Theatre Y Announces New Space, Partnership with Red Tape Theatre

Theatre Y announces a new artistic home at 4546 N. Western Ave. and a new artistic partnership with Red Tape Theatre. The new 3,300-square feet space offers a flexible black box performance area with an audience capacity of up to 75 seats, a spacious lobby, and rehearsal space for the two companies to utilize.

Located in the heart of Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood, Theatre Y's New Space is south of the Western Brown Line station. The New Space hosts both companies' upcoming seasons, as well as staged readings, off-night and late night shows, classes, and other programming and events for the community at large.

Theatre Y creates poetic and physical theatre, mines the contradictions of the human experience, and challenges audiences to find universally shared meaning. For more information including ticket reservations, donations, and volunteer opportunities, visit www.theatre-y.com or e-mail info@theatre-y.com.

The move to its New Space follows the biggest year yet in Theatre Y's ten year history which saw the formation of the Theatre Y Ensemble, a production of Macbeth, its first dance piece Fatelessness, a performance of The Ghoul Exhibition at Rhinofest, a 500 mile journey across Spain's Camino de Santiago to perform its one man show An Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences (Underneath the Lintel) and the development of its first fully devised work to be premiered in 2018.

The move into this New Space also coincides with Theatre Y's transition toward a Free Theatre Movement over the next few years in partnership with Red Tape Theatre. The two companies will co-produce the shared venue's inaugural production Yerma, freshly translated by Theatre Y Ensemble member Héctor Álvarez, directed by Red Tape Theatre's Artistic Director Max Truax, and featuring the Theatre Y Ensemble. Yerma opens October 27 and runs through December 10. It will be followed by Red Tape's production of I Saw Myself, written by Howard Barker and directed by Jennifer Markowitz. More announcements about Theatre Y's upcoming season will be coming soon.

Theatre Y is an international laboratory of theatrical experimentation. Their far-reaching collaborations serve two purposes: 1) they highlight values, issues, and aesthetics which are common across cultures, and 2) they allow the company and their audience to search for the truths of the human condition through the contradictions and diversity of a person's experiences. Theatre Y seeks out new theatrical languages that bridge the gap between cultures and tradition while embracing risk and removing all security, all notions of expertise, in order to better attempt the ideal of theater: discovery of the self through another.

The Theatre Y Ensemble was formed in 2016 to create a sustained and intimate dialogue between 13 theater artists and the community. We train and perform together to work toward a collective sense, a communal memory, and an aesthetic cohesion in order to better serve the goals of Theatre Y.

Red Tape Theatre believe it is essential to the welfare of their community that its members are able to see the world from multiple perspectives. Red Tape Theatre challenges audiences to think differently by disrupting expectations and by redefining the boundaries of the theatrical event. They apply their unique visual aesthetic to the social, political and cultural stories of the time, creating immersive and thought-provoking experiences for their audiences.

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