Cabinet of Curiosity to Present OUT LOUD! OUT SPOKEN!

Chicago spectacle event enterprise Cabinet of Curiosity will present Out Loud! Out Spoken!, Chicago’s first human-powered intimate spectacle, Sunday, October 1 from 3 to 6 p.m.

Out Loud! Out Spoken! will be presented at Vertiport Chicago, 1339 S. Wood St., inside a huge heliport hangar in Pilsen. Residents of Pilsen’s 60018 zip code are invited to experience Out Loud! Out Spoken! for free. $20 tickets are on sale now for the general public at cocechicago.com.

This family-friendly, one-day-only civic event is happening rain or shine, so be the first to experience Cabinet’s radically new, environmentally sound and spiritually potent public ritual. You’ll witness:

Poetry workshops with instructors led by Anya Zamiar and engineering workshops led by artists from the School of the Art Institute.

Chicago Printmakers Collaborative displaying their large panoramic machines while poets narrate three-to-five-minute intimate poems. Participating artists include Deb Lader, Kass Copeland and Mike Coon.

Performers hand cranking giant panoramic visual stories created by local painters, set to poetry written by students from Benito Juarez High and other nearby schools.

Recumbent bicycle-powered record players.

Typewriter stations for guests to write personal poems. Bonus: Cabinet will even mail those poems for its guests!

Artists illuminated by candlelight while operating ingenious mechanical devices.

The voices of professional writers, emerging artists, and untrained poets reflecting publicly about the day’s themes of hope and endurance.

The climactic moment, when artists pedal  bicycles and one arm machine to power audio amplification as poets read their works on a staircase 15 feet above the crowd. 

Out Loud! Out Spoken! is devised by Cabinet of Curiosity Artistic Director Frank Maugeri, Community Liaison Brandon Boler, and members of Cabinet’s community collective and board of directors. The event embraces the company's primary mission: 

Empower and pay local community members to make art and ritual.

Create original interactive rituals that are meaningful and reflect the community's ambitions and needs.

Encourage healthy living, comfortable exercise, confident authorship and dynamic expression

Use highly engineered items to ignite the public's curiosity and serve as instruction in science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Focus on the theme of Hope and stories of Redemption.

Poets include Siah Berlatsky, Big Mama, Jenny Bienemann, Chelsea Bonner, Jack Dwyer, Rachel Johnson, Justus Pugh, Dion Randle, Angel Rivas, Elisabeth Seonwoo, Eddie Skinner, Vira Waegel, Kay Williams, Alexis Willis, Anya Zamiar and day of audience members.

Partners for Out Loud! Out Spoken! include the Chicago Humanities Festival, Chicago Park District, Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, School of the Art Institute, Slow & Low: Chicago Low Rider Festival, Streets Calling, Skinner West Elementary School, Redline Services and Working Bikes. 

“We organized these partners to design and execute a unique, human, and audience-powered spectacle, highlighting personal expression and alternative energy sources,” said Maugeri. “We are combining engineering, landscape installation, exercise, and personal and public expression to create an unforgettable civic ritual created for and by Chicagoans. Don’t miss it.”

For 25 years, Maugeri was the Producing Artistic Director of Redmoon Theater, where he led celebratory events indoors and outdoors for President Obama, the City of Chicago, the Chicago Park District, multiple major museums including the Field Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Intuit Gallery, Spertus Museum, along with events in 35 wards of Chicago, three Mayors, several other cities and Europe. 

After Redmoon's demise, Maugeri launched a new collective called Cabinet of Curiosity. In six years, they have cultivated new relationships with the Art West (North Lawndale), Theatre Y (North Lawndale), Sheila McNary and The Homan Square Community Center (Homan Square), ChiBuck (Englewood), Shedd Aquarium, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago Children's Theatre, the University of Chicago, Indiana State University, the Clayco Foundation and more to design and execute transcendent, original ceremonies and rituals in unexpected and unused spaces.

For more, visit cocechicago.com, or follow the company on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

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