Curious Theatre Branch and BeauTown Cabaret bring together more than 20 of Chicago fringe theatre’s best writers, directors and performers for This Is Not a Churchill, four short plays paying homage to playwright Caryl Churchill. This funny, experimental and surprising collection of new works will be presented Fridays and Saturday at 8 pm from February 3 – 25, 2023 at Facility Theatre, 1138 N. California Ave. in Chicago. Tickets ($15 or pay-what-you-can) are now on sale through Brown Paper Tickets at m.bpt.me/event/5697525.
This Is Not a Churchill is a response to Caryl Churchil’s 1999 experimental play This is a Chair, in which heavy topical news bulletins are each followed by a scene that has that has nothing to with the news announcement. Chicago playwrights Beau O’Reilly, Jayita Bhattacharya and Ira Murfin, Chris Bower and Chris Zdenek followed Churchill’s lead and created four original works that riff on the play’s titular disconnections and the troubling, hilarious and inexplicable nature of our co-existences.
The full line-up includes:
The Umbrella Disguise - written by Beau O’Reilly, directed by Chris Bower
(Not) What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – written by Jayita Bhattacharya and Ira Murfin, directed by Jeffrey Bivens
How To Fix Your Fatigue (Do This Everyday) – written and directed by Chris Bower
This Is Not a Play by Caryll Churchill, Titled This Is a Chair – written and directed by Chris Zdenek
The cast includes Marz Allswede, Jim Christensen, Candace Lee Conner, Jake Flum, Kristin Garrison, Kristy Lockhart, Barry Lohman, Rauly Luna, Shaun Rosten, Andrew Schoen, Kevin Sparrow, Hannah Tymosko, Vicki Walden, Maggie Ward and Penny Lous Zimmerman.
Performance Schedule:
- Friday, February 3 at 8 pm
- Saturday, February 4 at 8 pm
- Friday, February 10 at 8 pm
- Saturday, February 11 at 8 pm
- Friday, February 17 at 8 pm
- Saturday, February 18 at 8 pm
- Friday, February 24 at 8 pm
- Saturday February 25 at 8 pm
Pictured (left to right) Vicki Walden, Kristin Garrison, Penny Lou Zimmerman and Barry Lohman in (Not) What We Talk About WhenWe Talk About Love, one of four short plays featured in Curious Theatre Branch’s This Is Not a Churchill. Photo by Jeffrey Bivens.
Curious Theatre Branch continues its over 30-year history of making new work for the Chicago theater.