New Leaf Theatre

Don’t forget to join New Leaf tomorrow, Wednesday August 27th.

I’m our production manager, so I’m just going to leave you with the bullet points:

Holiday Club: 4000 N. Sheridan Road. 7 PM.

You can win that iPod Touch you’ve been salivating over, and lots of other great prizes.

Two Included Drinks and Food for $30 at the door.

Or get your tickets early for only $25 right here.

Readings of Fresh New Plays by Bilal Dardai and Brandon Ray.

Music courtesy of local Folk legend Mark Dvorak.

A new season of great theater that we are eagerly bouncing off the walls to tell you about.

Oh and that iPod Touch? No service plan.

SWEET. I MEAN: FRESH.

Big question, huh?  I think so.  It’s big and scary and complex and important, and yet something that it seems we’d rather sweep under the rug than talk about at parties.  But it’s always there - we’re always building towards something whether we know what that thing is or not.  And not many people I know are exactly where they thought they’d be when they started out, starting making their plans.  And what do we do when the plan gets us something/somewhere/someone that’s different than we expected? Marsha quoted this great saying the other day - If you always stick to the plan you’ll get exactly what you wanted five years ago.

I am not where I thought I’d be five years ago.  But here I am.  And now what?  How can we move forward?  Where do we start?  What’s the next first step?

Well, if you’re New Leaf, you decide to take that step by building your season around the question that is perhaps the scariest thing confronting you at the moment.  And that’s just what we’ve done.  This season, we’ll work together as an ensemble -with some old and new friends - to ask ourselves “How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?”

I just sent a “For Immediate Release” to the press announcing our season, and now I’m filled with that butterfly/jittery/first-day-of-school feeling.  And I don’t think it’s the coffee or the fear of typographical errors in my press release.  Because now, for some reason, it’s real.  Here we go.  We’re about to jump in with both feet into this season, this question, not knowing where we’ll be at the other side.  It’s so exciting - I am so excited about this season.  And it’s also terrifying.  In the best possible way. 

So here we go.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present New Leaf Theatre’s 2008/2009 Season.  Here’s the short info - but pick up the Season Announcement Press Release to get all the goods!

FALL 2008
Six Years by Sharr White
CHICAGO PREMIERE
How does our nation of families hold together through the push and pull of progress?

WINTER 2009
Touch by Toni Press-Coffman
How do you move forward when your worst nightmare becomes your reality?

SPRING 2009
The Long Count - an original piece devised by the company
How do we create this future while we’re living in the present?

Every spring,  we New Leafers talk about how busy we’re going to be over the summer, and how this year, we’re not going to let the ball drop; this summer, we’ll keep up with all the work so we’re not completely backlogged at the start of the next season (we generally start rehearsals for our fall shows in mid-August).

Of course, it never quite happens.

So what did we do this summer?
Well, Marsha just got back from 5 weeks in upstate New York, working with the Bakerloo Theatre Project .This was her 4th summer with the company.  This year, they did a gender-blind casting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where she played King Alonso of Naples, and various “spirits of the island;” and a stripped-down, very comic production of Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, where she got rave reviews as Madame Ranevskaya. 

Michelle’s a technical assistant at Chicago Shakes and has been building the set for Willy Wonka, which includes fun things like a pink candy boat, a nut room, a giant TV, a flowing chocolate river, an inventing room, and a bubble room with big and little acrylic balls and blue mylar.  (I totally want to go play on this set.) She’s been monkeying around on scaffolding trying to figure out ways of attaching bizarre materials 16 feet up in the air. Good times.

Jared, as he has for several summers now, is working at Ravinia. He has to be there pretty much all day every day. I haven’t actually seen him in months (so thank God for email!)

Kyra’s working a day job and directing a one act at the side project for the fall titled “The Best Christmas Present, Ever.” She’s also been planning her wedding – and that, alone, is more work than I want to think about right now.

Nick and Jess spent 5 weeks teaching at Cherubs this summer (a.k.a. Northwestern University’s National High School Institute, Theater Division). If you know Cherubs, you know this is a 24/7 job. Nick designed sound for 10 shows and taught sound design classes; Jess directed one of those shows and taught a whole bunch of acting classes. Nick’s also doing all the programming for the awesome Chicago Theatre Database, which is in beta right now and growing so fast it’s scary. 

As for me, I’m working my regular 9-to-5, building an illustration/graphic design portfolio in preparation for changing careers (again), taking classes in bookbinding and digital letterpress, and starting an Etsy shop to sell handbound journals/sketchbooks and original art. 

So now it’s August (yikes!), and here we go again…kind of panicking as we realize that we’ve got a fundraiser on August 27^th to plan; we’ve got a short play in the Abbie Hoffman festival that needs to be rehearsed, teched, attended, etc.; rehearsals for our fall show start August 25^th and production meetings start now; we had callbacks last Saturday for our winter show, though we can’t finalize a cast quite yet; and we’re committed to creating an original piece for a spring workshop production, which we really need to write one of these days (much more on that later). We’ve got grants to apply for, an improved box office system to roll out,  a fiscal year to close out and another to open, marketing to design, press releases to write, and branding decisions to discuss.

Welcome back, everyone!

Hi, I’m Jack. I’m a friend/fan of New Leaf Theatre. About a month ago, Jessica and I went to see a play. After the show we went to a bar to talk about theater, and as usual we were talking about the same things–the mutual experience of the performers and the audience, a process that thrives on a multiplicity of voices, having fun with sound and lights. She asked me to be a part of this Summerfest party that New Leaf was putting up, and of course I said yes.

So okay, we go away, I’m in casting and preproduction for my next show (bobrauschenbergamerica with Chicago Fusion Theatre, coming in September!), not really thinking about much else. And then, about a week ago, I get an email containing three scripts and a casting breakdown. In the email, Jessica suggests that I direct Raptor & Scavenger, a play by Bilal Dardai, with actors Max Lesser, Alyse Kittner, Tiffany Topol, and Mark Chaitin. Now, Max and Tiffany I’ve seen in New Leaf shows, and I know they are the tops. And Bilal is in the first show that ever made my head explode in Chicago (Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, natch) so I’m already kind of starstruck. Then I read the play. Which is ridiculous. You want to see a script that will never, ever be fully staged despite its taut comedy, fun parts for actors, and breathtaking climax? Come see Raptor & Scavenger deny physics, the fiscal realities of production, and animal-cruelty laws three times on Saturday.

So okay, I get the script, I read it, I say “Sweet Christmas, what in the name of Bertolt Brecht do I do with this?” I make some notes (”have an opinion about that guy”, “SCREAM THIS”, “wha??”) and I put it away and recommence freaking out about casting my own show.

Thursday comes. Parking by the LPCC is usually a fool’s errand, but I get there early and find a sick spot right outside. I head into the space to look around, re-read, make more notes. This room is gorgeous–it’s just big enough for theater but it still feels like a real room. I love sitting on the little stage I’ve only ever seen used as the booth, which hangs, dark and empty, off the north end of the room, looking down on the big wood floor where the shows happen. Or no, my favorite part is the low swimming pool in the ceiling. No, it’s the Abe Lincoln fireplace. I’ve wanted to stage a play in here for like a year. The cast trickles in, Jessica’s there, and Kyra, and Bilal (who is awesome, it turns out). There are two more scripts that I haven’t read (oops). We sit in a circle and we get down to it. Jessica says, “Let’s start with Raptor.” And looks at me. And everyone looks at me.

I start talking about how I want to use the room, and the cast’s relationship with the audience, and it’s all a bit pie-in-the-sky for a ten-minute play that’s sharing its one 3-hour rehearsal with two other pieces. But everyone in the room–six actors, three directors, and two writers–gets involved. Those who’ve played at New Leaf before are telling me some of the room’s staging secrets. I’m trying to reconcile what I see in Bilal’s script with the needs of the other shows, but everyone’s saying “Just go with it, let’s play.” So we do, and it’s the most fun. Suddenly, we’ve got a seating arrangement that everyone is excited about. The cast is working incredibly fast, information is flying around the room. I’m shouting “Someone tell me where the tiger door is!” (someone does, and they’re right–the Abe Lincoln fireplace).

Three hours later, we’ve got three plays staged. Each one is unique in tone and visual concept. Each one flexes the space, and maximizes the creativity of our six brilliant actors. Each one is a blast to watch.

Tonight was one of those rehearsals.

I’m getting up super early on Saturday to take the bus from Pilsen for the show, and I CAN’T WAIT, SERIOUSLY.

About a month ago I issued a challenge to three of New Leaf’s playwright friends: Given identical lists of some of the features of Chicago’s Mid-North Neighborhood, create a ten-minute play using anything on the page as an inspiration, starting point, setting, character - anything - but you have to somehow incorporate something about the neighborhood on that sheet of paper.  

I was excited to see what these three gentlemen - as different from one another as they can be - would come up with, espeically because this is no idle exercise.  This Saturday each of these plays will have their world-premiere reading as New Leaf’s contribution to this year’s Mid-North Association Summerfest.  At 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM, staged readings of all three plays will be presented in our home at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center.  This was arranged long before seeing the plays, even before officially broaching the subject with the playwrights.  It was a bit of a leap of faith, espeically since we’re hoping that this event will be a way for us to reach out to people in our neighborhood who still look at the LPCC and say “There’s a theatre in there?”  After all, first impressions are a tricky thing. 

On Friday, these three lovely men (Bilal Dardai, Brandon Ray, and Dan Rubin) e-mailed me copies of what they’d created.  The three pieces I received are as different as their creators are and do exactly what I hoped they would - examine the inspirational aspects of New Leaf’s neighborhood in three distinct ways.

I was clear in the beginning that these are going to be staged readings, so that the guys would feel free to write something as fantastical and “unproducable” as they like.  I think Bilal really took up that gauntlet and rocket-launched it; his piece is incredulous and ridiculous in so many ways - it is truly delightful.  Dan has created something that is structurally and thematically fascinating to me and I can’t wait to hear it out loud.  And Brandon’s piece, the most naturalistic of the three,  is full of richly developed characters (yes, developed characters in 10 minutes) in three respective, instantly recognizable crossroads with which we can all empathize. 

On Thursday we’ll be assembling three directors, six actors, and two of these lovely playwrights to work collaboratively for a few hours to wake these texts up and get them in the air before showing them to the public on Saturday.  I’m finding this process (abbreviated though it may be) to be just exhilarating.  It’s reminding me how lucky I am to be in the company of such creative minds.  I can’t wait to see what happens next!

By the way - the images above remind me of the three plays.  Intrigued yet?