2010 PERFORMANCE

LINKS HALL PRESENTS

the DIALogues

Nine Mondays of Eavesdropping 

Curated by Links Hall Artistic Associate Dexter Bullard
September 13 - November 22
Mondays at 7:30pm
Tickets are $15/$10 – BUY TICKETS NOW
* Opening Night Reception - Monday, September 13

Dexter Bullard

September 13 & 20

October 4, 11 & 18

November 1, 8, 15, 22

A series of improvised intimate phone calls between two well-known Chicago performers who are unknown to each other - and the audience uses headphones to listen in... 

Nine Monday nights this fall, a new set of two award-winning performers are put "on the line" with someone they don't know and cannot see. What ensues is a live and lively conversation lead only by voice and meaning - dreams, stories, humor, controversy, and communion in 50-minutes of totally unplanned dialogue.  A guest sonic artist live mixes a hypnotic underbed to the tones of the conversation. After every performance, the entire audience is welcome to come out for a drink and a chance to "continue the conversation."

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dexter Bullard is an award-winning director and physical theater artist dedicated to directing new plays and creating original improvisational and experimental theater for Chicago and beyond.  Recent directing credits include From A Fading Light with Plasticene, Craig Wright’s Mistakes Were Made at A Red Orchid Theatre, and Reverie with Second City at The Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.  In 2004, Dexter was awarded the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction Off-Broadway for Tracy Letts’ Bug at The Barrow Street Theater, as well as a Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Director.  In 1995 Dexter co–founded Plasticene Physical Theater and has directed and collaboratively created fourteen original works including The Palmer Raids (2003) and One Fal$e Note (2006).  Since 1996, Dexter has directed with The Second City, developing the revues at E.T.C. Chicago and Second City Detroit.  Back in 1990, Dexter founded The Next Lab at The Next Theatre where he directed Bouncers, for which he received a Jefferson Citation and an After Dark award for his direction.   He has also directed projects for The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Northlight, Famous Door, American Theatre Company, Hartford Stage Company, and several times for A Red Orchid Theatre.  Dexter is the Head of Graduate Acting at The Theatre School at DePaul University.

the DIALogues #1

Featured Sue Gillan conversing with Tyler B. Myers with sonic underbed mixed live by Eric Leonardson.

Sue Gillan, an Evanston native, is an actress, improviser, writer and director.  An alumnus of The Second City, Sue was a resident stage actress and director, and was Jeff nominated for her performance in “The Revelation Will Not Be Televised”.  Recent credits include: performing in “Lowering The Bar”, a pilot that won the 2009 Chicago Comedy Pilot Competition; writing and performing the two-person show “Third Coast”, with David Pasquesi, that played at the Barrow St. Theater in NYC, and is currently being wrestled into a pilot; and starting a creative content factory with her ol’ buddy, Greg Mills (www.braindraincreative.com). On her days off, Sue keeps herself from thinking long thoughts by decorating the hell outta friends’ homes. Thanks to Dexter for hosting the party.

Tyler B. Myers primarily works collaboratively.  He co-founded the duo Cupola Bobber (2000 - present), and worked with Lucky Pierre (2000 - 2008). Both groups toured and exhibited work across the US and internationally. Venue highlights for collaborative work include the Plateaux festival at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Performance Space 122 and the CUE Art Foundation in New York, Fusebox Festival in Austin, Arnolfini in Bristol, Battersea Arts Centre and the Chelsea Theatre in London, Eurokaz in Zagreb, Belluard Bollwerk International in Switzerland, and Kunsthaus Graz in Austria. Individual and one-off collaborative projects have been shown at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, Yokohama's Theatre Fonte, and PSI 15 in Zagreb. His published writing includes, The Dictionary of Endurative Actions in The Drama Review (Cupola Bobber), Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me: A Reading Companion (Cupola Bobber), Letter to Leatherface in Frakcija Performance Journal, Letter To Tolstoy in Make: A Chicago Literary Magazine, and Monologue For One Performer Taking One Step, Slowly in an anthology on SLOW (Cupola Bobber).  Tyler’s collaborative projects have received commissions from  National Performance Network, Performance Space 122, Links Hall, and the Nationaltheater Mannheim in Germany. He has received a Northwestern University President's Fellowship, grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, the City of Chicago's Community Arts Assistance Program, Lancaster University, Illinois Arts Council, and Arts Council England. He was an MacDowell Colony Fellow this past summer, an International Fellow at the UK's Lancaster University in 2007/08, and was awarded Best of PAC/edge Chicago 2005. He has served as visiting artist for The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bristol University, Columbia College Chicago, and Goat Island's Summer School. Tyler received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a Nelson Raymond Fellowship, and an MFA from Northwestern University's Art Theory and Practice Department.

Eric Leonardson is a Chicago-based composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor, improviser, visual artist, and educator. He has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and micro-tones. 
Leonardson is a sound designer and composer in Plasticene, the Executive Director of the World Listening Project, founder of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and president of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology. His writing has been published in Musicworks, Leonardo Music Journal, and eContact! Leonardson is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2002, 2006), and teaches in Sound and Contemporary Practices at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 
As an improvising musician and soundartist, Leonardson performs in numerous ad hoc music groupings with artists from diverse aesthetic backgrounds; among them, Michael Zerang, Hamid Drake, Steve Barsotti, Neil Feather, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carol Genetti, Guillermo Gregorio, Ignaz Schick, and Birgit Uhler. In the music group Auris with Christopher Preissing and Julia Miller. With Canadian sound-radio artist Anna Friz, Leonardson toured through the eastern US and created works for broadcast on Kunstradio, Vienna and Deutschlandradio, Berlin. 

the DIALogues #2

Featured Greg Allen conversing with TJ Jagodowski with sonic underbed mixed live by Lou Mallozzi and Sam Wagster.

Greg Allen (left side) is the Founder of The Neo-Futurists and creator of over 50 productions including the legendary "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes)" which has been running every week in Chicago since 1988 and in New York since 2004.  His plays for The Neo-Futurists include "The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen", "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious", "H20", "A Child's History of Bombing", "Boxing Joseph Cornell", and "Crime and Punishment: a (mis)Guided Environmental Tour with Literary Pretensions".  His production of all 6 hours and 9 acts of "Strange Interlude" inspired hecklers and instant standing ovations at the Goodman Theater's Eugene O'Neill festival last year.  He recently remounted "The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett As Found In An Envelope (partially burned) In A Dustbin In Paris Labeled "Never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!"" at Steppenwolf this summer and is ready to tour it again.  He is restaging "K.", his award-winning adaptation of Kafka's "The Trial", this fall for The Hypocrites.  A proud graduate of Oberlin College, Greg teaches performance and playwriting at the University of Chicago and Depaul Theatre School, as well as residencies in Neo-Futurism at universities and theater programs all over the world.

TJ Jagodowski (right side) been improvising in Chicago for quite a bit –– with The Second City (for a time under the direction of Dexter Bullard) IO, and of course, as half of the well-known duo of TJ & Dave. Film appearances include Stranger Than Fiction, The Ice Harvest, and No Sleep Til Madison.  He is truly jazzed to be doing this tonight.

Lou Mallozzi is a sound artist who makes sound installations, performances, works for CD and broadcast, improvised music, sound design for cinema and media installations, drawings, visual installations, and other projects. He regularly collaborates with other artists and musicians – past (and present and hopefully future) collaborators have included Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Hal Rammel, Gustavo Matamoros, Charlotte Hug, Michael Vorfeld, Antonia Contro, Maurizio Pellegrin, Sandra Binion, Isa Wiss, Carlos Zingaro Alves, Guillermo Gregorio, Birgit Uhler, Mark Dresser, Frances-Marie Uitti, George Lewis, 48 Nord, and many others. He has received grants and residencies to pursue his work, including four Illinois Arts Council fellowships, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center in Italy, Artist-in-Residence positions at Harvestworks New York and Spritzenhaus Hamburg, and several faculty grants and residencies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mallozzi is co-founder and executive director of Experimental Sound Studio, a nonprofit sonic arts organization in Chicago, and he is on the faculty of The Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sam Wagster is a Chicago-based musician and composer who has written music for numerous film,  theater, and commercial projects, including an original score for “A Thing as Big as the Ocean” (which received the IFP Finishing Funds Grant in 2009), original scores for “Air Tact Light” and “Discarded  Landscape” by playwright Brian Torrey Scott, and an original score for a forthcoming documentary on clothing designer Yohji Yamamoto.   He also plays guitar and pedal steel in Fruit Bats (Sub Pop Records)  who released their fourth studio record “The Ruminant Band” in 2009,  followed by extensive touring in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.  Originally from Dallas, Sam grew up playing in local underground bands and clubs as well as working on video and theater projects in school and with friends.   While studying at Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, he began to do live and recorded music for various plays and short-films, as well as original sound-design for the Kitchen Dog Theater, for which he received a Leon Rabin Award Nomination.   In 2001, Sam moved to Chicago to further explore music and theater and began working with Scott on productions for Performing Arts Chicago and the Curious Theater Branch’s Rhinoceros Festival.   He also began collaborating with, and providing accompaniment for, a number of Chicago songwriters and musicians including: Ross Cashiola and Hotel Brotherhood, Jeff Harms, Emmett Kelley (The Cairo Gang), Azita Youseffi, LeRoy Bach, Marvin Tate, Doug McCombs and John Herndon (Tortoise), Jim Dorling (Town & Country), Dan Mohr, and Jim Becker (Califone) among others.    He is also a member  of the improvisational drone collective G L E A M I N G, often playing electric bass or steel guitar.  For Sam, this Fall/Winter will include more touring with Fruit Bats, work on a new record, and continuing collaborations in Chicago.

the DIALogues #3

Featured David Isaacson conversing with Tif Bullard with sonic underbed mixed live byEric Leonardson.

David Issacson: The Chicago Reader once said, "Give Noam Chomsky a speedball, a sense of humor, and a penchant for the absurd and you'd have David Isaacson." He is a founding member of Theater Oobleck, for which he has written fifteen plays, including "Letter Purloined," "Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast," "the Making of Freud," and "Casanova Takes a Bath." He has appeared in over thirty Oobleck shows, most recently as Casanova in "Casanova Takes a Bathe," as Saul Bellow ini Jeff Dorchen's "Strauss at Midnight," and improv-ing as John Wilkes Booth, Marie Curie, and Genghis Khan in "6x6" at Links Hall. He has also performed with the Curious Theater Branch, Red moon, the Splinter Group, Theater for the Age of Gold, the Magpies, and, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, The Brecht Company and The Performance Network. He has also been featured on Public Radio International's "This American Life," and is in the upcoming "The Last Days of British Honduras," a film by Catherine Sullivan and Farhad Sharmini.

Tif Bullard is a Chicago-based performance artist dedicated to process-oriented theatrical research and creation. Her work examines the way sound, image, media, clothing and context create codes that infiltrate and control the body in unnatural and untruthful ways of being. She explores this interest by using her body and identity to sample from resources found outside her self. her solo and collaborative performance work has appeared throughout Chicago at Links Hall (Detail of Double Escapement, Surround, 1400 of anything, Caption: Decoded, and echo chamber, MCA (Periphery with Plasticene,) Looptopia (Caption: Decoded,) Performing Arts Chicago's PAC/edge Festival (AirTactLight with Brian Torrey Scott and DCiscarded Landscape with Weather Talking,) Rinoceros Frestival (Decline of Ballooning with Brian Torrey Scott and echo chamber,) Chicago Artists Month, Chicago Humanities Festival, Sonotheque, Heart of Gold, The Artistic Home, En3my Gallery, The Reconstruction Room, SAIC New Blood Performance Festiva, Betty Rymer Gallery, and The Sullivan Galleries, as well as in New York City at the Joyce SoHo for the New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Festival. In 2009, she received her MFA in Performance at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a recipient of the James Nelson Illinois Arts Council Individual Aftist Fellowship. Tife was a Fall/Winter 2009-2010 Link UP Residency Artist at Links Hall where she premiered her solo work, Detail of Double Escapement. Her collaborative performance, FEEDBACK (with Michael Alaniz Macias and Marissa McKown) opens at Links Hall December 3-5, 2010. Visit www.tifbullard.com

Eric Leonardson is a Chicago-based composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor, improviser, visual artist, and educator. He has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and micro-tones. Leoardson is a sound designer and composer in Plasticene, the Executive Director of the World Listening Project, founder of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and president of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology. His writing has been published in Musicworks, Leonardo Music Journal, and eContact! Leonardson is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2002, 2006), and teaches in SOund and Contemporary Practices at tThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As an improvising musician and soundartist, Leonardson performs in numerous ad hoc music groupings with artists from diverse aesthetic backgrouds; among them, Michael Zerany, Hamid Drake, Steve Barsotti, Neil Feather, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carol Genetti, Guillermo Gregorio, Ignaz Schick, and Birgit Uhler. In the music group Auris with Christopher Preissing and Julia Miller. With Canadian sound-radio artist Anna Friz, Leonardson toured through the eastern US and created works for broadcast on Kunstradio, Vienna, and Deutchlandradio, Berlin.

the DIALogues #4

Featured Tim O'Mally conversing with Christopher Piatt with sonic underbed mixed live by Lou Mallozzi

Tim O'Malley (left) is an alumnus of The Second City Resident Company where he wrote and performed in 5 original revues in the early nineties.  Tim teaches improvisation at The Second City Training Center and performs with his sober comedy troupe Burning Desires, monthly at The Playground.  O'Malley's original play “Godshow” ran for four years to sold out audiences. Godshow gathered critical acclaim all over Chicago.  Lately Tim has been producing shows at The Beverly Arts Center bringing a variety of young comedy talent to the south side stage. He has been sitting in with seasoned veteran improvisers including Susan Messing among others. He can be seen in the films: Return to Me, Bad Meat, Shift, and Black Days.

Christopher Piatt (right)  Christopher Piatt is the creator and host of the Paper Machete, a weekly "live magazine" and free theater event that features comedians, journalists and storytellers talking about current events, pop culture and American manners. From 2005-2009, he served as Time Out Chicago's theater editor. He's also written for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine and 848. As a spoken word performer, he has appeared in Dollar Store, Write Club and Dave Awl's The Partly Dave Show. For more of his work as an editor, writer and public speaker, check out http://thepapermacheteshow.com/

the DIALogues #5

Featured Michael Shannon conversing with Susan Messing with sonic underbed mixed live by Lou Mallozzi

Michael Shannon (left) is an award-winning Chicago actor of international renown for roles in film and on stage.  Michael is a long-time ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre where he has appeared in numerous plays including the Jeff Nominated Mistakes Were Made.  He has acted at Steppenwolf, Northlight and Next Theatre where he originated the role of Chris Smith in Tracy Letts' international hit Killer Joe.  In New York, Michael has acted at Barrow Street Theater, Rattlestick, and at The Public.  Michael's film work is a staggering list of projects and directors including, Cecil B DeMented (John Waters) Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe) Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay) 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson),  World Trade Center (Oliver Stone), Bug (William Friedkin), Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes) for which he earned an Oscar Nomination, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call (Werner Herzog) and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) among many others.  He is co-starring in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (Martin Scorsese) as Van Alden, an agent with the Treasury Department on  mission to contain bootlegging during Prohibition.

Susan Messing (right) a NJ native and graduate of Northwestern University’s Theatre School, is an alumna of the iO, Second City’s Mainstage, and  a founding member of Chicago’s infamous Annoyance Theatre.  She continues to teach and perform improvisational comedy @ iO, The Annoyance, Second City, and is an adjunct instructor for DePaul University.  Her standup act with her puppet, Jolly, was featured at the HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, and on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and NBC’s Late Fridays, and her most impressive bit movie role was as a bad stripper in a halo brace in Let’s Go to Prison!  Susan has been an improviser and comedian for over twenty four years.  Nice things said about Susan include Chicago Magazine calling her “Funniest Woman in Chicago,” Chicago Reader naming her “Best Improviser” and recipient of CIF 2010 “Improviser of the Year.” You can see her fuck around in her critically-acclaimed show, Messing with a Friend, every Thursday @ The Annoyance, now in its 5th year.

the DIALogues #6

Featured Shanésia Davis conversing with David Pasquesi with sonic underbed mixed live bySam Wagster

Shanésia Davis (left) - formerly Shane’Williams - is excited to be a part of the DIALogues series. Her most recent credits include: The Glass Menagerie/Amanda (Steppenwolf.) Other Chicago credits include: Cymbeline/Queen (Chicago Shakespeare) Theatre Queen, Permanent Collection/Kanika, BEE-LUTHER-HATCHEE/Shelita, My Other Heart/Cara (Northlight), One Arm/ girl on yacht, Our Lady of 121st St./Inez(Steppenwolf),Drowning Crow/Hannah, Black Starline/Amy Jacques, Ties That Bind /Watermelon Rinds/Lottie, Spunk, The Visit, From The Mississippi Delta/Woman 3,(Goodman), Fuente Ovejuna/Pascuala, Mystery Cycle: Passion/Creation/V. Mary, Othello/Bianca (Court) among others. Regional credits include: The Syringa Tree/ Salamina, A Raisin in The Sun/Ruth (Kansas City Repertory), Intimate Apparel/ Esther (Centerstage Baltimore, SouthCoast Repertory), Hamlet/Ophelia, Goodnight Desdemona Good Morning Juliet/Desdemona (San Diego Repertory), Spunk/Missy May (Penumbra) among others. Television credits include: Early Edition(CBS), Missing Persons (ABC), Gabriel’s Fire (ABC, pilot), Making a Case For Murder: The Howard Beach Story(NBC). Film credits include: Damaged Goods, Morning Due(Cannes Film Festival), The Weatherman, Uncle Nino, Life Sentence, Chicago Cab, With Honors. Ms. Davis’ voiceover and commercial credit includes: Sears, Pampers, Charmin, Allstate, St. Vincent’s Hospital, McDonald’s, Illinois Lottery, Gain, Western Union, Early Edition among others. Ms. Davis is adjunct faculty at The Theatre School of DePaul University.

David Pasquesi (right) is an improviser and alumnus of The Second City, David worked at Steppenwolf in Glengarry, Glen Ross and The Dazzle as well as several other theaters in Chicago, including the Goodman, Northlight, Victory Gardens, and Lookingglass. Television credits include FACTORY, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Strangers with Candy. David can be seen in many films including: Angels and Demons, Year One, Employee of the Month, Father of the Bride, Groundhog Day, Ice Harvest, Strangers with Candy and Someone to Eat Cheese With and Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, a documentary about TJ and Dave, an improvisation two-man show, of which David is a part. roughly one half. He is pleased as punch to be working with Mr. Bullard.

the DIALogues #7

Featured Carolyn Hoerdemann conversing with Stephanie Shaw with sonic underbed by Sam Wagster

Carolyn Hoerdemann was a member of the European Repertory Company for twelve years, favorite roles at ERC include Clytemnestra, Glactia in Scenes from An Execution, Madame de St. Fond in Madame DeSade, and many Russians; in Zoyka’s Apt, Uncle Vanya, Ivanov, The Duel, and Black Milk. Carolyn has a BFA from DePaul and an MAAE from The School of the Art Institute, she teaches
Performance at DePaul University. She is a member of Collaboraction Theatre Company where she has performed in two original devised pieces at Sketchbook 9 and 10, where she enjoyed collaborating with choreographer Atalee Judy and musician and songwriter Kennedy Greenrod. She can be seen in Scorched at the Silk Road Theatre this
fall. Carolyn likes to talk on the phone with strangers.

Stephanie Shaw is a founding member of the solo performance
ensemble BoyGirlBoyGirl, performing original works based on found texts. She has performed her own work at such venues as The Paper Machete, The Poetry Center of Chicago, Cabaret Oobleck, Live Bait Theater, The New York Fringe Festival, The Partly Dave Show, The Dollar Store, The Estrogen Fest, The Encyclopedia Show and The Neo-Futurarium. She was an ensemble member with the Neo-Futurists for four years, writing and performing regularly in Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. Before that, she was a theater critic for The Chicago Reader. Before that, she was an actor around town. She has twice been the recipient of the 1st place award in Experimental Fiction from the Columbia University Scholastic Press and her short story “Afterbirth” appears in “Interfictions 2,” an anthology of interstitial writing published by Small Beer Press/Interstitial Arts Foundation. She is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia College Chicago where she teaches Solo Performance and Musical Theater, among other things.

the DIALogues #8

Featured Robyn Okrant conversing with Mick Napier with sonic underbed by Eric Leonardson

Robyn Okrant (right) is a writer, director, performer, and yoga teacher. She has appeared on the Today Show, CNBC’s The Oprah Effect, The Bonnie Hunt Show, Fox and Friends, The Joy Behar Show, and NPR’s All Things Considered. She’s also been featured in the New
York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago SunTimes and has been seen in Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, USAToday.com, Salon.com, and The Huffi ngton Post. Robyn is the author of LIVING OPRAH: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk (Center Street, 2010) and co-creator/writer of Ready, Set...Wife! (www.readysetwife.com). Learn more about her at www.robynokrant.com.

Mick Napier (left) is the founder and Artistic Director of The Annoyance. He came to Chicago in 1987 after studying at Indiana University and with a group of friends, created The Annoyance’s first show Splatter Theater. Following the success of Splatter, Mick directed Coed Prison Sluts, (still Chicago’s longest running musical) and The Annoyance was on its way. Mick is a renowned teacher of improvisation and has taught classes and workshops all over the world. Mick has also appeared as an actor in numerous television and
films including The Ice Harvest, Let’s Go to Prison, Second City’s Next Comedy Legend, Exit 57 and Talent (directed by former ensemble member Eric Hoffman). Mick has also directed many shows outside of the Annoyance, including David Sedaris’ Obie Award winning One Woman Shoe, more than 15 Second City revues, Martin Short & Friends, and Jeff Garlin’s one-man show I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. He has directed more than 15 Second City productions including the award winning Paradigm Lost, the premier production at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, and the 45th Anniversary show Red Scare. In fall 2009, Mick directed the 50th Anniversary show for The Second City.