Creatives at Edge Theater

Paul Brenner’s Wednesday night songwriting class is a perfect cross-section of the Chicago music scene, with all its incestuous dysfunction, navel-gazing narcissism, bitter rivalries, and, here and there, shards of transcendent brilliance. When Paul’s former student, pop star and singer/songwriter Sean O’Neil, visits this group of wannabe musicians to judge a contest, the stakes are suddenly raised to startling new levels. Creatives - a darkly comic pop opera with an original book by Irvine Welsh and Don De Grazia and a score including songs from some of the most popular rock bands of recent decades - reveals the desperation that fuels the passion to create. The score will include songs by Simple Minds, New Order, Iggy Pop, Oasis, Happy Mondays and others, along with original music by Laurence Mark Wythe.