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Showing posts with label Labyrinth Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labyrinth Arts. Show all posts

Monday, February 26, 2024

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

ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar

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. 

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Pay What You Can: Rhinoceros Theater Festival April 1 – May 7, 2022 at Jimmy Beans Coffee & Pride Arts Center

ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar:

Fest Alert 

The Curious Theatre Branch, in association with Pride Arts Center and Jimmy Beans Cabaret, Prop Thtr and Labyrinth Arts, is pleased to present A Hint of Rhino: Rhinoceros Theater Festival 2022, playing April 1 – May 7, 2022. Shows will run Thursdays – Sundays at Jimmy Beans Coffee (2553 W. Fullerton Ave, second floor) in Logan Square and the Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center (4139 N Broadway Ave) in Uptown.

Curious and friends present a pared-down, curated series of events including music, spoken word, new plays, drag and variety events. Programming on Sunday, May 1 at Pride Arts Center will include a special celebration of Matt Rieger, longtime Managing Director for Curious, who died suddenly in October 2021, and whose final play, Jimmy and the Nickels, will run Sunday afternoons and Thursday evenings at Pride Arts. Rhino Fest returns this year following a hiatus in 2021, in which festival producers awaited the return of safer gatherings in public spaces rather than shifting to a virtual format. This Rhino Fest represents the result of invitation and collaboration among small groups of Chicago artists, making inquisitive and expansive events for the current moment.



Tickets to all events are $20 or pay-what-you-can. 


Proof of vaccination will be required at the door, and audience members and crew will remain masked inside venues. Cash and credit cards accepted at the door. Tickets are currently available through Eventbrite. Further additional information and updates, visit rhinofest.com.

 


The full Rhino Fest 2022 line-up includes:

 A Hint of a Rhino Party

Saturday March 26 at 7 pm, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts

An opening night party to mosey back to Rhino. An evening of food and drinks, presentations, some previews of shows to come, a film or two, some jokes and lots and lots of mingling.  

 

John & Paul: Strictly Platonic

Fridays at 8 pm, April 1 – 29, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

Chicago sketch comedy veterans John Klingle and Paul Brennan bring their anarchic humor back to the stage in a raucous celebration of dysfunctional friendship. Watch John and Paul juggle the roles of emasculated fathers, naive prison guards and problematic method actors, all while struggling to keep their corporate sponsorships. Special guests include drag artist Tara Bitchup, songstress Zoë Pike\ and stand-up comic Katie Zane.

 

New Speculative Fiction

Friday, April 1 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Sharon Houk, Andy Sullivan, and Tanner Vaughan Halversen read new work.

 

Labyrinth Hour Cabaret

Saturdays at 8 pm, April 2 – 30, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

A musical and variety adventure featuring bands, musical guests and variety acts.

April 2 & 23: The Improper Behavior Jump Blues Band featuring Miss Sharon and Keith Fort.

April 9 & 16: Drag Show with Narcisca and Slussy Vanity. Further guest artists to be announced. Produced and directed by Diane Hamm with Labyrinth Arts and Performance Collective.

 

The Chicago Beast Women

Saturdays at 10 pm, April 2 – 30, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

Chicago’s longest-running showcase for veteran and premiering female artists comes to Pride!  An inspiring line-up of solo and collaborative artists showcasing new and urgent work. Jillian Erickson, Michelle Power, Cristina McCrystal, Alley Cat and many, many more beloved Chicago performers.

 

Vernon Tonges

Saturday, April 2 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Known to many as Spoo Willoughby, Vernon Tonges is a low-profile performing songwriter and singer known for his crippling introversion and disastrous inability to adequately self-promote. Many of his shows occur unannounced in random parking lots where his audience mainly consists of drivers idling in the drive-through line awaiting takeout chicken. Surplus thigh meat comprises his chief compensation. The world remains a tough nut to crack.

 

The Crooked Mouth and Special Guests

Saturday, April 2 at 9 pm and Saturday, May 7 at 9 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

A Chicago-based music group including Jenny Magnus, Beau O'Reilly, T-Roy Martin, Vicki Walden and Heather Riordan with ample harmonies and lyrics to sink one's teeth into. Rock/pop/alt-country/vaudeville, if you must have a genre.

April 2: Special guest Izzy Yellen. "Izzy yellin'? No, he's making ambient folk."

May 7: Special guests Michael Amandes and Mac Modean

 

Writers Aloud

Sunday, April 3 at 3 pm, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

For over three years, from in-person to online and now both live and streaming – this unassuming monthly forum organized by Donna Dunlap, Karen Fort and Cordis Heard for those who write and have seldom if ever spoken their own written words – a core Prop Thtr tradition. Two hours with three to five readers.

 

Jimmy and the Nickels

Sundays: April 3 at 5 pm, April 24 & May 1 at 3 pm. Note: the May 1 show will be followed by a celebration of Matt Rieger, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

Thursdays: April 7, 14, 21, 28 at 8 pm, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

A follow up to 2020’s lauded My Dinner with Joe, this chamber comedy, the last work of the beloved and abruptly departed Curious playwright and Managing Director Matt Rieger, features Mike McKune, Don Schroeder, Nick Leininger and Paul Brennan, and is directed by Stefan Brün with Charlotte Lastra.

 

Hypnosis

Friday, April 8 & 22, Saturday April 9 & 23 at 7pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

A new monologue from Chicago poet and fringe theater mainstay Barrie Cole.

 

Cafe Neckbeard To Go

Fridays: April 8, 15, 22, 29 and May 6 at 9 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Saturdays: April 9, 16, 23, 30 at 9 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

PR Representative and Procurement Specialist Chris Bower will theatrically update the world on the ongoing saga of the most experimental and explosive and explosively experimental cash-only fine dining celiac-intolerant temporarily to-go cafe in The Historic Logan Square Neighborhood (THLSN): Chef Anton "*" Anis's Cafe Neckbeard! Featuring Chris Bower and Steak Richardson.

 

The Problem With Flowers

Sundays: April 10, 17, 24 at 5 pm, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

Thursdays: April 14, 21, 28 at 7 pm, Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center

Roberto Del Rio’s solo work playfully examines the loves and miseries, the delights and betrayals in an emotional day off. From dawn until dusk we’ll hear those struggles, triumphs, fears and desires that only manifest when we’re by ourselves.

 

Deconstructing Desolation Row

Friday, April 15 and Saturday, April 16 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Four writers respond to Bob Dylan's 1965 ballad from Highway 61 Revisited in song and lecture. Performances by Jayita Bhattacharya, Frank Bonacci, Michaela Chan and Bill Ferguson.

 

Time in a Teacup

Friday, April 29 and Saturday, April 30 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

New work by Jay Sebastian. Musings on time, memory, and baloney sandwiches through stories, original songs and 8mm movies.

 

The Anchovy's Song, The Pelican's Apocalypse

Friday, May 6 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Jeff "Hollywood" Dorchen weaves together songs, obvious lies (elaborate and simple) and poems.

 

Sheila Donohue and Friends

Saturday, May 7 at 7 pm, Jimmy Beans Coffee

Performance poet and four-time National Poetry Slam Champion Sheila Donohue returns to Rhino Fest for an evening of new and archival work, with special guests.

Venue Note: Broadway Theater at Pride Arts Center is a first-floor space and is wheelchair accessible, with two accessible bathrooms. Jimmy Beans Cabaret is up one flight of stairs and is not easily accessible for wheelchair users.

 

About Rhino Fest

The event that became the Rhinoceros Theater Festival began in 1988 as an offshoot of the Bucktown Arts Fest, and in its first year featured just two days of performances, including work by Jenny Magnus and Beau O'Reilly. When the event's founder moved away from Chicago in 1990, he asked a ragtag group of local artists (including Beau O'Reilly and Theatre of the Reconstruction’s Scott Turner) to keep the festival going, and the Rhino Fest was born. The Curious Theatre Branch went on to produce the Rhino across many neighborhoods and venues over the years, with events variously taking place in Wicker Park/Bucktown, Rogers Park, Andersonville and Avondale; at spaces including the Lunar Cabaret and Full Moon Café, the Neo-Futurarium, the Society for New Things, The Garage, The Firehouse, Remains Theatre and Prop Thtr. In the mid-2000s, Rhino Fest settled at Prop Thtr in Avondale as its long-term base, and Prop and Curious co-produced the festival among a shifting group of curators for many years. Following the closure of Prop's Elston Ave. space in 2020, and a year off during the height of the pandemic, Rhino Fest is once more becoming itinerant, this year producing shows at The Broadway at Pride Arts Center in Uptown and Jimmy Beans Coffee in Logan Square.

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