5th Annual PARAGON Play Fest Returns To Otherworld Theatre

Otherworld Theatre presents the fifth annual PARAGON Play Fest, the world's largest Science Fiction and Fantasy genre play festival November 9-10, 2019. PARAGON Play Fest features 40 Science-Fiction and Fantasy plays performed over 2 days. Collaborating with hundreds of Theatre Artists, locally and internationally to increase exposure for an underserved theatre genre, PARAGON Play Fest has become an annual festival and a unique part of Chicago's diverse cultural landscape. Curated by Otherworld Theatre Company's Literary Manager Elliott Sowards and Artistic Director, Tiffany Keane Schaefer for the fifth year running. The 40 plays chosen are a small sample of over 600 submissions from 8 different countries in 3 different continents!. Weekend and Day Pass Tickets are on sale now at www.otherworldtheatre.org

Otherworld Theatre Company's Literary Manager Elliott Sowards says of the PARAGON Play Fest: "We created PARAGON out of necessity six years ago. I was trying to do my job as the literary manager of Otherworld, but there were virtually no published plays in the genre of Sci-Fi and Fantasy and we needed scripts and relationships with writers who were brave enough to write those kinds of scripts. PARAGON has since become Otherworld's greatest annual exposure to the Chicago theatre community. Hundreds of actors, directors, writers and patrons now know that Science Fiction and Fantasy stories can be told on stage, because they experienced it first-hand at PARAGON. Most of the playwrights, actors and directors featured in our mainstage productions at Otherworld have participated in PARAGON at one point in time. Many of the PARAGON plays have since been published and the host-building, in which we performed PARAGON, for the first 3 years of the festival, is now our very own theater. The plan is working, and PARAGON has been and continues to be a very powerful instrument in the building of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Theatre genre."

Plays written by Chicago playwrights include 47249 (Reina Hardy), Memory Foam (Anthony Targan), Puppies in Space (John Enright), The Sun and the Moon and Salena (Paul Pasulka), & Big Bang Tango (John Weagly).

Domestic plays include Memento Mori (Jonathan Cook), Capernicus: Attorney to the Stars (Justin Pope), The President is a Vampire (Sean Nixon), Bot Lives Matter (L. Zephyr), A Game to Fit Them All (Ayal Wolf), Caveman Principle (Max Gill), Seeds (Scott Mullen), Auntie Hazelwood (Rachel Hunt), Sir Theo and the Swamp Boy (Emily Hageman), A Logical Seduction (Bethany Dickens), Three Two One (Francesca Pazniokas), Redshirt (Robert O'Connell), What's Held Back (Judy Klass), Unit LLT (Eli Effinger-Weintraub), Monsters Beyond the Midnight Zone (Lindsay Partain), Joyland (Karen Saari), All That We See or Seem (Jonathan Wickremasinghe-Kuhn), Charlie (Beth Polsky), Origin Story (Kyle Borcz), Bite Me (Pete Mergel), Exactly What You Would Do (Scotto Moore), Gus (Robin Baron), Hal and His Atomic Ray Gun (Straton Rushing), Future is F***** (Adrienne Dawes), The Centenarians (Lavinia Roberts), Artificial (Christopher Morse), The Mudget Lattice (Rob Walker), A Faint Rumor of Existence (Chuck Smith), Blood, Hate and Other Gruesome Things (Seph McAndrew), A Taste of the Future (Allie Costa), The Light Princess (Greg Cummings), Home (Ellen K. Graham), & I'd Follow You Anywhere: A Solaris Story (Scott Sickles).

International plays include A Chill in My Bones (Angela Cerrito), & One Day (Andrew Cooper).

Ticket prices for PARAGON Play Fest are $10 per block, $20 for a single day pass, or $30 for a full weekend pass. Tickets may be purchased at the door, or by visiting www.OtherworldTheatre.org. All performances take place at Otherworld Theatre: 3914 N Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60613. Street parking is available and Otherworld Theatre is ADA and CTA accessible by Red Line Sheridan/ #22 Clark Bus and #9 Ashland bus.

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