100 Neo-Futurist Plays
100 Neo-Futurist Plays

Author: The Neo-Futurists

Publisher: Agate Publishing

Published: 2011-11-21

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0981564372

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This collection of 100 short (very short) plays from The Neo-Futurists’ acclaimed cult hit Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind was originally published by Chicago Plays in 1993. The show presents 30 plays in 60 minutes, its ensemble of writer/performers generating between two and 12 new plays each week, as dictated by a roll of the dice. The material runs the gamut of style, tone, and topic: musical, confession, agit-prop, poetic gesture, physical comedy, puppet theater, audience interrogation, folk song, sex joke, and many more. The plays are funny, moving, challenging, powerful, and occasionally just plain weird. There is no fourth wall in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind — the show embraces the ideal that theater is created in the connection between audience and performer. Randomness, dynamism, speed, brevity, and planned obsolescence are celebrated and exploited to engage and refresh all participants. The plays stand as an entertaining document of the show's output, and they are ideal for scene study, auditions, and competitions.

225 Plays
225 Plays

Author: The New York Neo-Futurists

Publisher: Agate Publishing

Published: 2011-07-05

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0981564356

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This book brings together over 200 short (very short) plays from the New York production of the acclaimed cult theater hit "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind." "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," created by Greg Allen, debuted in Chicago in December, 1988, and has been playing to sold out houses ever since. The show presents 30 plays in 60 minutes, 50 weeks a year, to a devoted following. The ensemble of writer-performers generates between two and 12 new plays each week, as dictated by a roll of the dice, creating a constantly changing menu of plays. In 2004, a New York ensemble was formed and the show has been running there since, playing to houses of younger, culturally adventurous audiences as well as seasoned theater-goers. The 225 plays in this volume, culled from more than 1,300 the New York company has generated since 2004, reflect the diversity of 35 current and past ensemble members and the multiplicity of viewpoints and voices they bring to the stage. The material runs the gamut of style, tone, and topic: musical, confession, agit-prop, poetic gesture, physical comedy, puppet theater, audience interrogation, folk song, sex joke, and many more.

Neo-solo
Neo-solo

Author: The Neo-Futurists

Publisher: Hope & Nonthings

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780970745880

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Neo-Solo: 131 Neo-Futurist Solo Plays from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is the second book of short (very short) plays from Chicago's experimental theater company, The Neo-Futurists. Too Much Light is an on-going attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The show is in constant flux, with at least 2 to 12 new plays written by the ensemble each week. Since the show's inception in 1988, the ensemble has generated nearly 4,500 short plays, performance pieces, and monologues, from which this collection is culled. The book contains solo performance pieces by 25 authors, covering such diverse topics as racial politics, sex between strangers, child abuse, and what it means to be a "male secretary". Rants, poems, songs, plays without words, straight-ahead monologues, jokes and audience participatory plays are just a few of the forms used by The Neo-Futurists to present their ideas and stories.

200 More Neo-Futurist Plays
200 More Neo-Futurist Plays

Author: The Neo-Futurists

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780970745835

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This collection of 200 short (very short) plays from The Neo-Futurists acclaimed cult hit "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" is the third collection from this prolific group of theater artists. (100 Neo-Futurist Plays, Chicago Plays, 1991 andNeo-Solo: 131 Neo-Futurist Solo Plays, Hope and Nonthings, 2002.) "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," created by Greg Allen, debuted in Chicago in December, 1988, and has been playing to sold out houses ever since. The show presents 30 plays in 60 minutes, 50 weeks a year, to a devoted following. The ensemble of writer-performers generates between 2 and 12 new plays each week, as dictated by a roll of the dice, creating a constantly changing menu of plays. The material runs the gamut of style, tone, and topic: musical, confession, agit-prop, poeticgesture, physical comedy, puppet theater, audience interrogation, folk song, sex joke, and many more. The plays are funny, moving, challenging, powerful, and occasionally just plain weird, but all within The Neo-Futurists' trademark non-illusory aesthetic. There is no "fourth wall" in "Too Much Light" -- the show embraces the ideal that theater is created in the connection between audience and performer, in the two-way exchange of ideas, emotions, and energy, and in an honest exploration of everyday life. Randomness, dynamism, speed, brevity, and planned obsolescence are celebrated and exploited to engage and refresh participants on both sides of the theatrical equation. The 200 plays in this volume reflect the diversity of 27 ensemble members and the multiplicity of viewpoints and voices they bring to the stage. The plays stand as an entertaining document of some of the show's output from 1993 to 2002 history as well as ideal material for actor scene study, auditions, and competition presentations.

Ensemble-Made Chicago
Ensemble-Made Chicago

Author: Chloe Johnston

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0810138794

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Featuring the work of: About Face Youth Theatre • Albany Park Theater Project • Barrel of Monkeys • Every house has a door • FEMelanin • 500 Clown • Free Street Theater • Honey Pot Performance • Lookingglass Theater • The Neo-Futurists • The Second City • Southside Ignoramus Quartet • Teatro Luna • Walkabout Theater • Young Fugitives Ensemble-Made Chicago brings together a wide range of Chicago theater companies to share strategies for cocreating performance. Cocreated theater breaks down the traditional roles of writer, director, and performer in favor of a more egalitarian approach in which all participants contribute to the creation of original material. Each chapter offers a short history of a Chicago company, followed by detailed exercises that have been developed and used by that company to build ensemble and generate performances. Companies included range in age from two to fifty years, represent different Chicago neighborhoods, and reflect both the storefront tradition and established cultural institutions. The book pays special attention to the ways the fight for social justice has shaped the development of this aesthetic in Chicago. Assembled from interviews and firsthand observations, Ensemble-Made Chicago is written in a lively and accessible style and will serve as an invaluable guide for students and practitioners alike, as well as an important archive of Chicago’s vibrant ensemble traditions. Readers will find new creative methods to enrich their own practice and push their work in new directions.

Microdramas
Microdramas

Author: John H. Muse

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0472053639

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Explores what brevity can teach us about the powers and limits of theater

The Contemporary Ensemble
The Contemporary Ensemble

Author: Duška Radosavljević

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-08-21

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1136283536

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‘Dr. Radosavljević has an excellent and extensive grasp of her subject, and deep understanding of not only the history of these groups, but how they function, and how each contributes to the field of ensemble theatre.’ – David Crespy, University of Missouri, USA Questions of ensemble – what it is, how it works – are both inherent to a variety of Western theatre traditions, and re-emerging and evolving in striking new ways in the twenty-first century. The Contemporary Ensemble draws together an unprecedented range of original interviews with world-renowned theatre-makers in order to directly address both the former and latter concerns. Reflecting on ‘the ensemble way of working’ within this major new resource are figures including: Michael Boyd, Hermann Wündrich, Yuri Butusov, Max Stafford-Clark, Elizabeth LeCompte, Lyn Gardner, Adriano Shaplin, Phelim McDermott; and Emma Rice; representing companies including: The RSC; The Berliner Ensemble; The Satirikon Theatre; Out of Joint; The Wooster Group; Kneehigh Theatre; Song of the Goat; The Riot Group; The Neo-Futurists; Shadow Casters; and Ontroerend Goed. All 22 interviews were conducted especially for the collection, and draw upon the author’s rich background working as scholar, educator and dramaturg with a variety of ensembles. The resulting compendium radically re-situates the ensemble in the context of globalisation, higher education and simplistic understandings of ‘text-based’ and ‘devised’ theatre practice, and traces a compelling new line through the contemporary theatre landscape.

Blindsight
Blindsight

Author: Peter Watts

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2006-10-03

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1429955198

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Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

What the Sea Means
What the Sea Means

Author: Dave Awl

Publisher:

Published: 2002-09-20

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780970745873

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The first book collection of work by Chicago-based writer, performer, and "surrealist insomniac mystic" Dave Awl, gathers a selections from decade and a half of poems; stories and monologues fromThe Pansy Kings' Cotillion,Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind,Talking to Myself, and other shows; and the 1997 online chapbook Night Diaries.