Hamburgers and Disappointment: Plays about Enoughness, a festival of works by Barrie Cole playing in repertory, May 2 - 19th, 2024

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SWEETBACK PRODUCTIONS, IN COLLABORATION WITH LABYRINTH ARTS COLLECTIVE PRESENTS 

HAMBURGERS AND DISAPPOINTMENT: 

PLAYS ABOUT ENOUGHNESS 

A FESTIVAL OF WORKS BY BARRIE COLE, MAY 2 - 19

AT LABYRINTH ARTS PERFORMANCE COLLECTIVE

Cole’s Four Short Two-Character Plays, Including a World Premiere, Explore Relationships in all their Beautiful and Twisting Forms

Top row: Barrie Cole, playwright; Jayita Bhattacharya, director, FRUIT TREE BACKPACK; Kristy Lockhart, actor, FRUIT TREE BACKPACK

Second row: Julia Williams, actor FRUIT TREE BACKPACK; Jen Moniz, director, I LOVE YOU PERMANENTLY and MEANING IS TRICKY; Jeffrey Bivens, actor, I LOVE YOU PERMANENTLY

Third Row: Vicki Walden, actor, I LOVE YOU PERMANENTLY, Kelly Anchors, actor, CAPACITY; KellyAnn Corcoran, actor, CAPACITY;

Third row: David Isaacson and Diana Slickman, actors MEANING IS TRICKY; Carolyn Hoerdemann, actor, ELEVATOR TOURS

Fourth Row: Colm O’Reilly, actor, ELEVATOR TOURS

Sweetback Productions, in collaboration with Labyrinth Arts, is proud to announce Hamburgers and Disappointment: Plays about Enoughness, a festival of works by Barrie Cole playing in repertory, May 2 - 19 at 7:30 p.m., at Labyrinth Club, 3658 N. Pulaski Road. Performances of Schedule 1 includes I Love You Permanently and Fruit Tree Backpack runs on Thursdays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Schedule 2 that includes Capacity and Meaning is Tricky runs on Fridays and Sundays at 7:30 p.m. In addition, for those who may not be able to attend, a digital play, Elevator Tours, will be available for digital download for $10.  Press nights for Hamburgers and Disappointment: Plays about Enoughness are Schedule 1, Saturday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m., and schedule 2, Sunday, May 5 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 and are now on sale at SweetBackProductions.com.

“All of us at Labyrinth are proud to be co-producing this festival of Barrie Cole’s works,” said Artistic Director and Founder Diane Hamm of Labyrinth Arts. “We look forward to welcoming audiences, both familiar with her work and those experiencing them for the first time, to experience the complete relationship cycle created by Barrie.”  

Hamburgers and Disappointment: Plays about Enoughness, is a new festival of four short, two-character plays by Chicago-based playwright, Barrie Cole. The festival includes performances in repertory:

 

SCHEDULE 1

Performed on Thursdays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.

Fruit Tree Backpack

Written by Barrie Cole (she/her) 

Directed by Jayita Bhattacharya (she/her)

Ceil (Kristy Lockhart, she/her) and Anna (Julia Williams, she/her) traverse the various rooms inside the exhausting, sweet, metaphorical mansion of love.

 

I Love You Permanently

Written by Barrie Cole (she/her) 

Directed by Jen Moniz (she/her) 

Jay (Jeffrey Bivens, he/him) wants to be with Lee (Vicki Walden, she/her), but is unable to leave his abusive relationship. They meet one last time and try to find out if it is possible to have an entire relationship in the span of one cold night.

 

SCHEDULE 2

Performed on Fridays and Sundays at 7:30 p.m.

WORLD PREMIERE

Capacity

Written by Barrie Cole (she/her) 

Capacity is a world premiere and completes Cole’s collection of two-person plays about relationships. The play explores a thorny friendship between a playwright (Kelly Anchors, she/her) and an actor (KellyAnn Corcoran, she/her) who were both, at different times, married to the same man.

Meaning is Tricky

Written by Barrie Cole (she/her) 

Originally directed by Jen Moniz (she/her)

Roommates and former lovers Mark (David Isaacson, he/him) and Clare (Diana Slickman, she/her) navigate Clare's burgeoning new relationship with a TV-obsessed man in an open marriage whose wife operates a flower kiosk.

  

AUDIO PLAY 

Elevator Tours 

Written by Barrie Cole (she/her) 

Originally directed by Jen Moniz (she/her)

A special audio play with animation. Ruth (Carolyn Hoerdemann, she/her) has just moved into a new apartment when her recently divorced friend Will (Colm O’Reilly, he/him), comes to stay with her. They discuss life as a spectacle, art and sex.

The creative team for Hamburgers and Disappointment: Plays about Enoughness includes: Pamela L. Parker(set/props designer, she/her); Diane Hamm (producer/lighting designer, she/her); Kelly Anchors (producer/costume designer, she/her); Paul Brennan (film/sound designer, he/him); Charlotte Lastra (stage manager, she/her); Hannah Tymosko(stage manager, she/her); Timothy Hiatt (photographer, he/him) and Jules Darling (graphic designer, they/them).

ABOUT BARRIE COLE, playwright

Barrie Cole has written 14 plays, numerous monologue works, as well as essays, hybrid-works and more. Her plays have been produced by Theater Oobleck, Curious Theatre Branch and others.The Chicago Reader said about Cole: “Her ambiguously concrete work layers childlike simplicity over seasoned melancholy to produce piercing, wondrous images of charming, discomfiting transformation.”  

ABOUT JEN MONIZ, director, I Love You Permanently

Jen Moniz is an immigration paralegal, artisan gelato maker and writer, performer, producer and director of fringe theater. She is originally from California and has called Chicago home for 17 years. She has previously directed Mexico, Room, Elevator Tours, On Loss, To Relax and Laugh, Meaning is Tricky and Reverse Gossip.

ABOUT JAYITA BHATTACHARYA, director, Fruit Tree Backpack

Jayita Bhattacharya is a multidisciplinary theatre artist originally from Southern California, who has made her home in Chicago as an ensemble member of Curious Theatre Branch. Directing credits include What Is Even Happening?!!! by Kristin Garrison, Lizzie Borden Is Smashing by Sue Cargill and The McGuffins Run the 440 by Beau O'Reilly. She wrote the plays To End to Seem to End, today like a kind of shivering and Should We Put It Out? (The Smoke). Bhattacharya has also appeared in numerous Curious and Rhinofest productions through the years, including The Skriker, 4:48 Psychosis, Evanston Which Is Over There, The Buzz that is the Buzz and most recently, the revival of Hit Me Like a Flower.

ABOUT SWEETBACK PRODUCTIONS

Sweetback Productions was founded in 1994 by Kelly Anchors and Mike McKune. They started with a string of hit late night parodies of cult films that includes; Plan 9 From Outer Space, Female Trouble, Super Pussy Vixen, Go Faster! Kill! Kill!, Scarrie, The Musical!, The Birds and Freaks. Sweetback now focuses on more obscure and original work, most recently, Deep Fried and Suck My Nose, which featured three generations of family actors weaving their love through their pain while tap dancing and singing hymns; Bipolar Bitch, a mystical ride into psychosis and Dorothy Mae and the 1978 Holiday Rambler Ramblette, an outdoor extravaganza detailing Kelly’s roadtrip across the southwest during the Trump re-election season. Sweetback is beyond thrilled to be producing this festival of Barrie Cole’s plays, a playwright that Anchors was lucky enough to work with in Clumsy Sublime. Find them on Facebook.

ABOUT LABYRINTH ARTS AND PERFORMANCE COLLECTIVE

Labyrinth Arts and Performance Collective, a 501 c 3 not for profit, is organized for the purpose of building the creative community and developing wisdom through art.  The Collective believes that making and sharing meaning is key to being with artistic projects as a means of interactive exchange towards meaningful experience and encourages consciousness.  Risk taking requires compassion and holding space for fearless, free self-expression, the Collective believes that joy is the highest expression of being and inherent in all creative acts. And believes in artistic autonomy where the artistic project takes precedence over a single executive's vision.  

Recent past projects included the Labyrinth Film Fest 2024, variety shows 2023, music shows 2023, comedy showcases of John and Paul 2023 and play development in 2023. More information on their website or on Facebook.