Summer Inc
Past Summer Inc participants include:
Cabaret Vagabond
Caffeine Theatre
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre
Alscase-Lorraine
Babes With Blades
Big Tree Productions
Blank Line Collective
Gwydhar Enterprises
The Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials (LDS)
Opera Cri Dernier
Teatro Americano
The Shared Ensemble
Vintage Theater Collective
The Theater and Performance Studies department (TAPS) in collaboration with University Theater at The University of Chicago is very happy to announce their 2009 Summer Incubator collective. This summer residency program was developed four years ago to promote and develop the creation of new work through the provision of rehearsal facilities in addition to staff and technical support. Through two, 2-week residencies involving six Chicago arts organizations, we foster a synergetic laboratory environment, with the hope of summer work resulting in subsequent performance.
Rivendell Theatre, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre and Caffeine Theater are just a sampling of the diverse artist collection in residency at the 2009 Summer Inc. Series.
The groups selected this summer represent the city’s boldness in its artistic approaches. All of the new work developed reflects the University’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaborations. Many of the pieces developed already have performance dates set for the upcoming season, and what began as an experiment in experiments has become an anticipated event.
July 7th- July19th
- Teatro Americano – Meet Juan(ita) Doe
- Vintage Theater Collective – Misanthrope, or The Impossible Lovers
- Caffeine Theatre – Memory of a Sun
July 21st – August 2nd
- Cabaret Vagabond – Full Disclosure: An Evening of Solo Performances
- Rivendell Theatre Ensemble – Fresh Produce 2009: A Celebration of New Plays by Women
- Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre – Latin Fire
Resident Company Bios and Synopsis:
Teatro Americano
Teatro Americano is Latinos Progresando’s professional theatre company dedicated to exploring the issues affecting the immigrant community and diaspora. Teatro Americano focuses on ensemble devised and original works with social relevance that are largely produced for and by the community and often times localized in Little Village and Pilsen–two city neighborhoods with over 90 percent Latino populations. In June 2004, Latinos Progresando began working with a group of volunteers, leading discussions and soliciting impromptu readings of a Latino-authored play about immigration entitled La Victima. Since then, Teatro Americano has grown to include adult and youth ensemble members. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Ricardo Gamboa and Advocacy and Community Education Director, Melissa Gonzalez, Teatro Americano aspires to demonstrate how theatre can be utilized to allow communities and individuals address their larger social world on their terms and through collaboration for greater discourse and understanding toward empowerment. Current projects include the creation of two teatronovelas for New Routes to Community Health’s SALUD Project, the development of Meet Juan(ito) Doe, and the development of an untitled work developed in Tamaula, Mexico and Chicago, Illinois exploring immigration on both sides of the border with support from MacArthur Foundation’s Chicago International Connections Grant.
PROJECT: Meet Juan(ito) Doe
Meet Juan(ito) Doe is a Teatro Americano youth multi-media ensemble-devised production exploring how young people from Chicago’s sprawling Mexican immigrant community and diaspora navigate immigrant families, hip-hop and popular culture, and White-dominated Americanization in the construction of their individual and collective identities and social agency within the hyper reality and disconnect of the urban experience. Meet Juan(ito) Doe is a busboy, gangbanger, graffiti artist, undocumented student—Meet Juan(ito) Doe is you. Developed and directed by Ricardo Gamboa with Coya Paz and written by Ricardo Gamboa with the ensemble.
Vintage Theater Collective
Katy Collins and Rachel Jenison created the Vintage Theater Collective in March of 2008 here in Chicago. Vintage was created after both graduating from the University of Minnesota Guthrie BFA Acting Program. After both moving to Chicago, Katy and Rachel wanted to start doing plays that dialogue with vintage works while learning through them how to better live in our world today. Recently, they produced a successful production of Hedda Gabler at the Peter Jones Gallery this past February.
PROJECT: Misanthrope, or The Impossible Lovers
In this new adaptation of Moliere’s classic play, the action of the story takes place during a wild party, over the course of one long, drunken, difficult night. The misanthropic title character, Alceste, is at a fork in the road, unsure whether to break off his love affair with the notorious party-girl and social butterfly, Celimene, and leave society altogether. Vintage will endeavor to lift the veil off this masterpiece, and rip the false title ‘comedy of manners’ from its gutsy, sex-and-drugs-fueled, will-he-stay-or-will-he-go nature. As Alceste and Celimene search for some compromise that will save their relationship, they’re beset on all sides by well-meaning friends, potential lovers, sabotaging enemies, and their own unbending natures. Staged in-the-round with only four actors, this Misanthrope will fly by in 90 minutes without an intermission.
Caffeine Theatre
Caffeine Theatre, now in its fifth season, mines the poetic tradition to explore social questions. With language-intense, idea-driven performances, Caffeine explores the role of the artist in society, and the potential of art for social change—to reclaim theatre’s roots as a public forum to hone citizenry (as Anna Deavere Smith suggests, the continuation of the national dialogue). The poetic tradition laid the groundwork for us to become better through conversation, and we believe poetry and performance go hand in hand. Production history includes the recent rotating repertory of The Changeling and Tallgrass Gothic; the world premiere of Like the Moon Behind the Clouds; the sold-out Antigone Coffeehouse (a festival of new poetry, dance, and theatre responding to Antigone–a part of DePaul University’s citywide Year of Antigones); Brain Friel’s Translations; Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy; Eliot’s The Cocktail Party; and Silva, developed in part with student project funding from the University of Chicago.
PROJECT: Memory of a Sun
Memory of a Sun pays tribute to Russian poet Anna Akhmatova in poem, history, and poetic physical images, exploring also the human capacity for endurance and the human way of reconstructing memory. Through dance, movement, and language, and engaging even modern cognitive theory, Caffeine Theatre imagines a world as only Caffeine Theatre can, in the tradition of Caffeine past productions Sailing to Byzantium, Silva, Dona Rosita or the Language of Flowers, and The Antigone Coffeehouse.
Cabaret Vagabond
Cabaret Vagabond is a group of performance artists, musicians, writers and visual artists, dedicated to creating an atmosphere of experimentation and provocative entertainment. The cabaret’s aesthetic draws heavily on the European cabaret tradition of the early twentieth century, while remaining grounded in an American context. The cabaret’s motto: “Das ist Kunst!” (German: “That is Art!”), is a nod to the universality of art and the necessity of it in our everyday lives. You can hear this slogan raucously shouted out loud at a CabVag show near you. In addition to producing multi-disciplinary performance events, Cabaret Vagabond is also committed to personal development through performance and the fostering of a positive artistic community. The cabaret has produced seven shows since April of 2008, with an 8th show titled: Hobo Erectus: Intelligently Designed Kunst slated for June of 2009.
Cabaret Vagabond presents our core ensemble members at their best: storytelling, cooking, puppeteering and entertaining their way through an evening of variety performance. Each performer blends their own talents together to create a solo show or short play using material generated during the Summer INC residency as well as drawing on past cabaret performances. Highlights include a How-(not)To guide to Chicago dating, an exploration of the morality of inanimate objects, and well-crafted yarns about cigarette smuggling in Eastern Europe. Complimented by a photography installation and hosted by our Vagabond MC, FULL DISCLOSURE is an intimate look at who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going: real, raw, and irreverent cabaret!
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble
In 1908, 12.8% of the plays produced on New York Stages were written by women. In the 2008/2009 season, as it has been announced, the number of plays written by women on New York stages will amount to 12.6% of the total, even though those theater audiences are made up of 60% women.
Since our inception, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble has provided Chicago audiences with artistically challenging, thought-provoking plays that explore the female experience. Rivendell has emerged as a leader in new play development, a major port for new women writers, and an artistic home for women actors, directors, and designers. This spring, after fifteen years of nomadic existence, Rivendell is finally settling into a home – as the resident ensemble in a brand new theatre being built in the Edgewater neighborhood!
Over the course of the past fourteen years, Rivendell has produced five world premieres, fifteen regional premieres, received four Equity Wing Joseph Jefferson Awards and eight nominations for artistic excellence. Some notable productions include the critically acclaimed production of local playwright Anne McGravie’s WRENS, Richard Strand’s lyrical and haunting My Simple City, Sally Nemeth’s Holy Days, a moving tale of a family struggling through the Dust Bowl, the runaway hit Faulkner’s Bicycle by Heather McDonald, the darkly hilarious Be Aggressive by Annie Weisman, and the gender-bending Medieval comedy Silence by Moira Buffini.
Our current season has been especially stand out, beginning with our Jeff Recommended, critically acclaimed premiere of These Shining Lives which played to sold out houses in the dead of January and will be remounted at the prestigious Theatre on the Lake summer theater festival July 15th – 19th. We will present our annual developmental workshop for women playwrights July 22nd through August 2nd, Fresh Produce: A Celebration of New Plays by Women—which has just been selected for the University of Chicago’s “Summer, INC” retreat. And, of course, our current world premiere production of The Walls is playing now through June 20th in the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre as part of Steppenwolf’s Visiting Company Initiative. The Walls is a compelling exploration of women and madness devised by the ensemble in collaboration with award-winning playwright Lisa Dillman and directed by Megan Carney.
Rivendell is committed to soldiering through this difficult economic time and continuing providing women theatre artists with an advocate, an ally and an artistic home here in Chicago. For more information visit www.rivendelltheatre.net
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre (CRDT) is a company that has redefined the concept of a “performance ensemble.” By uniquely fusing contemporary dance, live music, and visual art together onstage, CRDT performances truly satisfy the senses. Each concert focuses on a new segment of society and a new era, reaching out to ethnically diverse audiences and communities, and expressing stories that span the diversity of American society. Cerqua Rivera is also dedicated to its outreach program through in-school presentations and the Cerqua Rivera Youth Ensemble, a group of local underserved high school students who train, rehearse, and perform with CRDT. The Ensemble was incorporated in 1998 by a trio of award-winning artists: composer Joe Cerqua, choreographer Wilfredo Rivera, and painter/muralist Matt Lamb. Currently, the company employs 40- 50 Chicago based artists per season. In 2001 the Ensemble was honored with two After Dark Awards for original choreography by Wilfredo Rivera and music composition by Joe Cerqua for its premiere of The American Plan. From the artwork laden backdrops to the soulful live melodies, Cerqua Rivera brings much more than dance to its audiences.
PROJECT: Latin Fire – The Trinity of Joanne
Alarmingly, Latino and African-American women and their unborn are the fastest growing populations infected with HIV. The prejudice towards HIV still exists in certain Latino populations and religious organizations, leaving these women isolated without any substantial means of survival or support. This piece will show how some of these women have overcome insurmountable odds and emerged as social activists and community leaders. The Trinity of Joanne is inspired by the true story of a local Latina, Joanne Montes. This piece will explore the emotional journey of denial, rejection, survival, redemption and triumph and features an original composition by Joe Cerqua, choreography by Dionna PridGeon, and new original murals by Matt Lamb.
