March 11 -13
Fri & Sat at 8pm / Sun at 7pm
BUY Tickets $10
What is Love?
Presented by
Pearl Pistol
Along with a team of very creative and dynamic performers, Pearl Pistol is posing the question "What is Love?"
A cabaret inspired theater piece; a cheeky look into cultural perceptions & directions of love, lust, sensuality, sexuality......
Dare we say more?
Through a multimedia creation synced w/ live performance art, blended w/ song, dance, a touch of the old school bump & grind, the group will direct answers to their posed question.
We invite our sweet city to join this small ensemble as they explore the simple notion of what love really is and everything that lies between!
Featuring:Kyle Greer, Harper Horan, Nadia Oussenko, Frank Mares, Meredith Miller, &
Pearl Pistol.
Kyle Greer is southern boy with classical training turned northern lad. He has an extensive background in both music and theatre. In Chicago, he has performed with theatres such as the Jeff Award-winning Theo Ubique and The National Pastime Theatre as well as queer venues such as Girlie-Q, Homolatte, and Cake Chicago. He was a regular performer on the recently departed acoustic Unpugged series at the Wild Pug. He's also been the musical sidekick at the Wild Party Variety Hour and at Uncommon Ground with the Dolls of Doom variety show, Dinner and a Floozie. Check him out all over those social networks on the internet and at www.kylegreerrocks.com Part theatre rock, dark cabaret, and chamber pop, he combines them all for your viewing and listening pleasure.
Harper Horan: Mostly nocturnal, you can often catch glimpses of this songbird performing in variety shows throughout the city and sometimes tweeting and fluttering around the local burlesque scene. Harper is a local bird that, unlike her distant cousin the Harpy, enjoys bearing good tidings and has been entertaining audiences as a singer, songwriter and actor since early childhood. She has fronted for bands and ensembles big and small of varied musical genres and has held roles in several musical theater and theater productions in the Chicagoland area.
Nadia Oussenko is a choreographer, filmmaker, and photographer. She completed her MFA in Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Oussenko recently premiered her dance film, On Falling. . . funded by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, IL. She has co-directed dance films with Chicago artists Molly Shanahan and Erica Mott, and has had her films screened at festivals such as ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival of Video and Dance, and Moves International Festival of Movement on Screen in Manchester, England. Nadia has also choreographed stage works for Ameba and Dance Chicago.
Meredith Miller/Claire De Lune is a Chicago-based puppet designer and cabaret performer who is known for her unique fusion of the two art forms. Recent performances of her work include The Great Smalls Toy Theater Festival in New York, Toy Theater After Dark at Open Eye Figure Theater in Minneapolis, Banners and Cranks: A festival of Cantastoria, The World is Flat! A Weekend of Toy Theater, The Rustbelt Revival (curated by Holly Hughes)--all at Links Hall in Chicago, on the mainstage at The Windy City Burlesque Festival, and in the Sissy's Butch Brothers' renowned Gurlesque Burlesque events . Throughout the years has appeared regularly in local burlesque and variety shows such as Vaudezilla's Show and Tell Cabaret, The Belmont Burlesque Revue, The Girlie-Q Variety Hour, The Backyard Variety Show, and Heartless B!tch Productions at Spin Nightclub. She has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the drag/burlesque troupes The Windy City Blenders and A Sordid Collective, and as a performing puppeteer with Blair Thomas and Co. Additionally, Meredith/Claire appeared as a contestant in Comedy Central's short-lived revival of The Gong Show--on which she was gonged by (ironically), a dog puppet. As a puppet designer, her recent credits include Aladdin, Short Shakespeare! A Midsummer Night's Dream, Willie Wonka (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), and collaborative work with Blair Thomas and Company on productions including The Snow Queen, Moby Dick, The Cabaret of Desire, The Ox-Herder Tale, Reflections on the Nature of Water, A Rabbit's Tale, and Pierrot Lunaire. Meredith holds a degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied puppet animation, and spends her free time working as a specialty props artisan for regional theaters.
Pearl Pistol: As lead creative and producer of Pearl Pistol Productions, Pearl Pistol just loves to create old school & classic vaudeville burlesque. A class act with real class, Pearl honorably shakes her influences from the likes of Gypsy Rose Lee, The Minksy Brothers, Betty Boop, Dita Von Tease and many others of gyrating glory and fame. You can find Pearl Pistol all over the Chicago burlesque scene playing in a variety of shows & reviews including Pearl Pistol Productions and many more! Also keep your eyes peeled for Mz. Pistol as she oft makes a random stop in many a city away from home.
For more information visit http://www.whatislovechicago.webs.com/
March 19-20
Sat at 11pm-12:30am/ Sun at 6am to 7:30am
Buy Tickets $15 ($12 online)
Gong Lab:
Suite for Dreamers a Vernal Equinox Celebration
Shu Shubat and Oliver Seay ( Directors of Jellyeye Drum Theatre), with Mike Oleon.
Welcome spring with a Shadow Puppet Show / Gongbath / Dream In. Participants will experience Gong Lab in a relaxed prone position. You are encouraged to bring a mat, sleeping bag, or long cushion to lay on, a blanket to cover yourself with, and a pillow, in order to fully immerse yourself in this very special storytelling journey that is at once sonic, visual and visceral; a celebration of the return of Spring. You'll be bathed in the reverberations of a 38" Earth Gong as it unites the waves of shadow, light, and Earth, and takes you on a journey of discovery and rebirth. Featuring unique and fantastic puppets, poetry, song, ritual, and masterful gong performance by Jellyeye Drum Theatre directors Shu Shubat and Oliver Seay, along with shadow puppeteer/designer Mike Oleon, this event is guaranteed to be unlike any performance you have ever experienced.
March 18-20
Fri & Sat at 8pm, Free Sunday Spectacle beginning at 2pm at
Voice of the city (3429 W. Diversey Avenue, Suite 208)
Buy Tickets $15/ $12 Online / $10 Students and seniors
To Art & Profit
Curated by Artistic Associates Abra Johnson and Meida McNeal
Click Here for Festival Details
Spread over three weekends from March through May 2011, To Art & Profit is an interdisciplinary performance series augmented with arts-focused dialogues and Carnival-inspired street theatre spectacle throughout the city of Chicago.
To Art & Profit envisions what collective social action looks like through a diverse and democratic approach to artistic programming, and tackles difficult questions bringing art-centered conversations and explorations to different kinds of local public spaces.
WEEKEND 1:
What Is It Good For? Defining Art’s Purpose Now
The opening weekend of the series acknowledges art's potential for addressing complicated questions of cultural meaning and value. Art makers navigate a fine line between addressing their own interests and making their work accessible to a public who will find these economically valuable. How can we use our creative labor to catalyze collective action? Is that art's purpose?
Free Street Spectacle Sunday, March 20 beginning at 2pm at Voice of the City, 3429 W. Diversey Ave and completing with a panel discussion at Elastic Arts, 2830 N. Milwaukee Ave. from 3:30-5pm
Panelists: Soyini Madison, Joel Velentin-Martinez, Samuel Lewis and Susan Fox.
Works:
dancing the balancing act of survival: a complicated chorus of schedules, writing & stuff...
Featuring Collaborators: C.C. Carter, Keli Stewart, and Sage Morgan-Hubbard
Join award-winning writers and performers C.C. Carter, Keli Stewart, and Sage Morgan-Hubbard as they explore the themes of class, motherhood, daily life schedules, artistic desires and future possibilities in this interactive, engaging, multimedia piece.
Utopic Monster Theory
Featuring Collaborators: J'Sun Howard and Jennifer Karmin with insight by Coya Paz
A polydesirious bricolage of text-movement exploring 21st Century cultural work.
Spark
Featuring Collaborators: Cristal Sabbagh and Roger Noel
Spark is an interdisciplinary performance that engages and activates the body, and incorporates afro-atlantic rhythms. The original soundscore will undergo a live transformation and cultivation through human interaction. Energy and movement will be offered through a collaboration of butoh inspired ritual and Afro-Cuban movement.
This program is funded in part by 
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