Very big news: I'm leaving Chicago for the next four months to study at the Accademia dell'Arte, a conservatory in Tuscany. I'll be doing intensive study in physical theater, clowning, voice, Italian, and commedia dell'arte—right where it all began. I'll also be working as a program assistant for the school. I already know this experience will put me into an entirely different place as a performer. I hope it will also lead to some teaching work when I come back this winter.

In the interim, I'm probably not going to be updating this site very much. However, you can read about what I'm doing and learning on my clown blog.

I'm also going be suspending my cell phone while I'm gone. If you need to reach me, e-mail is by far the best way.

June 22, 2008

The "wacky, whimsical and wonderful" Mysterious Elephant has opened, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. It's not every show that requires you to learn ukulele. Come see it in the Chopin studio. It runs through July 19. There's an industry night this coming Thursday, if you're into that sort of thing.

Sansculottes' annual festival of short plays, No Pants, Just Shorts, is tomorrow, June 23, on the Chopin's mainstage. The winning scripts are cast, rehearsed, and performed the same night; the auditions are part of the show. It's quite a lot of fun.

The Baked Tomato (4350 N Elston) has started a singer-songwriter showcase, and this Wednesday I'm playing a fairly long set, including some brand-new songs. Two other musicians are featured as well. The theme is "No cover charge, no cover tunes." Things get started around 8:00. Please drop by if you can.

The pilot of "Julie's House" will play at the Music Box on July 18 at 10:30 p.m. (I play Julie.) Tickets for this one are in short supply, so get yours now if you want to go.

May 13, 2008

I'm happy to announce a new writing project: the Field Guide to Forbidden Books. If you enjoy it, please Digg it, and help spread the word.

My web sitcom "Julie's House" has been selected for the 2008 Chicago Comedy Pilot Competition, which means we'll have a screening at the Music Box in July. I'll post more details as I have them.

April 29, 2008

It's been quite a month! Just a couple of days ago I got back from an excursion to New York City to see shows (Macbeth and Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and catch up with friends. Only a week before that was a trip to Orlando for some industrial acting—and mere hours after landing in Chicago I was dashing to the "Julie's House" premiere. I have been out of town more weekends than I have been in town this month. But it's all for the good.

Tomorrow I start rehearsals for the next Strange Tree Group show, The Mysterious Elephant, a new play by Emily Schwarz.

Tonight is the first writing meeting for Sansculottes' next collaborative project, The Headphones Tour (coproduced with Collision Theatre Company). This month Sansculottes have also gone through some major growth, adding eight new artistic associates. Submissions are open for our third annual No Pants, Just Shorts festival of ten-minute plays, which takes place on June 23.

April 1, 2008

I've begun the great experiment of an online serial novel. It's scary and exciting.

Chicago ScriptWorks is giving my script Bellham a Square Table reading in May. This is a relatively new series of workshops from CSW; the goal is to prepare a script for actual film production.

The first episode of "Julie's House" will debut this month.

I'm in rehearsals for an acting job that will take me to Florida for a week in April.

My clown work has continued apace, with a series of workshops to help Molly Feingold develop a physical-theater version of Candide, a lot of practice with pratfalls, a LeCoq workshop at Lookingglass, and 500 Clown's Create Your Clown intensive. I also saw Antonio Fava's maskwork demonstration at the Cultural Center last week. I can't wait to start putting all this together. But maybe that's already happening.

March 4, 2008

Sansculottes' new show is Jeff-recommended! 13 Dead Husbands is a charming, beautiful show with love, death, puppets, and outrageous French accents. See it.

January 15, 2008

Holy cow! I'm on iTunes! Thanks to that one little word in "Practice," the whole EP has been stamped with the "Explicit Lyrics" label, but so what? I'm on iTunes! You can now download "Half," "Your Girl," "Practice," "Tantalus," "Nice," and—in case the single explicit lyric actually does bother you—the radio edit of "Practice." Ninety-nine cents a song. You can download any or all. Your choice. Because I'm on iTunes.

Is there other news? Yes. Plenty. The anthology Life Sentences, which includes my short story "S," is finally available at Amazon and wherever else books are sold. I'm recording some new songs for a belated (but no less heartfelt) holiday CD. And Sansculottes' new show, 13 Dead Husbands, opens February 29 at the Storefront Theater.

Did I mention I'm on iTunes?

August 30, 2007

I have a plethora of new projects to report.

First, two music gigs this weekend. On Friday, August 31, I'll be playing a set at Strawdog Theatre Company's benefit, at the Strawdog space, 3829 N Broadway. There's a $10 cover charge, and performances start around 11 p.m. Then on Saturday, September 1, I'll perform a couple of songs in Colonel Ritter's Spectacular Hour Of Wonderment at the Lakeshore Theatre (on Broadway, just south of Belmont). The S.H.O.W. starts at midnight, and admission is $5.

Saturday is also the day my book comes out. People have been preordering The Crazy Garden from the Press 53 site all week; as of Saturday it'll also be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. (Of course, that doesn't mean you can't order it through your favorite local independent bookstore. If you are lucky enough to have one of those, please support it.) On September 30 I'll be reading from the novel in the Sunday Salon Series at the Charlestown Bar.

I've been cast as a lead in the pilot of a Web comedy series, Julie's House, which starts filming in September. Also in September, I'll start rehearsing Chalk, the next Right Brain Project show.

Finally, Sansculottes' next collaborative script opens on September 12 at Rhinofest, at the Athenaeum. It's a frankly strange (but funny) piece entitled My Pants Are Fire. The incredibly talented Sarah Bendix directs.

August 20, 2007

This coming Saturday I'll be performing with Trap Door Theatre in the Bucktown Arts Festival. We're supposed to go up around 6:00.

Edits to this site are under way. You may have seen all the spiffy new production photos on the Theater page (and if they look weird on your computer, please let me know). Speaking of which, thanks to Matt for pointing out the broken link on the Music page. This is the place to order my CDs.

More updates, including details on my next two acting gigs, soon.

August 11, 2007

The Designated Mourner closes tonight. I'll be sorry to see this one go. It's an unsparing show and the role has never once been easy to perform, but of course that's sort of the point. I think I'll look back on this show, years from now, as something that forced me to grow as an actor.

Today I also start rehearsals for my next stage project, Carlo Gozzi's The King Stag with Trap Door Theatre. It'll be in a street festival in a couple of weeks; I'll post information as soon as I have it.

My music demo is mixed, mastered, done. It's available as a six-track EP here.

Speaking of online ordering, starting this week, you should be able to preorder my novel The Crazy Garden from Press 53. The official release date is September 1. I'm lining up readings in the Chicago area (and looking for good places to read on the East Coast), so if you know of a good spot for a reading, please let me know. I'm especially interested in indie bookstores, cafés, and smaller places that might be open to a combination fiction reading-acoustic concert.

Sansculottes' latest collective script, My Pants Are Fire, opens September 12 at the Athenaeum, as part of Rhino Fest. I can say without hesitation that this is one of the strangest things we've ever written. But it's strange in a really funny, enjoyable way.

This month I'm going to be making some rather big revisions to this site: adding a music page, incorporating my new headshots (incidentally, if you know JavaScript I could really use your help), getting rid of outdated content, updating links, etc. I don't anticipate that the site will have to go offline or anything, but if you try to visit and can't, that's probably what's happening.

July 29, 2007

Reviews of The Designated Mourner are great. Chicagocritic.com's Tom Williams calls it "a mental jungle gym . . . an important, thinking person's play," and Randy Harwick notes the "exceptionally fine acting." This one has a short run—don't miss it. We're at the Side Studio through August 11.

And how's this for cool? My parents called today to say they'd just met Wallace Shawn in the airport. I don't know what kind of spheres have to align for your parents to meet Wallace Shawn on the same weekend that you're opening a Wallace Shawn play, but wow. (And yes, Mom reports that he's extraordinarily charming, witty, etc.)

I'll be playing once again in Colonel Ritter's Spectacular Hour of Wonderment this coming Saturday, August 4. It's at midnight at the Lakeshore Theatre (on Broadway, just south of Belmont). Five dollars gets you a show that is invariably fun and surprising.

June 30, 2007

I'm incredibly excited to be rehearsing the new Right Brain Project production, The Designated Mourner, by Wallace Shawn. Tony Ingram directs; Ted Hoerl and Charles Bernstein round out the cast. It's a beautiful, complicated, funny, terrifying play. The press/industry opening is July 20; the public run is July 26–August 11. We'll be at the Side Studio in Rogers Park (1502 W Jarvis) at 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

500 Clown is currently performing 500 Clown Macbeth and 500 Clown Frankenstein at Steppenwolf, and if you haven't seen them, drop what you are doing and go right now. They're some of the best shows I've ever seen.

And it's terribly short notice, but I'm playing a few songs tonight at midnight in Colonel Ritter's Spectacular Hour of Wonderment (S.H.O.W.) at the Lakeshore Theatre. It's always a fun show, and it's just $5.

May 29, 2007

TimeOut raves about The Castle:

A story where nothing happens, and happens repeatedly, might not sound like edge-of-your-seat theater, but Robbel's vivid staging is one of the most inventive and exhilarating things we've seen onstage in ages. K.'s struggle to make sense of the seemingly arbitrary rules and mores of the village and bust through suffocating bureaucracy is brought to life in golly-gee-whiz fashion by an outstanding ensemble that pulls double duty creating David Marcotte's live percussive sound design. Who knew a cerebral portrait of alienation and xenophobia could be so damn thrilling? —Kris Vire

I'm really proud to be a part of this show, so please come see it. We're at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W Cortland, with shows Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. We close June 17.

Other news: A screenwriter named Philip Kobylanski adapted my short story "The Shape of Grief" into a feature-length screenplay, which just received honorable mention in the University of North Carolina's first-ever Short Story to Screenplay competition. Excerpts from my story and his script will appear in a forthcoming anthology; I'll post more information when I have it.

I've received a CAAPs grant to record the music from Practical Anatomy with the original cast, so I should have a full demo of the show by the end of the year. That's incredibly exciting.

Mark September 30 in your calendar: I'll be giving a reading from The Crazy Garden at the Sunday Salon Series.

Finally, Fear of a Hood closes this weekend, and if you haven't seen it, you should. It's a fantastic piece of theater.

April 24, 2007

I have new headshots, thanks to the marvelous Benjamin Newton.

Rehearsals for The Castle are coming along well. We open May 17 at Trap Door.

I'll be performing a short musical set in the midnight Spectacular Hour of Wonderment (S.H.O.W.) at the Lakeshore Theater on May 19.

And don't miss the next Sansculottes show, Fear of a Hood. It opens May 11 on the Live Bait Bucket stage.

March 27, 2007

Only one weekend left to see me in Striding Lion's Gerrymander. We close April 1.

I've started rehearsal for Sansculottes' installment of 365 Days/365 Plays. We go up on April 7, with shows at 8:00 and midnight, at the Heart of Gold Loft, 3036 N Lincoln.

March 6, 2007

It never rains but it pours. Less than two weeks after Gerrymander opens, I'll start rehearsal for The Right Brain Project's production of The Castle, an adaptation of the Kafka novel. We'll open in mid-May at Trap Door Theater.

February 27, 2007

Much news! Press 53 has decided to release my novella The Crazy Garden on its own as a stand-alone book, rather than as part of Lost Children. This is wonderful and exciting. We have a tentative release date of September 1.

I'm in rehearsals for Gerrymander: The Good, the Bad, and Tom DeLay, a terrific new play from Striding Lion InterArts Workshop. Amanda Berg Wilson is directing. We open March 9 and run through April 1 at National Pastime Theater, 4139 N Broadway. You can purchase tickets by calling 773-561-0949 or visiting www.stridinglion.org.

There are three Sansculottes events coming up. The first is Art for Art's Sake, an evening of art and performance at the Peter Jones Gallery, 1802 W Cuyler. It's on March 21. I'm really looking forward to it. A number of talented artists have donated their work to the art auction, I'll be singing a couple of songs, and we'll perform a few scenes that have never before seen daylight. Second, on April 7 we're taking part in the 365 Days/365 Plays festival, with performances of seven short Suzan-Lori Parks plays and seven short plays the company wrote in response. Last is the kickoff night for Fear of a Hood (and, incidentally, a two-days-late celebration of our third birthday as a company). We'll be at the Four Moon Tavern (1849 W Roscoe) on April 17. The bar is donating a percentage of its take between 7:00 and 9:00 to Sansculottes, so please come join us for a beer. Hey, it's for charity.

And of course Fear of a Hood opens on May 10 at Live Bait. Dan Kerr-Hobert is directing. See this show.

February 17, 2007

I'm wrapping up my music demo (Jesse Cryderman is producing) and should have copies available shortly. In the meantime, you can listen to rough mixes of a couple of the songs on my MySpace page.

Check out Signal Ensemble's production of The Weir, which opens this Thursday at the Chopin Theater. It's directed by my good friend Christopher Prentice, and features performances from my other good friends Joe Stearns and Ted Hoerl, who's also one of the best acting teachers I've ever had.

January 19, 2007

Happy New Year!

I've just returned from my second trip to Actors' International Retreat Experience, the most challenging and thrilling performance training I've ever been through. Can't wait to put it all to good use.

Ottavio Canestrelli's one-man show A Clown Without a Circus opens tomorrow night at the Actor's Gymnasium. Ottavio is a talented clown (he played Trinculo in The Tempest this past fall) and I'm really looking forward to the show. And I'm sort of in it, as the voice of his conscience! (I seem to be carving out a niche as the spooky voice from the beyond. There has to be a way to capitalize on that.)

In fiction news, my short-short story "Dog" is going to be included in the anthology Choices, edited by Gregory Colleton and Anthony Pinn and due out sometime this year. I'll post more information as I have it.

November 20, 2006

I don't have any huge news right now, just lots of odds and ends: a handful of voice-over jobs, some exciting new writing projects, a class at Old Town School of Folk Music, a singing gig at the Thunder & Lightning Ensemble benefit.

I've started recording this year's holiday CD (again produced by the multitalented Jesse Cryderman). And my music demo should be done soon as well. Please e-mail me if you'd like a copy.

Also, it is with immense pride and relief that I post my badge of honor:

I don't know how, exactly, to describe this year's project (except to say that its title, Strange Bedfellows, turned out to be especially apt), but here's to 50,000 words I didn't have in October!

October 28, 2006

I'm going to take a break from the regular arts-related news to mention that election day is coming up and that, dear sweet lord, your vote matters, so please use it and use it wisely.

As far as I know, it's still legal for me to say things like this, so I'm also going to mention that the current chief executive has suspended habeas corpus for aliens (in the Military Commissions Act), suggested that torture is okay, and approved the construction of an immense wall along the border. I'm going to suggest that, while there are many valid responses to terrorism, fascism is not one of them. I'm also going to note my belief that there is not one set of human rights for U.S. citizens and another set for the rest of the world—that they are called human rights for a reason.

On the domestic front, the ruling party has given us the embarrassing debacle of the massively flawed—but mandatory—but still somehow underfunded No Child Left Behind; the even more embarrassing conversion of a budget surplus into the largest deficit in history; a rather large drop in real wages; and the blatant bigotry of trotting out bans on gay marriage as a way to distract the voters from all these colossal failures.

Oh, yes: and they're doing all this with our money.

We seem to be stuck with this administration for another two years. We need a legislative branch that will do everything possible to oppose this administration. Some people say this will result in nothing but gridlock; yes, that's precisely the point. Politics is the arena of ideas. They are supposed to be debated endlessly. That way, only the really strong ideas survive. It's when new bills are not questioned, when the legislative and executive branches work together too efficiently (as they have for the past several years), that we encounter abuses of power.

Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

October 28, 2006

Spoooooooky! Come see me perform in the workshop of Sansculottes' new collective script, The Posada Project. The performance is Friday, October 27, at midnight. We're at American Theater Company, 1909 W Byron. A $5 suggested donation gets you admission, Halloween candy, and a Sansculottes button. The workshop will also be the debut of a song I've just written, so new it doesn't have a title yet.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to see The Tempest. We sold out the last three weekends, and it was just wonderful to be able to perform in front of audiences that big. (And to hear a distinct "Mommy, I'm scared" from the front row when I made my first entrance.)

October 7, 2006

Only six performances left for The Tempest!  We've been selling out, so if you've come to see it, thank you, and if you haven't come, make sure to reserve your tickets in advance. Shows are at 4:00 and 7:30 on Saturdays and 2:30 on Sundays at the Actor's Gymnasium, 927 Noyes Street, in Evanston.

I'm reading fiction from Lost Children this Friday, October 13, at the Book Cellar, 4731 N Lincoln, in Lincoln Square. Things get started at 7:00 p.m., and I'm going on around 7:15. Space is limited, so come early and enjoy a snack or some wine from the Book Cellar's excellent selection.

Finally, I saw the incomparable Bill Irwin give a conversational performance at Northwestern last night. Holy cow. I think I'll still be learning from that ten years from now. If you have a chance to see him, in any capacity, do it.

August 23, 2006

My publisher Press 53 has started a new program, Buy a Book for a Soldier, that lets you donate books to U.S. troops serving in the Middle East. Please give if you can.

Also thanks to Press 53, two stories from my forthcoming collection Lost Children will be included in UNC's Short Stories to Screen program, in which film students adapt fiction into screenplays. The stories are "S" and "The Shape of Grief." I can't wait to see how they turn out on screen. On a related note, I've updated the fiction page to include an excerpt of Lost Children.

Rehearsals for The Tempest are proceeding apace. I've been writing lots of short fiction—so perhaps soon I'll be able to post news of the follow-up to Lost Children, now under the working title Strange Bedfellows.

Project:Philanthropy is gearing up for its massive fall undertaking, DesignWriteEmpower, in which we'll create new graphic identities and marketing materials for three nonprofits in a single day. We still need a few talented designers and writers to volunteer. And we can always use donations from printers and paper companies.

And go see Signal Ensemble's production of Albee's Zoo Story and Pinter's The Dumb Waiter. I'm not just saying that because my friends are involved. These are great productions, great performances, great plays.

May 27, 2006

Several bits of exciting news:

1. Press 53 is going to publish my collection of short stories, Lost Children, in spring 2007. The book consists of four stories and the novella "The Crazy Garden" (my first NaNoWriMo project, considerably revised since then). And, thanks to Press 53's project with UNC's film program, students are adapting one of the stories into a short screenplay. Neato! The book will be available through Amazon and other online retailers; I'll post information about other stores as I know it.

2. I've just been cast as Prospero in Tangerine Arts Group's production of The Tempest. This fits neatly with my goal of performing in every Shakespeare play before I die (this will be number 8, I think, though I'd like another crack at the Scottish play). I'm particularly excited about this production because it will incorporate clown and circus arts, and Actors Gymnasium is coproducing. So we'll spend the summer working with Shakespeare and learning trapeze and Spanish web and things, and then the show will open in September. That, my friend, is a summer.

3. As if that's not enough, I'll be the opening act for several performances of Tantalus Theater Company's The Strange Dreams of No One in Particular. I'm playing half-hour acoustic sets before their opening night, June 17, and another show on July 1. I'll post details on time and place as soon as I can. Come if you can. I can pretty much promise that you'll hear "Nice," the song from Screw Love. But I have a lot of new material as well, and I'm thrilled to be playing it for Tantalus.

Writing! Acting! Music! Woohoo!

May 1, 2006

Resurrection Mary won Best Picture and the Audience Choice Award at the Chicago Horror Festival! Huge, huge congratulations to Michael Lansu and Cooked Goose Productions.

April 23, 2006

Chicago ScriptWorks is staging a reading of my screenplay Bellham, a romantic comedy about a has-been actor and a struggling writer who, desperate to succeed, concoct a phony public love affair. I've performed in several ScriptWorks readings; they're a great company and I'm really happy to be working with them again. The awesome Caren Evers is directing a terrific cast. The performance is this Wednesday, April 26, at 7:00 p.m., at the Theatre Building Chicago (on Belmont). There's a $5 suggested donation. One catch: Scriptworks' readings tend to sell out, so you must r.s.v.p. Send a quick message with your name and the number of tickets you need to rsvp@chicagoscriptworks.org, or call 312-264-0123.

This Friday, April 28, there's a screening of Resurrection Mary at the Threepenny Cinema, on Lincoln. Guess why? It's part of the Chicago Horror Festival—and it's been nominated for best picture! Writer/director Michael Lansu is also up for best director. The movie represents an insane amount of work from Michael and quite a few other people, and it shows. I'm excited to be a part of it.

Sansculottes Theater Company presents its first festival of ten-minute plays, No Pants, Just Shorts, on Monday, June 12, at the Kitsch'n River North (600 W Chicago). This is the first time the company has ever accepted submissions from outside authors, so hey, writers, seize your moment. The winning plays will be directed by Uma's Mikhael Garver, Signal's Ronan Marra, and Goodman's Steve Scott, using actors who have been cast and rehearsed that very night. I'm looking forward to an evening of theater, creativity, and good food.

November 3, 2005

TimeOut Chicago calls Tuxedo Love "charming" as well as "fun and inspired late-night theater." And the review specifically mentions one of my songs, "Let Me Love You": "the penguins' final love duet [is] strong indeed." Only four shows to go before it closes forever! Don't miss this one. Fridays and Saturdays at the Theatre Building, 11:00 p.m.

Some work I did last year is now available for viewing online. Check out the trailers for Resurrection Mary, an awesome and creepy horror movie shot in Chicago by Cooked Goose Productions. Both trailers include a nice close-up of my very frightened eyeball. There's more of me (and a more frightened me) in the actual movie, which premiered last weekend.

As promised, I've started a MySpace page to cover updates on the Practical Anatomy rehearsal process and post music samples. Whee! More websites! MySpace is particularly helpful for musicians, so I assume that after the show I'll keep posting other bits of music and whatnot, as Sonnets and Love Songs takes shape. Please join my Friends list if you'd like to get bulletins. (Of course, I'll keep posting the major events here.)

Another fun Web thing: the Sansculottes online store is now open for business, with offbeat T-shirts and limited-edition coffee mugs bearing our trademark doodles. Seriously, the mugs rock. I can tell I'm going to be collecting them. And I drew the dang doodles, so it's not like I don't already have a copy. There's just something really neat about doodles in mug form. Plus my order took about three days, total, and this was with the budget shipping option. Give credit where it's due: Cafepress really knows what it's doing.

October 15, 2005

Practical Anatomy is almost cast, and due to start rehearsals in just a few weeks under the capable direction of Terry Selucky. I'm starting to get really excited about the whole thing. I'm going to create a separate production journal on MySpace, so I can post samples of the music, plot spoilers for the curious, and—in all likelihood—one or two jittery first-time playwright/composer panic attacks. I'll post the link here when I have it.

Theatre 5.2.1's production of the new musical Tuxedo Love—written by Jenna Newman and directed by Larua Sturm—opened last night at the Theatre Building Chicago. The show, about the wedding of a pair of gay penguins, features two songs I wrote, "Nest Building" and "Let Me Love You." Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 11:00 p.m. through November 12, when—in keeping with 5.2.1 tradition—the script will be burned, never to be produced again. So no excuses: if you want to hear these songs performed, you'd better get your butt to the Theatre Building now.

One of my favorite acting teachers, Molly Lyons, is coming to Chicago to teach a Shakespeare workshop at Act One. It's November 4–6 and, if you care about performing Shakespeare, it's absolutely not to be missed. Molly's AIRE retreat for actors remains some of the best training I have ever received.

July 28, 2005

Only two more weeks to see me performing in the Velvet Willies' productions of Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well. Hamlet, in particular, has gotten some nice reviews from the Reader, TimeOut Chicago, and Chicagocritic.com. The shows are in rotating rep at the Chopin Theater through August 7—visit www.velvetwillies.com for a full schedule.

Sansculottes' world premiere of C. Mitchell Turner's American Rock Anthem opens next Friday, August 5, at the West Theatre of the Raven Theatre Complex, 6157 N Clark. I can say, with a certainty colored by only the slightest bit of personal bias, that it will be awesome. This is an anarchically funny play, with a gifted cast and a director (Frank Merle, who directed me in Puss in Boots) who's exceptionally skilled at slapstick. See it. See it. See it.

June 16, 2005

The Storefront Theater has accepted my play Practical Anatomy for its spring 2006 season! I'm really excited—and just the slightest bit daunted by the amount of revising and retooling I'll have to do in the next couple of months. But it's wonderful news, for me and for Sansculottes, who will produce the show in tandem with the Storefront folks.

May 31, 2005

Come to the benefit for Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well this Thursday, June 2. It's at 7:00 at Nick & Dino's, 1147 W Armitage. $30 gets you all you can drink for the evening. Proceeds will go toward my queenly garb as Gertrude, and my countessly garb as the Countess Rosillion. Don't make me act naked! Come to the benefit!

My extremely talented friends Jenna Newman and Laura Sturm have created their own studio, the Professional Training Program at Breadline Theater. Classes include Meisner repetition and activity work as well as stage movement. Jenna and Laura were part of the group that made The Sleeper such a joy to work on; I can't recommend them enough. For more information, call 773-327-6096 or e-mail breadline@breadline.org.

Sansculottes Theater Company is staging an evening of one-acts, Business Casualties, in July at the Neo-Futurarium. The scripts (by Adam Simon, Tom Horan, and Tai Palmgren) are brilliant, and the cast is too. I'm excited to be producing this.

April 28, 2005

Well, this is shaping up to be a busy summer. Once again, I'll be performing with the Velvet Willies. The company is putting up Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well in rep with the same 12-person cast for both shows. The run is July 1–31 at the Chopin Theater Studio. I'll post more details as I have them.

Sansculottes Theater Company's new sketch show, No Pants Left Behind, opens next Friday, May 6, at 10:30 p.m. on the Live Bait Theater mainstage, 3914 N Clark. Tickets are $10. The very funny script deals with American public education; the cast—largely veterans of past Sansculottes shows—is immensely talented; and the band Snack Time accompanies the whole thing with live music. This one has only four performances; it closes May 27. Don't miss it.

March 31, 2005

Only six shows left for Theatre 5.2.1's brand-new musical (and debut production) The Sleeper! I play the female lead, Irene Lovely, opposite Joe Stearns's maniacal—and very funny—Rolley Landlourde. We perform Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 p.m., at the Theatre Building on Belmont. We've gotten some nice mentions in the Reader ("the cast has a ball") and TimeOut Chicago ("if 5.2.1 can hold on to talents like Stearns, Morrison, and leading lady Bagby . . . the company's probably onto something"). See this one while you can—once the run is over, the script will be burned, never to be performed again. Plus, tickets are only $5.

Screw Love, the evening of awkward love scenes from Sansculottes Theater Company, was a roaring success—so much so that we're planning another sketch show for this spring, this one about the flawless system that is public high school in America. The working title is No Pants Left Behind, though Smartypants has also been tossed around. It will open for a late-night run in early May.

I've just been cast as the lead in a staged reading of a new screenplay, Moment of Truth, with Chicago ScriptWorks. The reading is the evening of Wednesday, April 13, at the Chicago Cultural Center on Randolph. This is my second reading with CSW, and I'm really excited to be working with them again.

And I seem, somehow, to have more or less finished my own play, Practical Anatomy, a musical that Sansculottes plan to produce this winter. It needs work, of course, so we'll have some workshops and sing-throughs over the next few months. I'll post updates as I have them.