Stages, Sights and Sounds

“Notes and Impressions”

Week 1

Monday Night. Attended the opening night ceremony. Very moving speech by the Chicago Humanities Fest’s new Exec Director, Phillip Bahar. Saw a great performance by Paige Hernandez. Her show “Paige in Full” is a hip-hop mixtape about her life in Baltimore. Very fun and moving. She’s also rep’d by our great Simon Shaw.

Tuesday Night. Second-to-last rehearsal.

Wednesday morning. Saw Cloud Man from Scotland. Ailie Cohen rocked it with the wee ones – and her even more wee cloud man puppets! Afterwards, we enjoyed a beautiful sunny picnic with Ailie and her technician, Matt. Talking about international theater and Chicago tourists attractions on a sunny day = glorious.

Thursday Night. Last rehearsal!

Saturday Night. Festival Party. Didn’t get to go last year so I really enjoyed myself this year. Got to talk to great folks from the Festival like Mary Kate (MK) and Matti Bunzl – two of the main directors. Then we hit the speakeasy dance floor at Untitled in River North with our Scottish and French-Canadian artistic conspirators. Dance!

Week 2

Our performance week…

Monday. Fun, easy tech rehearsal. Loving the Biograph Theater!
Tuesday. Double duty school kids shows. They love our opening security sequence they are screaming! We can’t hear each other. The shows are a blast.

Wednesday. Day off. Phew!
Thursday. First night-time show. Lots of laughs.
Friday. Last school group only show. Inspiring Q+A. “Who wants to create their own theater?” Every student’s hand shoots up.
Saturday & Sunday. Last two shows. Soaking it all in. Great audiences. The show is really starting to gel.

Thanks to the Humanities Festival for another great experience this spring!

Last night, I had the pleasure of participating in a new experience. The kind folks at the Chicago Humanities Festival invited Theater Unspeakable to participate in the first-ever Open Rehearsal for the upcoming “Stages, Sights and Sounds”. Staff and board members from the Festival gathered at the upstairs rehearsal room at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater to watch a run of our show and then to give some feedback.
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For a brief moment, while the cast members and I warmed up in the lobby of the Richard Christiansen Theater next door, I had a time-warp moment. I realized I was about to perform at the 99-year old Biograph Theater! The place where, in the 1930’s, the outlaw John Dillinger was shot while watching a gangster flick, the place where, in the 1970’s, my parents’ generation had dressed up and watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show and now, in 2013, the place where Victory Gardens Theater had built its home.
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It ended up being a very successful evening. We learned a lot by performing the show for an audience after making some significant changes since our run at Second City. We also gained some insights from the feedback session, which was skillfully led by the lovely Ginger Farley using elements of the Liz Lerman critical response process. Although the Festival will take place in various locations, our performances of “Murder on the Midwest Express” will happen at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in May and I hope to see you there!

After working so hard on “Murder on the Midwest Express” for the past couple
months, it has been nice to take a little break from rehearsals. Of course, much of
that time outside the rehearsal room has been spent in the office. Well, the home
office. As in, our second bedroom. Putting together contracts, holding auditions for
alternate cast members, planning out the season and filling out applications kept the
staff and me busy.

Finally, this Tuesday night, all the hard work paid off as we had the first gathering
of the new “Super Team” – the current and alternate casts of our show “Superman
2050”. It was great to see some old faces and some very new faces as I handed out
contracts and made early announcements of the 2013 touring season! (For those of
you wondering where we’ll be headed, the tour dates will be announced soon…so
stay tuned!)

I want to officially recognize our original cast members who built such an incredible
show over a two-year period:

Brittany Bookbinder, Melissa Cameron, Lily Emerson, Marc Frost, Becky McNamara,
Thomas Kelly and Kathleen Wrinn

I want to also officially recognize all the new cast members that will be joining the
“Super Team”:

Brittany Anderson, Breon Arzell, Alice da Cunha, Justin Kimball, Christian Libonati,
Vanessa Valliere and Mary Cait Walthall

Last but certainly not least, I want to give a shout-out to the amazing staff members:

Zachary Baker-Salmon – Producer
Isabel Dayson – Marketing Director
Alice da Cunha – Artistic Consultant
Diandra Miller – Intern

I could not be more happy to have led a convening of such a great group of people
that will now all be working on such a great project. Of course, I’m a little biased…

Signing off,

Marc Frost – Artistic Director – Theater Unspeakable

Stepping into Times Square on a cold January evening felt close to otherworldly—especially knowing I was going to perform there later that night. I emerged from the subway to find myself in the bright hue of so many LCD screens I could have mistaken the night for day. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but Times Square merits a few million.

And there I was—nervous as you-know-what; it was the first time I was performing in New York City. I was concerned about how our show seemed anything but extravagant. Seven performers squeezed onto a tiny stage telling an entire Superman story with no props, no scenery, just their bodies. I could not help but think about Broadway’s Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, featuring actors on wires flying around the theater, and whose stage door I passed walking west on 43rd St. A block later, I saw the modest blue awning: “Times Square Art Center.” There was no looking back.

Along with sixteen other companies, we were about to perform at the Times Square International Theater Festival. Our show, Superman 2050, had been created through a six-month residency at Links Hall in Chicago. We had opened there with three sweaty nights in their cozy Wrigleyville location, the Red Line trains trundling past the windows. Then, we had stretched our endurance levels to perform five midnight weekend shows at Second City’s Donny’s Skybox Theater. Finally, putting the icing on the (melting) cake, we dragged our little wooden stage across the Midwest for five days. During the hottest week of 2011, we performed at outdoor train stations and indoor theaters.

Why was I nervous? This ensemble had been to Milwaukee and back. Surely, this Chicago troupe could handle a little New York cold. But when the first performance began, I felt my fears coming true. From the moment we had walked into the building, I could tell we were not in Kansas anymore. The lobby was filled with glamorous-looking actors awaiting a TV audition. We got into costume and waited for our theater space to open up. In that cramped entrance hall, I do not know what glimmered more: the auditionees’ lipstick and hair gel or our shiny blue Nike running gear. My nails were all but bitten off.

Superman 2050

Ten minutes before starting time, we were let into the theater. Fifteen minutes later, the lights went up—only 15 inches above our heads—and I realized that even in January, we were again destined to sweat. The audience sounded so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Inside that long and narrow theater, the sounds of Times Square had been hewn to a hush.

We knew not to rush. We had performed the show enough times that we had learned to trust each other. Even the pressure of Broadway proximity had not broken this year-long bond. Instead of panic, the show went on. Clark Kent saw Lois Lane hanging off the side of a building. Suddenly, like the Man of Steel himself, the audience leapt into action. And little by little, with each piece of absurd virtuosity, they helped bring our small stage to life with their imaginations. The momentum continued until the end, when the lights snapped to black and, after a second, the once resolute crowd ripped into applause.

It was a milestone, we had gotten over the hump. And I will never forget the feeling I had leaving our little theater with its non-electric blue awning looking up at the mass of lights above. Stepping into the cold, my breath was frozen in time—in Times Square.

Posted on Monday, Feb 27 by Marc Frost

A year and a half ago, I was sitting on a folding chair at my friend’s high-rise apartment in São Paulo, trying to determine the number of train stations in the U.S. My plan was to move back to Chicago, create a show about high-speed rail, and then tour it to every town with an active stop. Using Amtrak’s website, I counted the number of functioning stations, state by state, until I came up with the final tally: 530.

“Wow,” I said.

“What?” my Brazilian friend Joana asked.

“Amtrak has 530 stations,” I replied.

She snorted: “And you want to perform at all of them?”

I nodded, “Yep.”

She looked me in the eyes and smiled, “Que louco, gente!” Which, in Portuguese, roughly translates to “I think the asylum is missing a patient.”

A few months later, I said goodbye to my Brazilian Carnival and moved back to Chicago, all ambition. I applied for a six-month artistic residency at Links Hall. Then, I started calling and writing Amtrak incessantly. Finally, I was told to submit a proposal for sponsorship through their online application. I waited for a response, which did not come. I called them up again and again until, eventually, I was told that my proposal had officially been denied.

Luckily, around the same time I received this news, I had discovered an organization in Chicago called the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. I met with Richard Harnish, the Executive Director and told him about my idea (which by now had been scaled back from all 530 stations to the 200+ stations in the Midwestern states). He listened and said, “It sounds fun. Let me know when I can see it.” Nobody, I realized, was going to support a concept.

A few days later, my cell phone rang. The voice on the other line was Erica Mott from Links Hall, congratulating me on winning a 2010–2011 Lisa Dershin LinkUp residency. I now had six months to create something real.

Theater Unspeakable’s – Superman 2050

Fortunately, I was able to employ the help of two Lecoq school graduates: my mentor, Paola Coletto, and my colleague, Molly Feingold. Pretty soon, the cast was up and running with this tight-quarters style of theater. We embarked upon a beautiful journey of creating, as a group, something new. A few months later, we presented our show at Links Hall and then again at Donny’s Skybox Theater, part of the Second City Training Center. We received several strong reviews and, at last, I felt, we were ready for a tour.

The Brazilian dream of all 530 stations, which had dissipated to about 200 stations, had now dwindled to a list of just 10 cities. There were several reasons for the “downsizing.” First of all, I had always envisioned us traveling by train as a way to promote our show’s message. The story takes place in a future Midwest where bullet trains connect all the major cities. Unfortunately, Amtrak had refused my many inquiries for free or discounted tickets, so travel costs became a big issue. Not to mention the platform. Though smaller than most travelling sets, our little stage presented a logistical nightmare built as it was in nine wooden blocks, each weighing about 25 lbs. Traveling by train, we would either have to rent a van, get a taxi, or physically carry the pieces on handcarts to move our show around each city.

Next, the issue of scheduling put a damper on our plans. When we had finally coordinated the calendars of the seven performers, two tour managers, one documentarian, and the lone representative of the MHSRA, we had given ourselves almost no time to plan the tour. The 10-city count dropped to three—and one of those was Chicago!

Suddenly, we were rushing to book the venues, find accommodations, market the show, acquire permission to perform in train stations… At one point, I thought about calling the whole thing off. I did not want to invest in a tour halfway. I also did not want to end up with a group of disgruntled actors and crew members who felt they had been dragged through the mud simply to make my vision come to life. Slowly, Joana’s words were catching up to me.

But it was too late. We’d launched our Kickstarter fundraising page, and the momentum was already churning. We had a goal of reaching $5,000: an amount that would help us to pay for the train tickets, provide a stipend to the performers, cover the editing fee of our documentarian, and settle all the remaining tour expenses.

Despite some major setbacks, the tour went reasonably well. By touring to other cities and playing in different types of venues, the show got stronger and the ensemble tighter. The performers grew in ways that would not have been possible inside the comfort of a local, storefront audience. Moreover, while many of the logistics of the tour turned out to be extremely chaotic (e.g. all 11 people sleeping in one house, pushing the platforms through heat advisory conditions, waiting on an Amtrak delay for 13 hours, et al), we were able to learn a lot of lessons—and capture a lot of great images!

In the end, I think it’s important to recognize what are the limitations of live performance and, especially, a young company. While we cannot fill houses the size of the Goodman Theater or Broadway in Chicago yet, we can reach people on a more intimate basis with a more mobile set and an even smaller budget. Moreover, our forthcoming documentary will be broadcast on the web where it will reach many more viewers than we could have ever hoped to gain with our present means. I am proud of what we accomplished, humbled by our mistakes, and happy that there will be a video. Not only will it help us to market the project in the near future; it will also remind me, years from now, of this particular time…when I dreamt big enough to bring something very small to life.

-Marc Frost, Artistic Director of Theater Unspeakable

Written in Summer 2011. This story includes editorial support by CAR Dance Researcher Meida McNeal.

Marc Frost is an actor, deviser, and educator. A native of Chicago, he has performed and produced work in Brazil, Ireland, Spain, the U.S. and U.K. Most recently, he toured the Midwest with Theater Un-Speak-Able’s original piece “Superman 2050.” Other collaboratively devised projects include: Backbone (Sketchbook Festival XI, Chicago), War and Peace: a dance-theater redux (Viaduct Theater, Chicago), Moon Far Ocean Deep (High Concept Laboratories, Chicago), Chariots of Fire (FestiClown, Spain), Superman the Show (Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland), and many more. He has taught workshops in various countries and currently works with the Lecoq-trained teacher Paola Coletto in Chicago. Marc graduated with his M.F.A. in Lecoq-Based Actor-Created Theater from Naropa University in cooperation with the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA).

PUBLISHED BY CAR_LAURA ON THU, 08/11/2011 – 1:46PM
UPDATED ON TUE, 01/22/2013 – 3:26PM

Theater Unspeakable (TU) will be holding a casting call for 3 male performers to be cast in the original show Superman 2050. This physical comedy piece has been picked up for touring and needs to fill the following roles:

• Lex Luthor
• Lex Luthor (alternate)
• Clark Kent/Superman (alternate)

TU is seeking performers who are:

1.  1. comfortable with movement as well as text delivery
2.  2. trained in one or more of the following: mime, clown, circus, improv, mask

Performers are asked to wear movement clothes to the audition. Bring Headshot and Resume. There is no need to prepare anything, just come ready to play! Callbacks will be held the following evening.

WHAT: Casting Call for Theater Unspeakable Superman 2050
WHEN: Monday, April 1st / 6 – 10 PM
WHERE: Crawl Space / 1474 N. Milwaukee Ave. / Chicago, IL 60622
CONTACT: theater.un.speak.able@gmail.com Send a copy of Headshot and Resume!
WEBSITE: www.theaterunspeakable.com
PAY: YES!

CALLBACKS: Tuesday, April 2nd / 6 – 10 PM

Having just finished a month-long run of performances of Murder on the Midwest Express at Donny’s Skybox at The Second City Training Center, I learned that limitations help a lot! We boiled the show down from 7 actors to 3 actors, from 10 heavy wooden platforms to 2 light fabric-and-balsa-wood screens and dropped the live musical accompaniment all together.

Structurally, I think it also helped us to remember what worked so well for Superman 2050. Basically, it became fun to work towards a 35 minute, physical comedy piece that would be based on fun images as much as witty dialogue.

As we continue to build the piece for our run at the Chicago Humanities Festival “Stages, Sights and Sounds” Festival in May, I feel confident that we are finally attaining the path towards a show that will eventually serve as a strong companion to Superman 2050: another all ages comedy that slips in the idea of a future Midwest connected by high speed trains.

There are more lessons that I learned in those two weekends than I will be able to remember and write down here. In the beginning of January, TU showcased Superman 2050 at the IPAY (International Performing Arts for Youth) booking conference in Philadelphia and I followed up with some of the booking agents the following weekend at the APAP (Association of performing Arts Presenters) conference in New York City. The overall impression that remains right now is the sense of having been through a whirlwind.

The good news seems to be that the showcase of Superman 2050 at IPAY was successful: people enjoyed the show and are interested in finding ways to produce it and promote it. After working on the show for the better part of two years, the response at IPAY confirmed the journey of devoting myself to one project for a long time. The investment paid off: the piece is solid and will now get the chance to be performed in front of more audiences.

In New York, I was able to solidify a relationship with a booking agent and continue my education in the business. I learned enough to know that there is a lot more to learn. I understood that the touring industry is very large and offers many opportunities. I also saw that there is a huge pool of performers, presenters and agents involved in this industry and that I have to be patient and humble as well as optimistic and hungry in order to find my place within it.

Luckily, our train is pulling out of the station (wink wink) with the addition of Simon Shaw as our booking agent and the forthcoming performances of Superman 2050 outside the Chicago city limits.

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Well, this has been difficult. After getting excited by the auditions in December, in which I saw some potential new cast members make some very interesting improvisations around the story, I have now had to face some realities that I had been skirting. First off, the show is based on a book that technically I do not have the rights to. Secondly, that book has been adapted by a playwright who worked with the original author into a solid script and has played at many regional theaters and is now playing Off-Broadway, which means it will probably continue to play around the country. It now seems unthinkable to continue with the project.

It is too bad because I really lived in the world of the story when I was in New York. I stayed at my aunt’s and uncle’s place in Brooklyn, and one day, I found some time to walk down Eastern Parkway to the Crown Heights neighborhood where the actual story took place. this has brought me closer and closer to the world of Asher Lev. At the same time, I read the sequel to Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev, which is called The Gift of Asher Lev. This beautiful and moving book made me realize that there might be other possibilities than adapting the first book into a play, since that seems to no longer be a good option. As the sequel continues with Asher’s story two decades into the future, I understood that maybe I could one day adapt the stories together. Or even, try to stage a play based on an imagined third act of Asher’s life.

For now, anyways, I have had to let the project go. And by doing so, I have come to understand that sometimes it is good to read the handwriting on the wall before you get too involved with a project that has not yet found its moment to emerge. Maybe, like a painter’s discarded sketches, some projects may be more valuable for the lesson they teach you as a creator.