Strawdog Theatre Presents The Laura On Laura Comeback Tour

The stakes are high, the skirts are even higher, and you better believe the guitars are sharp!

Prepare to have your faces melted into a puddle of rocked as Laura and Laura welcome you to their first show ever...of their comeback tour. Through a hilarious mixture of mind-blowing jams and seemingly absurd lesson plans, the Lauras are determined to take their lives, as well as their audience, to THE NEXT LEVEL.

The Laura on Laura Comeback Tour is a whirlwind comedy show and a live concert wrapped into a sixty minute burrito of deluded grandeur. The Lauras (Laura Grey and Laura McKenzie) are two grade school teachers who have decided to give it all up and concentrate on their fallback plan, which is becoming two of the greatest-mega-rock-superstars of all time.

Think Flight of the Conchords, meets Romy and Michelle, meets your Kindergarten Teacher, meets Hall and Oates and you have a taste of what it's like to hear the Lauras live and in concert. Expect music, off the wall banter, and elaborate hand made costumes as the Lauras try to make sense of their lives, and melt your faces in the process.

QUESTION: Will combining the elements of amplified music, adoring fans, and the raw talent of LAURA and LAURA in a pyrex beaker set off a chain reaction to create two of the greatest rock stars of all time?

ANSWER: T.B.A..

Laura Grey (co-writer, performer) most recently concluded a two-year long stint at The Second City where she co-wrote and performed in two original revues, including the Jeff Nominated Campaign Supernova. She also adapted Reverie, an all-silent physical theatre revue directed by Dexter Bullard for the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal in 2009.

A seasoned comedic improviser, Laura trained and performed in the ensembles of IO theatre (formerly Improv Olympic,) the Playground, the Annoyance, and Comedy Sportz Chicago. She was one-third of the all-female sketch comedy troupe Triplette with whom she wrote five shows and showcased at Sketchfest NYC, San Francisco Sketch Fest, and Chicago Sketchfest. She has devised outdoor spectacles with Redmoon, improvised musicals with Baby Wants Candy, and performed with the House Theater at the Steppenwolf, and done a bunch of plays.

In 2008, she served as Artistic Director of Barrel of Monkeys, a company of actors who adapt the work of Chicago Public School Children into short plays and musicals. Currently, she is hard at work directing a thirty-minute toy theatre adaptation of Beowulf, and being cast as an elf in Holiday commercials. Laura has a degree in creative writing with a minor in drama from Northwestern University.

Laura McKenzie (co-writer, performer) hails from Houston but has called Chicago her home since graduating from Northwestern University (with a couple of lost years in New York and Lansing thrown in to the mix). Most recently Laura music directed and performed in the Neo-Futurists' production Beer, which had an extended run in Chicago as well as a limited engagement in Denver.

Laura's work has been seen all over the country, most notably in her critically acclaimed one-woman show Laura McKenzie Feels Like Makin' Love which ran at the New York International Fringe Festival, the Seattle Fringe Festival and several theaters in Chicago. Other writer-performer credits include her work with the Factory Theater where she has had two of her plays produced, the latest being Janice Dutts Goes to Life Camp. She has also written and performed in Picked Up and Alice with the Neo-Futurists. Other projects include Are You There, Jesus? It's Us Trailer Trash (produced by the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York), Funk Cloud: Fight the Stank! (produced by the Estrogen Fest at Gallery 37 Theater), and Waiting ON Godot (produced by Micelings Productions, the name Laura and her co-writer came up with after living through a year of gluetraps in New York).

Aside from creating new works, Laura also appears on stage as "actor", and is currently in the critically acclaimed That's Weird, Grandma. Laura serves as the Literary Director for the Factory Theater as well as a company member and Music Director for Barrel of Monkeys.

Halena Kays (director) hails from Chicago but is currently living in Austin getting her MFA in Directing at The University of Texas. In Chicago, Halena has performed and directed all over town for more than 10 years; she is the co-founder and former artistic director of Barrel of Monkeys where she directed the majority of their public performances including their critically acclaimed long-running show: That's Weird, Grandma. She is a Northwestern grad and a former member of the Big Apple Circus Clown Care unit. She is a member of the Hypocrites theatre company where she has both performed and directed. She has directed the world premieres of both Fake Lake and Dare Devils for The Neo-Futurists. At UT she has directed a wild new adaptation of The Trojan Women, the world premiere of Frances Cowhig's Lidless, and Erin Phillips' new comedy The Death of Beth. She also conceived, co-wrote and directed the ensemble-generated 101 Ways to... for the 2009 New Works Festival. Halena has been nominated for a Jefferson Citation for Best Supporting Actress, named one of "30 under 30" to watch by SixOSix magazine, achieved the Presidential Fitness Award from Ronald Reagan in 1984 and received a signed letter from MR. Rogers saying she was "special" in 1978.

Laura McKenzie and Laura Grey have been collaborating on musical pieces, short plays, and sketches since 2005. Most of their work together until now has been adapting the work of Chicago Public School children for That's Weird Grandma, the Barrel of Monkeys "Best Of" show that runs every Monday night at the Neo-Futurarium. The Laura on Laura Comeback Tour is their first collection of original material. They have performed as the Lauras at the Strawdog Late Night Open Mic curated by Noah Simon, The New Movement Theater in Austin, TX and Studio Ballistico in Lincoln Square. Upcoming performances include The Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival on January 14, 2010.

Click here for the Laura ON Laura video: Let's Wear Masks Tonight

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