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August 26 - September 26
Storefront Theater
It was a dark and stormy night in a house by the lake, when Mary Shelley famously took up her host Lord Byron’s challenge to write a terrifying story and created Frankenstein, one of the most famous novels in the Western canon. Witty, salacious, and often melodramatic, Emily Dendinger’s world premiere play directed by Jessica Hutchinson depicts the larger than life Romantic figures as the normal teenagers they were – overeducated, egotistical, and ready to change the world.
View photos by John W. Sisson, Jr.
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XIII Pocket presents LACK THEREOF
XIII Pocket entertained a crowd of about 40 people last night in the DCA Studio Theater with three excerpts from plays as part of Lack Thereof: Development Series. See below for some photos from the evening’s performance showcase.
The event was presented as a part of INCUBATOR, a series designed to support the creation of new work by emerging Chicago theater companies. Utilizing Chicago DCA Theater space and resources, participants explore new projects, develop and refine styles, and share their process with the public during a special showcase event.
Don’t miss the next INCUBATOR series showcase for Strange Tree Group on Monday, September 27 at 7:30pm.
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Judith Cross/Carin Silkaitis and Huxley Cross/Chip Davis reading from The (method) Displaced
Preparing for the Presentation
by Jeff Phillips, playwright for Bosto script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator
The growth in each piece that has taken place over the course of our new play workshop Lack Thereof has been quite exciting. And each entered into the workshop at a different stage in development. Cash had been first put down on paper by Stephen Louis Grush in 2003. The Displaced was first conceived in 2005 by Anthony Nikolchev. My play, Bosto, is the baby of the group, it was only last February that I first typed it out. Bosto in its raw form came out fairly quickly for me. Some stored up feelings and ideas for characters kind of spewed forth one afternoon, in one sitting, I had the first draft of Bosto completed at 42 pages. From that point I let it sit in drawer while I focused on wrapping up other writing projects and began to tinker with it as we rolled into July, mostly cleaning up thoughts, making it a little less “raw” for further examination. I entered August with the initial intention of reworking dialogue and fleshing out the ending.
Technology in Bosto
by Jeff Phillips, playwright for Bosto script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator
In developing Bosto the offstage sounds are becoming huge to the script, at points serving as some of the major events to drive the story. Which is certainly challenging. The way the offstage voices, the eavesdropped conflict from the floors below are taken on a misshapen texture in the latest re-write. Originally they came through clear as day, but I have since worked them to come through diluted, creating more confusion in the character, and more mystery to the spectator. So the art of the sound design has become pivotal, as the way it is contorted as though it is really resounding through intricate ductwork, is almost an extension of the set design. As well I have developed a television show within the staging, as another background noise which parallels some of the themes of the on stage action. Certainly there will be a lot of technical cues in the execution of the play. In some ways, I feel a bit of a cop out relying so much on the external forces to move the piece a long, like a warped little deus ex machina, but at the same time, given the perspective of the characters Melbourne and Barry, and the world they are trying to understand on a “micro” level as well as “macro” it is highly important to me to keep it and develop it to the most effective specificity. It’s easy as a playwright to jump ahead and think about staging, but as I pondered in a previous post, at what point to stop worrying about how to pull the script off, and just focus on the story.
Photo blog
by Paige Smith, XIII Pocket company member and resident photographer
Cash reading L-R Chip Davis, Jeff Philips, Stephen Louis Grush, Caitlin McGlone, Mark Minton, Heath Cordts
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The (Method) Displaced reading from L-R Jacob Lorenz, Carin Silkaitis, Jeff Philips
Director of New Works Caitlin McGlone
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