The LIVINGroom Collaborates with Jeff Award-Winning Designer for PLAYLIST Performance

The LIVINGroom announces the lineup and details for a special performance on Sunday, July 31, offered in addition to its monthly residency at Stage 773. The LIVINGroom: Playlist is created in collaboration with Jeff Award-winning Sound Designer Jeffrey Levin. Solo artists and LIVINGroom ensemble membersAbigail Phelps, Megan Powell, Ian Randall, Joel Reitsma and Laura Reitsma will perform in The LIVINGroom: Playlist, which is directed by Laura Reitsma.

The LIVINGroom: Playlist integrates solo performance with sound art by Levin, who in June received a 2016 Non-Equity Jeff Award for Sound Design for Oracle Theatre's production of The Hairy Ape.

"As a composer and Sound Designer who mostly works in theatre, I am always looking for how sound, whether music or sound effects, enriches a story. I am always working with and around words, which are themselves sounds that we've ascribed meaning to," said Levin. "The LIVINGroom's work to me felt like a good vehicle to explore this relationship deeply. The writers and performers in this group tell beautiful personal stories that I felt could be even more expressive with the evocative ability of music and sound."

With inspiration from some of his favorite podcasts (Snap Judgement, Radiolab, This American Life, 99 Percent Invisible), as well with financial support from the Edes Award for Emerging Artists, Levin engaged in this collaboration with The LIVINGroom at the beginning of 2016, a creative journey that culminates in the July 31 performance. The partnership is one that, he said, "I hope to grow and evolve to create a unique storytelling medium that can either exist as Live Theatre or to be enjoyed with a good pair of headphones."

The LIVINGroom: Playlist will be performed at 8:00 pm on Sunday, July 31 at Stage 773, located at 1225 W. Belmont, Chicago. Tickets are $10, $7 for students with valid ID, and are available at the box office and at http://stage773.com, or 773-327-5252.

The LIVINGroom is a? t?heatrical? a?ssembly of individual, autobiographical performances that blend spoken word, movement, spectacle, music, and any other device that bridges the personal and the universal. On the second Sunday of the month in the Box Theatre at Stage 773, the solo artists in The LIVINGroom engage the audience in as many points of the performance as possible, blurring the line between spectator and stage in order to find commonality with each other.

Some of the most intimate, truthful, and exciting moments happen in living rooms. In 2009, founders Laura Reitsma, Joel Reitsma, and Ian Randall, who are all Columbia College graduates, workshopped stories in their own living rooms before performing them at various festivals around Chicago. In 2014, the trio was invited to produce their unique take on solo performance at Stage 773.

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