Make/Believe: A Festival for Young Audiences at Ghostlight Ensemble

Cereal royalty, a monster that eats words, the source of all black girl magic, a unique bird that tastes bad. Welcome to Make/Believe, a theatre festival that challenges its young and young at heart audiences to throw out the way things have always been done and indulge their imagination.The production features a mix of short plays by local and out-of-state playwrights that were written for audiences 12 and under, but which are also meant to be enjoyed by all ages.The eight stories that make up this years Make/Believe festival are filled with young women who turn convention on its head. From the young heroines in "Epic Tales from the Land of Melanin" who reclaim their own stories and the power that comes along with them to that classic victim of folklore, Little Red Riding Hood, who decides a feminist fairy tale is more her style, the heroines of these plays face the types of figurative monsters modern children will recognize from their own lives.Selected scripts include: "Asherella" by Lori Taylor; directed by Laila Rodriques; "Ava's First Escape Room" by Kim Z. Dale; directed by Jill Olson Stuck; "Epic Tales From the Land of Melanin", originally devised by Guadals Del Carmen, Mariana Green, Brandi Lee, Maya Mackrandilal, Enid Muoz, Alyssa Vera Ramos, Deanals Resto, Ana Velazquez and Teresa Zorc with FEMelanin; directed by Deanals Resto; "Little Red Reboot" by Sonya Sobieski; directed by Kristin Schoenback; "The Queen of Cocoa Puffs and the Cap'n Crunch King" by Corey Pajka; directed by John Gleason Teske; "Scaredy Friends" written and directed by Carolyn Minor; "Snow White, Who Is Also Called Becky, No Rebecca...and the Frog Prince" by Jack Helbig and Margaret Helbig; directed by Lizzy May; and "Stinky Bird" by Seth Freeman; directed by Jackie Bowes.This is an expansion of our Nightlight young audiences series, which produces original, adapted and forgotten plays geared toward children and the adults who love them.Make/Believe takes place Saturday, February 22 and Sunday, February 23, 2020, at 2 p.m. at Laugh Out Loud Theater Chicago in the North Center neighborhood (3851 N. Lincoln Ave.). Tickets are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets: $15 adults, $5 children 12 and under, or $25 family of four.