Villains,” an unusual, genre-fusing new play that combines a comic book sensibility with the flavor of Upper Midwest Gothic. It’s a bit reductive, but you could reasonably think of this Collaboraction show, at the Theatre Building Chicago, as “Batman” (or maybe Batman’s dad) meets “Fargo.” Or “Escanaba in da Moonlight.”

Here’s the premise. A small town on a lake, which feels like it’s somewhere on the fringe of Door County, Wis., saw its fortunes turn around some years ago, when Goldring’s Gus did a superhuman, life-saving act involving a speeding car. The attendant publicity revived tourism, but many summers later, a skeptical young woman named Sunshine shows up at the salon by day/saloon by night, to debunk the Gus myth for mysterious reasons of her own.