Lookingglass Theatre Announces UnGALA Going Gglamping Fundraiser

Lookingglass Theatre Company has announced its annual fundraiser, the unGALA: Going gglamping! The 2023 experience will take you back to your best summer camp memories - only this time as a gglamorous grownup! On Saturday, March 25, 2023, frolic with your fellow "forest creatures" for an evening of mirth, revelry, and stargazing. Only this Tony Award-winning theatre can curate an experiential night of gglamping with party games, gaiety, and engagement.

Join the Lookingglass Board, Ensemble Members, Artistic Associates, and guest artists in a progressive dinner party through the rooms of Chicago's iconic Blackstone Hotel, featuring themed performances along every stop of the route. Going gglamping will celebrate 35 years of Lookingglass by journeying through the core values of Collaboration, Invention and Transformation in inimitable Lookingglass style.

Collaboration

Guests will be camping out under the stars in the Collaboration Ballroom where Award-winning projection designer John Boesche will be mapping the ceiling with the wonders of the world in video form created by HMS media and Ensemble Member Phil Smith, and featuring the voices of Chicago's own Ana Belaval (WGN's Around Town), Ensemble Member Joey Slotnick and Bill Kurtis (Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me) while Ensemble Member and Head Camper Kasey Foster and Charlie Otto (This Must be the Band) guide the group through time and space with a bedrock of sound.

gglassworks, Lookingglass New Works Development Initiative now responsible for over 70 new plays for the American stage, will take the spotlight in the Invention Room. Artistic Associate and Stand-Up artist Atra Asdou will take the mic and present sneak excerpts from her original play Iraq, but Funny presented by guest artists Sarha Abraham, Michael Jando, and Will Mobley, with live musical accompaniment by Ronnie Malley. "I don't see a lot of plays about the Middle East, and when I do, they are rarely written by middle eastern people, and when they are...they are not comedies," says Asdou. "The Mid-East makes people nervous, and I want to break that down, break bread, break hearts and have a laugh."