The Neo-Futurists Present Burning Bluebeard, Opens 11/19

Celebrate Christmas with a tragic holiday tale turned hauntingly beautiful homage to life, inspired by the true story of the Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903. Burning Bluebeard, opens Saturday, November 19, 2011 at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland. Burning Bluebeard closes on December 30, the 118th anniversary of the fateful Iroquois fire.

Singed clown performers recount the horrific event where 600 lives were lost as the new Chicago loop theatre caught fire during a matinee performance of Mr. Bluebeard, a Christmas pantomime. Personal stories and touching remembrance are met with silliness, gift giving and dance as the performers seek to end their nightmare through a successful completion of their show. Day by day, show by show, these hopeful performers recreate the fateful night, joyfully embracing the impossible task of changing the inevitable. Sadly, each night, their efforts end in fiery death. How hard will you fight for your happy ending?

Creator, Jay Torrence, states, "History doesn't blame the performers for the accident. Courts have never convicted them. Burning Bluebeard explores how the performers face the guilt of having caused this tragedy, just through their presence on the stage and their inability to save their audience. This is the story of an apology from a group of artists to their audience for causing horrific grief in an attempt at making something beautiful."

Jay Torrence (Creator) is a Neo-Futurist ensemble member since 2002 where he writes and performs regularly in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and where he wrote, co-directed and performed in Roustabout: The Great Circus Train Wreck (awarded Outstanding New Work 2007 and Outstanding Production 2007). He played Quasimodo in Redmoon Theatre's Hunchback (2008). Previous Neo-Futurist performance/writer credits include: Daredevils, Daredevil's Hamlet, Picked Up and Windmilled. Torrence recently finished his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and his writing won first place in the 2009 Prairie Fire Non-Fiction Contest and was nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award and was also a finalist in the 2011 Western Magazine Awards. His essay "Buckshot" recently won the 2011 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Non Fiction and will appear in the Bellingham Review spring of 2012.

Halena Kays (Director) is the artistic director of The Hypocrites theater company. She is the co-founder and former artistic director of Barrel of Monkeys where she created and directed the majority of their public performances including their critically acclaimed long-running show: That's Weird, Grandma, called "the best reason to live in Chicago on a Monday night" by Time Out. She is a Northwestern and UT-Austin grad and a former member of the Big Apple Circus Clown Care unit. For The Neo-Futurists she co-created and directed Daredevils and Daredevils Hamlet as well as the premiere of the sight specific extravaganza, Fake Lake. Halena is equally proud to have worked with many other respectable and disreputable theater companies in Chicago over the years; she was recently on stage in Oedipus, Mud and 4.48 Psychosis (The Hypocrites), The Kid Thing (About Face/Chicago Dramatists),The Children's Hour (Timeline), The Golden Truffle (Redmoon), and Fair Use and Theatrical Essays (Steppenwolf).

Performers include: Anthony Courser who has worked with Redmoon, The Actor's Gym, Sprung, Dell' Arte International School for Physical Theatre and the Institute of Canadian Clown; Dean Evans who is a alumni ensemble member of The Neo-Futurists and is also the Artistic Director of Chicago Physical Theatre and Chi-town Clown, Molly Plunk who has performed with the Gift, Redmoon, Collaboraction and Silent Theatre Company; Leah Urszendowski who is a new member of The Neo-Futurists and has performed with 500 Clown, Building Stage, Redmoon, UMO, and Broadway Bound Children's Theatre; Ryan Walters who is the Artistic Director of The Neo-Futurists and was a creator and performer in Daredevils, Daredevil's Hamlet, and Picked Up and Jay Torrence.

The Burning Bluebeard staff includes: Dan Broberg (Set Design), Maggie Fullilove-Nugent (Lighting Design and Production Management), Mike Tutaj (Sound Design), Lizzie Bracken (Costume Design) and MeLinda Evans (Technician).

THE NEO-FUTURISTS
The Neo-Futurists, performers of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind and creators of over 60 other original, full-length productions, are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers who create immediate, non-illusory, interactive and head-slappingly affordable performances. Neither "improv" nor a "comedy troupe," the short works presented in Too Much Light... are plays, rather than "sketches." All work is scripted by the ensemble who individually write new plays every week which reflect our immediate lives and the world around us.

The Neo-Futurists are partially supported by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, Alphawood Foundation, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation,and a CityArts 2 grant.