A BINGO Fundraiser at Hamburger Mary’s?!
CANCELLED
Well, that’s a drag. As it turns out, Mary goofed up and overbooked too many charities for Monday’s fundraiser (May 14, 2012).
But… we are a creative bunch, so we’re doing this instead. Watch this quick video that our biggest fans, Joan and Paulette, made for us, then follow their lead? Thanks.
For Reference:
Mary’s Menu:
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What would you have spent at Hamburger Mary’s on burgers, cocktails, BINGO cards and raffle tickets? Why not simply donate that amount (or thereabouts) and call it a day?! It’s not as much fun as a real drag-queen BINGO game, but it’s what we got.
We’ll still hold the raffle (see prizes below) for everyone who donates through midnight Sunday, May 20, 2012. Simply select the level of your donation by rolling over a square below, upload your picture so we know who you are (or not) and then share this with your friends!
Select what you would have spent:
All proceeds from this fundraiser go directly to Interrobang, and you get the chance to win some fabulous prizes! Winners will be notified by May 28th.
- 2 Tickets to the Chicago Cubs vs. Houston Astros July 1 at 1:20 pm donated by Patricia Pindelski. ($140 value)
- Interrobang Gift Basket including $50 Target Gift Card donated by Craig Freedman, Freedman Seating Company, an ITP T-shirt & hat and 2 tickets to our next production, Here Lies Henry. ($115 value)
- 2 Season Tickets for ITP’s 2012-2013 Season ($80 value)
- Woman’s Haircut at Urban Lift Salon donated by John Flemal ($50 value)
Interrobang Theatre Project is a 501(c)(3) Not-for-Profit organization supported in part by ticket sales and, in large part, by generous gifts from people like you. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law and directly supports our work.
Walking the Edge
Why are you involved with Interrobang as a Company Member?
By Michael Moran
What excites me most about being an ITP company member is Jeffry Stanton’s eye for texts. The texts he chooses and his vision for them challenge my habitual sentimentality as an artist—cutting through to raw, delicate, ephemeral, funny, and powerful emotions. He has an innate sense of theatre’s power to reveal the dark underbellies we wrestle with in ourselves and condemn in others.
I have worked as an actor under Jeffry’s direction for the last few years, beginning while I was training for my BFA at Boston University. I am always inspired by his ability to capture art’s elusive elements; he reveals what might be most uncomfortable about our human condition in a way that is neither garish nor crude, but somehow enticing, digestible and cathartic. In the rehearsal room, where we deal with material that plumbs our ugliness and vulnerability, Jeffry orchestrates us with a gentle enthusiasm and irreverent humor that invites openness and immense joy. It is this artistic virtuosity that I am inspired to follow and support.
Jeffry has put together a company that walks the edge in both content and form, exploring the edges of ourselves that we are usually afraid to examine outside of a theatrical communion. Most importantly, he has an eye and taste for theatre that fulfills what I personally believe to be severely lacking in our current theatrical climate: an authentic sense of danger on-stage that is not extraneous or indulgent, but rather lifts the text to new heights. I am a better actor under his direction, and this, along with the team he has assembled, inspires me to play my part in furthering this company.
Announcing the 2012-13 Season!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7, 2012
Contact: Jeffry Stanton
(773) 888-BANG (2264)
jeffry@interrobangtheatreproject.org
http://interrobangtheatreproject.org
INTERROBANG THEATRE PROJECT ANNOUNCES 2012-2013 SEASON
Interrobang Theatre Project Will Produce Paula Vogel’s Explosive Hot ’N’ Throbbing and the
Chicago Premiere of Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues
Chicago, IL – Interrobang Theatre Project (ITP), under the leadership of Artistic Director Jeffry Stanton and Managing Director Gregory Owen-Boger, announces its 2012-2013 season. The company’s 3rd season will feature Paula Vogel’s Hot ’N’ Throbbing and the Chicago premiere of Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues. Both plays will be directed by Jeffry Stanton.
Artistic Director Jeffry Stanton said, “I’m thrilled for Interrobang to bring together the work of Paula Vogel and Andrew Bovell—two extraordinarily clever playwrights who share idiosyncratic theatricality, a dark sense of humor, and a cellular-level understanding of the complexity and capriciousness of human nature.
Hot ’N’ Throbbing’s title titillates but there’s nothing gratuitous in this roller coaster of an evening. Paula Vogel’s unflinching, unconventional, and, dare I say it, funny play challenges an audience to chew on tough questions about domestic violence, sexual politics, parenting, and society’s continued role in raising both victims and abusers. Deemed too disturbing by many artistic directors, Hot ’N’ Throbbing has been largely sidelined from the stage. ‘If we cannot confront domestic violence on our stages,’ Vogel wrote in 1995, ‘we will not be able to eliminate it from our living rooms.’
Audiences may be familiar with Andrew Bovell’s wacky and wonderful movie Strictly Ballroom but his play Speaking in Tongues is quite another beast. Tongues has enjoyed more than 15 years of award-winning runs, revivals, and tours in England and Australia, so Interrobang Theatre Project is tongue-tied to bring it, at last, to Chicago. Bovell has crafted a stunning work of theatrical mastery that is smart, complex, and mysterious. Four actors portray nine characters caught in a destructive web of coincidence, betrayal, desire, and obsession. It’s just one of those plays that you’ll be piecing together for days after.”
The 2012/13 Interrobang Theatre Project Season Up Close
Hot ‘N’ Throbbing
By Paula Vogel
Directed by Jeffry Stanton
The Play
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel’s Hot ’N’ Throbbing unflinchingly explores the pyrotechnic intersection of sex, domestic violence, pornography, and power. Charlene is a suburban mother who writes feminist erotica to support her hormonally charged teenagers. With a script deadline looming, voices from her subconscious taunting her, and a ferocious craving for a cigarette, Charlene is having a bad day. When Clyde, Charlene’s drunk and manipulative estranged husband arrives, the day takes a turn that will change the family forever. FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.
“What happens is startling—alternatively raunchy, tough, tender, compassionate, tough again…You may be able to shake off its shock, you won’t be able to escape its pulverizing truth.” —Boston Globe
“Hot ‘N’ Throbbing is a theatrical 911 call that no serious theatergoer can afford to ignore.” —Baltimore Sun
The Playwright
Paula Vogel’s play How I Learned to Drive received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, as well as winning her second OBIE. Vogel’s other plays include The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, and The Oldest Profession. Paula Vogel is the Eugene O’Neill Professor (adjunct) of Playwriting and Chair of the Playwriting Department at the Yale School of Drama, as well as an artistic associate at Long Wharf Theatre. Works in progress include a commission for Yale Repertory (based on The God of Vengeance), a work in collaboration with director Rebecca Taichman, and a new play, Jitterbugging and the War Effort.
Schedule
Hot ’N’ Throbbing will perform on the West Stage at the Raven Theatre Complex, 6157 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60660
Opens: Saturday, Sept 22, 2012, 4:00 p.m.
Runs: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 8:00 p.m.; Sunday 3:30 p.m.
Closes: Sunday, Oct 21, 2012
Run Time: Approximately 90 minutes, no intermission
Previews: Thursday, Sept 20 & Friday Sept 21, 8:00 p.m.
Tickets: Previews/Students/Industry $10; General Admission $25; Season Subscription $40
Speaking In Tongues
By Andrew Bovell
Directed by Jeffry Stanton
The Play
Two couples set out to betray their partners. A lover returns from the past and a husband doesn’t answer the phone. A woman disappears and a neighbor is the prime suspect. Contracts are broken between intimates and powerful bonds are formed between strangers. In Andrew Bovell’s masterful polyphony, an evocative mystery unravels within a devastating tale of disconnection, coincidence, and destruction.
“Clever, provocative, elliptically resonant.” –The New York Times
“A play of shimmering, iridescent beauty, revealing the marvelous in the everyday.” –Financial Times
“Gripping, emotionally and intellectually satisfying… Get tangled up in its wonderful web.”—Time Out
The Playwright
Andrew Bovell is a celebrated writer for both stage and screen. Bovell’s plays have won numerous awards in Australia, including the Victorian Green Room, State Premier’s Awards, and the peer-judged AWGIE awards. Among his critically acclaimed films is Lantana, —based on Speaking in Tongues—which won over ten major awards in Australia in 2001 and enjoyed international praise. AWGIE award-winning Speaking in Tongues was widely praised by audiences and critics alike when produced in Sydney (1998), Melbourne (1998), the Hampstead Theatre in London (2000), and at the U.S. premiere at the Roundabout Theatre in New York (2001). Some of Bovell’s other works for the stage include Shades of Blue (La Mama, 1996), Scenes from a Separation (MTC, 1995), Like Whiskey on the Breath of a Drunk You Love (1992), and Distant Light from Dark Places (1994).
Schedule
Speaking in Tongues will perform at Theatre Wit, 1229 West Belmont Avenue, Chicago, IL 60657
Opens: Saturday, Feb 23, 2013, 4:00 p.m.
Runs: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 8:00 p.m.; Sunday 3:00 p.m.
Closes: Sunday, March 24, 2013
Run Time: Approximately 2 hours 15 minutes with 15-minute intermission
Previews: Thursday, Feb 21 & Friday, Feb 22, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: Previews/Students/Industry $10; General Admission $25; Season Subscription $40
About Interrobang Theatre Project
Interrobang Theatre Project is dedicated to excellence in producing visceral, smart, substantial, and timely classic plays, rarely produced texts, and new American plays. Interrobang strives to build and encourage a new generation of theatregoers, to engage our community through challenging plays in an ongoing dialogue of ideas, to create an exciting lobby life that will allow us all the space and time to talk about the work we typically share alone in the dark, to maintain an environment in which artists can do their very best work, and to uphold live theatre and the act of collective imagining as a powerful and vital means to change our world one play at a time. Interrobang is not recommended for audiences who prefer theatre to be benign or familiar.
What’s an interrobang !?
An “interrobang” (!?) is the combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, joining the Latin for “question” (interro-) with a proofreading term for “exclamation” (bang). Punctuation expresses an attitude, an idea, an attempt to make things clearer. Through the plays we produce, Interrobang Theatre Project poses complex and intoxicating questions. Navigating through the dark together with our audience we attempt to arrive at new understandings and fresh perspectives of who we are and the world in which we live.
Season Subscriptions
As Interrobang Theatre Project continues to build momentum for its boldly original productions, we are introducing our new Season Subscriptions. “We’re excited to be at a place in our evolution that we can now offer our audience this great deal. At 20% off the regular ticket price, it just makes sense to join,” says Greg Owen-Boger, Managing Director.
The Write Idea
“What about … oh, wait. Never mind – it was done last season.”
“What do you mean we’re too young, too small to be given the rights to this production?!”
“Have you ever heard of …”
These are the questions Interrobang Theatre Project is facing these days; they revolve around season planning. That dreaded time when theater companies’ artistic staffs bend the ears of each other, ensemble members, friends, and just about anyone who will listen to get ideas about what to do next year. It’s also a time of taking stock: evaluating the mission of the theater and how what we produce connects to our core values. So choosing plays is not simply looking for what excites you or what you like – it’s a matter of making the right choices.
The right choices are never easy.
Sorting through the numerous options of submitted plays, plays we’ve read in school, plays we’ve seen performed, and plays we’ve found published in any one of a thousand publications seems like a leisurely chore. It isn’t. Many plays disappoint, others bore, and some frustrate – making the process laborious. You use your free time to sift through pages and pages of text, hoping some golden idea pops out at you. When it does happen (at last) the excitement is thrilling – for you. Convincing others becomes the next challenge.
Often your perfect choice doesn’t pass muster with your colleagues. Issues of taste and aesthetic preferences come into play, and suddenly your gem of a script becomes a pile of pulp. You argue for your choice – how it stirs the blood, serves the resident actors, and jives with the theater’s mission – but you often end-up back at square one, resuming your search. Eventually this seemingly endless process yields something: a masterpiece for you to produce. If you can.
Before the financial business of making a play happen – the fundraising, the budgeting – the legal challenges must be conquered. Negotiating and obtaining rights to a writer’s work doesn’t just happen. It brings numerous considerations: Has this play been produced recently in a certain mile-radius of your city? Who did it last? Does the playwright – or the playwright’s agent – think that having a production by a small Chicago theater company will move the author’s reputation in the right direction? The arguing for producing a script now voyages beyond the inner-circle of the theater and into the realm of business, potentially scuttling plans.
We stew in this process at present. We’re reading, discussing, and negotiating, and will soon have a bold announcement for what 2012-2013 has is in store. Until then, let us know what your thoughts are – how can we serve you? Send us an e-mail, or an old-fashioned letter, and let us know the stories YOU would like to see, and we’ll work to make it happen. Interrobang works to “engage our community through challenging plays in an ongoing dialogue of ideas,” so don’t be afraid to join in the discussion. You may have the right idea.
Young, fresh out of grad school, new to Chicago – it makes sense that Jeffry Stanton and I should meet. This was the thinking of Jim Petosa, the man to whom I owe my affiliation with Interrobang Theatre Project. A former colleague of mine and a mentor to many in the collective, Jim suggested I check out the project. Specifically: I should get to know Jeffry. A few e-mails later, I stood in the lobby of The Argument and began the remarkably quick journey from business patron to business partner.
I took a deep breath as I entered the Viaduct Theater for The Argument on October 9, 2011. I was nervous: that night’s show was more than a performance. It was an audition. It tested the validity of Jim’s recommendation. Therefore, “Will this be good?” “Are these people to whom I would want to commit weeks of my time working on a production?” were questions that swirled around inside my head.
Also in the mix: “Will they like me?” “Will I be smart enough for them?” “Will I contribute, or weigh them down?”
That night at the Viaduct I was looking for allies: theater people with similar convictions and aspirations, with whom I could put on a show every now and then. Finding people like this – in any theater scene, large or small – daunts. Taste, exposure, age, intelligence are all subtle factors that determine who plays-well together. So it was important that we mutually impress each other, and what I saw in The Argument elated me.
Jeffry’s production used movement and design – in addition to Gregory Moss’s words – to tell the story of The Argument. Actors didn’t simply enter, speak while crossing the stage, and exit; the ensemble created a unique representation of Moss’s ideas. It was a theatrical production, not just a play. Its creativity impressed me, and the conversations that followed allowed me to impress Jeffry and our Managing Director, Greg Owen-Boger.
It was e-mail and face-to-face conversations with Jeffry and Greg that gave them the confidence to invite me to be more than a sometimes-collaborator and serve as Interrobang’s literary manager. Discussing the structure of our third season, what plays excite us and why, creating rubrics for how we evaluate scripts, and other logistical topics not only introduced us to each other’s thoughts and style, we got to learn about each other as individual artists. Beyond wanting to achieve artistic success, we share the desire to nurture the artistic growth of every member of the collective. Interrobang works to present and grow artists, not just produce productions.
The greeting currently on our winter 2011-2012 homepage notes that this is an exciting time for Interrobang. It is. We’re not only working to meet you, our audience, but we’re working to meet ourselves by discovering our potential. This discovery makes right now an amazing time to be involved with this collective of artists; I am proud to be a part of it.