International Puppet Acts and Artists Coming to Chicago in 2017

The Neo-Futurists present Vincent De Rooij and The Neo-Futurist Ensemble in Future Crash: a collision of short work by Vincent de Rooij and The Neo-Futurists, at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave.

Performances are Thursday, Jan. 26 - Saturday Jan. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25; $10 student/senior.

For tickets and more information, http://www.chicagopuppetfest.org/event/neo-futurists/. The performance runs 70 minutes and is recommended for ages 14 years old and older.

Future Crash collides Vincent de Rooij, puppeteer of site-specific performances and magician of the inanimate object, with The Neo-Futurists, purveyors of the first-person play and destroyers of the fourth wall. Traveling from the Netherlands, de Rooij will lead an ensemble in interdisciplinary collaboration, guiding the audience through a solar system of short work hidden throughout the Neo-Futurarium.

Vincent de Rooij
Vincent de Rooij is an autodidact independent theatre maker, actor, director, designer, visual artist and musician. He was a part of the theatre group Dogtroep, co-creating site-specific performances all over the world. As a freelance artist, de Rooij creates, directs and performs using the visual power of theater, inspired by a wide range of subjects, locations, materials, machines and people. vincentderooij.nl

The Neo-Futurists
The Neo-Futurists are a collective of wildly productive writer-director-performers who are committed to creating immediate, non-illusory, irreproducible events at affordable prices. From humble beginnings as the first late-night theater production in Chicago, The Neo-Futurists have grown to become one of the most highly regarded experimental theater companies in America. neofuturists.org

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

The biannual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, in the wake of its runaway success in its inaugural outing in 2015, returns to the Windy City for its second outing boasting even more international puppet acts and artists, January 19-29, 2017. The inaugural festival was established in 2015 by Chicago master puppeteer Blair Thomas to celebrate and cultivate Chicago's growing reputation as a leader in the renaissance of the art of puppetry.

The 2017 coalition of Puppet Festival presenting partners, each participating in next year's festival by presenting local, national and international puppet artists and companies that sync up with their own programming, include (at press time) Adventure Stage Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, Beverly Arts Center, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College, Chicago Children's Theatre, the Chicago Park District, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, The House Theatre of Chicago, the League of Chicago Theatres, Links Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Neo-Futurists, the University of Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and the University of Chicago's Richard and Mary L. Grey Center for Arts and Inquiry.

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