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?