We thoroughly enjoyed checking out the adult puppet show, Ironwill Tate, on Sunday night. Bat Honey is from Missoula, Montana and they're just swingin' through Chi-town for 3 shows only, on their cross country tour. Come on out and see 'em tonight. We'll have HD show clips coming soon.
“Ironwill Tate” is a fantasy-filled puppet extravaganza for adults. The show features over 40 handmade puppets utilizing ancient and modern puppetry styles. In “Ironwill Tate” we follow a family on the last leg of their cross-country road-trip. At the wheel is Tate, the father and fanatical schedule keeper who decides what they will and will not stop for. Drunken zoo animals, dying wizards, and giant robots vie for the family’s attention, but Tate will stop at nothing to keep that pedal down. This main narrative is the springboard for a series of vignettes woven throughout. It gets strange, folks.
Bat Honey is comprised of Britt Juchem and Ariel Gregory. Britt and Ariel began their career as stop motion animators. Veteran Los Angeles model makers for film and television, they have been collaborating for over ten years.
*Show contains language and adult intellectual themes and content Catch their final Chi-Town show TONIGHT on the north side at Portage ARTspace!
Event:
Ironwill Tate Plays Portage ARTspace
Start:
Sept 25, 2012 7:00 pm
End:
Sept 25, 2012 8:00 pm
Updated:
Sept 17, 2012
Venue:
portage ARTspace
Address:
4837 W. Berenice Ave. ,Chicago, IL,60641 ,United States
Please come to portage ARTspace to see our road-trip odyssey Ironwill Tate. The show starts at 7pm at portage ARTspace, 4837 W. Berenice Ave. Chicago, IL 60641
This past weekend, Bat Honey performed at Southside Hub of Production,a cool, Hyde Park art gallery Saturday and Sunday night, where an eclectic audience brought pot luck food and wine to share. Their 1910 space is full of gorgeous wood work and wabi sabi, salvaged furniture. Check out their upcoming events here. They're planning openings and events for artists' month in October, so check out their main site and calendar of events.
We're so excited to offer one of our lucky readers 4 free tickets to the opening performance of Six Stories Tall at 4pm on Saturday, November 10th. Enter right here for your chance to win! *Wait for Rafflecopter to load up right here (if you've gone through RSS feed or are scrolling down the blog and don't see it, click on the actual page title and it should pop right up). Enter like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often. Entries accepted through midnight on 11/2/12. Winner will be announced on Saturday 11/3. Thanks to Adventure Stage for once again providing us with rockin' awesome tickets for our give aways.
Check out ChiIL Mama/ ChiIL Live Shows Past Interview With Director Tom Arvetis right here. We have an exclusive interview with Tom Arvetis, Adventure Stage's Producing Artistic Director, and his infant daughter, Vivian, which we first ran in December of 2011. Check out our video below for insights into balancing creative work and parenting, life after birth with 3 girls under 6, their past productions Walk Two Moons and The Giver. Walk Two Moons was adapted by Tom, who also expounds on "adapting" to fatherhood & life in theatre. We continue our series on "How Creatives Parents and How Parents Create". Click here for our full past feature on Tom Arvetis and Walk Two Moons at Adventure Stage
Adventure Stage Chicago presents the Midwest Premiere of
Marco Ramirez’s Six Stories Tall: a play about mermaids, monsters and spray paint! directed by ASC Producing Artistic Director Tom Arvetis
Nov. 10 – Dec. 13 at Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble St., Chicago.
Adventure Stage Chicago (ASC) at Northwestern University Settlement House is thrilled to present the Midwest Premiere of Six Stories Tall: a play about mermaids, monsters and spray paint!, written by Marco Ramirez and directed by ASC Producing Artistic Director Tom Arvetis.
Pictured top to bottom: Lance Newton, Alyssa Vera Ramos, Alexandar Knapp, Mark Anthony Gonzalez, Sarah Rose Graber, Kevin Brown and Danielle Davis. Production Photos by Johnny Knight.
ABOUT THE PLAY
What Does It Mean To Be A Hero?
Inspired by Hispanic folklore, Six Stories Tallis a storytelling spectacle unlike anything ever seen on our stage. Featuring a live DJ and incorporating a unique mix of narrative influences including comic books, video games, hip-hop music and mythology, the six fantastical tales that comprise this remarkable play create a thrilling, heartfelt journey that families will not soon forget.*Recommended for ages 8 and older (grades 3 and above).
Six Stories Tallis a play of six stories commissioned by Washington D.C.’s The Kennedy Center, where it made its premiere in October 2008 under the title Mermaids, Monsters and the World Painted Purple and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play. One of the stories in the play, “I Am Not Batman,” was part of the 2007 Humana Festival and won the Heideman Award for Best 10-Minute Play before being incorporated into the complete script of Mermaids, Monsters and the World Painted Purple. This Adventure Stage Chicago production marks only the second time the complete play has been staged, and the first time under its new title Six Stories Tall: a play about mermaids, monsters and spray paint!
Tom Arvetis (Director/ASC Producing Artistic Director) says of the play: “The gift that Marco Ramirez has given us with Six Stories Tall is the joy derived from the power of youthful imagination and the conceit that young people can be superheroes, guardians and saviors. Through six uniquely wrought adventures we see a boy save a mermaid, a girl defeat the devil at the crossroads, another boy become Batman, another girl defeat a legendary monster relying on video game skills, a boy and a girl invent a musical language together, and a boy express his love for his grandfather by literally changing the world.“
Please join us for a FREE open rehearsal of Six Stories Talland gain a glimpse into the journey that awaits you as we pull back the curtain for a sneak peek into what you can expect on show day. Refreshments provided. Limited seating - register at 773.342.4141 or www.adventurestage.org.
OPENING DAY CUPCAKE SOCIAL Saturday, Nov. 10, 4:00-8:00pm Celebrate opening day with us and mingle with the cast after the show while enjoying yummy cupcakes from Kyle’s Cupcakery.
*ChiIL Mama's four pack ticket winner can have a show and cupcakes too!!
SETTLEMENT SATURDAY Saturday, Nov. 17, 4:00-8:00pm Settlement Saturday is a day to celebrate our parent organization, the Northwestern University Settlement House, as well as the Settlement's neighbors. This performance includes Spanish supertitles, and the pre- and post-show discussion are conducted in both Spanish and English. The show is followed by a food and game reception in Vittum Theater's Burnside Hall for all audience members to enjoy.
CAST AND CREWCast: Kevin Brown (Drummer/Chorus)
Danielle Davis (Rebecca/Marta Elena/Yennifer/Chorus)
Mikhail Fiksel (DJ/Chorus)
Mark Anthony Gonzalez (Tomas/Stranger/Abuelo/Chorus)
Sarah Rose Graber* (Sirena/Abuela/Lawn Guy/Chorus)
Alexander Knapp (Alfredo/Carbon/Warrior 2/Store Clerk/Chorus)
Lance Newton (Boy/Warrior 1/Chester/Chorus)
Alyssa Vera Ramos (Emilia/Lupe/Chorus)
Sara Sawicki (Understudy) Tony Garcia (Understudy)
Crew:
Director: Tom Arvetis* Asst. Director: Emilio Robles Stage Manager: Phil Claudnic Asst. Stage Manager: Morgan Gire Dramaturg: Brian Bell* Music Direction/Composition/Sound Design: Mikhail Fiksel Movement Director: Stephanie Paul Scenic Design: Brandon Wardell* Lighting Design: Heather Gilbert Costume Design: Jessica Kuehnau Wardell* Props Design: Catherine Campbell Technical Director: Jarrod Bainter
*denotes ASC company or ensemble member
BIOS
Marco Ramirez (Playwright) is a two-time Latino Playwriting Award winner at the Kennedy Center's American College Theater Festival and has had plays produced at The Juilliard School, The Arsht Center, and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays (where he's twice received the Heideman Award). TV writing credits include FX's "Sons of Anarchy." He trained at both NYU and The Juilliard School.
Tom Arvetis (Director) founded Adventure Stage Chicago in 2004 and is responsible for the creative vision of the company, the implementation of all programming, and the supervision of the theater staff. Tom's directing credits for Adventure Stage Chicago include And A Child Shall Lead by Michael Slade, Katrina: The Girl Who Wanted Her Name Back by Jason Tremblay (world premiere), The Blue House by José Cruz González (world premiere), and A Woman Called Truth by Sandra Fenichel Asher. Tom also directed a reading of Katrina: The Girl Who Wanted Her Name Back as part of the 2008 New Visions/New Voices Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Other directing credits include Dragon/Sky by Elizabeth Wong (workshop reading for Silk Road Theatre Project), The Search for Odysseus by Charles Way (The Simple Theatre) andThe City Wears a Slouch Hat by Kenneth Patchen (Wanderlust Productions). Playwriting credits for Adventure Stage include Walk Two Moons (honorable mention in Chicago Theatre Beat's Best Shows of 2011) and I Dream in Blues (dubbed "the sleeper hit of the season" by the Chicago Tribune). Tom was an Ann Shaw Fellow with TYA/USA in 2009 and a finalist for a 2010 Chicago Community Trust Fellowship. He is a board member with the American Alliance for Theatre and Education.
ABOUT ADVENTURE STAGE
Adventure Stage Chicago creates dynamic and transformative theatre for young audiences that activates the imagination, inspires dialogue and strengthens community among families, educators and artists. We strive to become Chicago's premier destination for theatrical productions and programming designed for young people and the adults in their lives; we aim to be leaders in theatre education through professional development workshops, residencies and resources that offer innovative ways to infuse theatre into the classroom; and we seek to cultivate and create challenging new work as well as produce celebrated stories. This is Adventure Stage's ninth season.
Adventure Stage has received numerous honors since its inception in 2004, including:
Recipient of a prestigious Continuing Innovation Stage II grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Selected participant in EmcArts' Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts, a program generously funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Zeta Phi Eta Winifred Ward Award for Outstanding New Children's Theatre Company from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education
Two-time Finalist for the Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theater Award
Participant in the New Visions/New Voices Festival at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Washington D.C.
Four-time Recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence Grant
Adventure Stage Chicago is a program of Northwestern University Settlement House, the oldest continually operating settlement house in Chicago. Throughout its 121-year history, the Settlement has remained committed to providing resources that empower neighbors to overcome the obstacles of poverty. Adventure Stage extends this mission by presenting Chicago's young audiences, educators and families with an affordable artistic experience rooted in performance. Last season, Adventure Stage served over 7,000 students from 85 schools throughout the Chicagoland area and over 2,600 audience members for our weekend performances.
Each Adventure Stage Chicago production presents weekday matinees primarily for school groups, as well as weekend performances for the general public. Every performance includes a post-show audience talkback with the cast. Out of respect for our actors and audience members, children under age 5 are not permitted in the theatre during a performance.
All shows are performed at Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble St., in the heart of Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. Street parking is available, and the theater is close to the Noble St. stop on the #56 Milwaukee bus line and the Division stop on the CTA Blue Line. The theater is wheelchair accessible.
ChiIL Mama's Next Kindie Land CD Multipack Is HERE For You To Enter To Win! a Rafflecopter giveaway
Between now and October 10th, you can win rockin' kindie CDs including our old favs, new kindie tunes hot off the presses, and some CDs so new they haven't even been released yet!! We include loads of award winning musicians the whole family will dig. Entries are accepted nationwide. So enter like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often. We've broken our favs down into two 3 packs and another 5 pack. Congrats to our recent 5 pack winner, Teresa O. of Chicago. Enter to win any or all. Our next 3 CD multi pack winners will be chosen and announced October 10th from a combo of our on line and in person entrants. Live in Chi-town? Swing by and see us at Beat Kitchen's Concerts for Kids Kick Off on 9/30. Spread the word for more chances to win. You can tweet up to once a day for additional entries. Check back with ChiIL Mama for original band video interviews, original show shots and footage, reviews, photo filled recaps and more. One winner will take home all of the following (est $45 value): #1 Orange Sherbet--Delicious Check out their main site right here
Orange Sherbet “...miraculously blended the nearly impossible olio of educational messaging, dazzling musicianship and clever songwriting” -Time Out Chicago Kids
“DELICIOUS is tasty.” -The Rock Father
Orange Sherbet’s new cd Delicious isa tasty, jazzed-up, seventeen-song musical celebration of the joys of growing, preparing, and enjoying nourishing, delicious, local, seasonal meals.
The toe tappin’ tastiness and scrumptious singing served up in Orange Sherbet’s Delicious will have kids dancing at the farmers’ market through all four seasons--clamoring for the taste of parsnips, persimmons, purple kale, and tomatillos! -Vanessa Barrington ~ Author/Blogger/Chef
ChiIL Mama will be giving away a free family 4 pack to EVERY Beat Kitchen Concert for Kids EVERY week, so check back like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often. Spread the word by FB and Twitter for even more chances to enter and win! Entry is easy and winning rocks. We never spam or share info. A new winners' first name/last initial will be announced every Friday, so check here to see if YOU get to rock out for free this week. We will make every effort to reach our winner by e-mail as well. ChiIL Mama will be there for the opening fall festival with our fun Rock Tots Photo Spot (instrument petting zoo and rock star dress up) and we'll have photo and video filled features, reviews and great give aways for you all season. We're also excited to offer one of our lucky readers 4 free tickets to Beat Kitchen's Concerts for Kids Fall kick off festival. Enter right here for your chance to win! *Wait for Rafflecopter to load up right here (if you've gone through RSS feed or are scrolling down the blog and don't see it, click on the actual page title and it should pop right up). Enter like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often. Entries accepted through midnight on 9/27/12. Winner will be announced on Friday. Thanks to Beat Kitchen for once again providing us with 4 weekly concert tickets for our give aways.
ChiIL Mama's back again as media sponsor for another year of weekly kindie rockin' fun for your little folk, punk kin, and banger babies. Beat Kitchen's Concerts for Kids kicks off with a BIG Fall Festival September 30th from 11-3. Then mark your calendars for sweet day shows every Sunday, where you can drink some of the best bloody marys in town and dance with your littles for a song. For the fall festival, we'll be there in person with our infamous Rock Tots Photo Spot and Instrument Petting Zoo! B.Y.O.C. (cameras that is) for some of the cutest photo/video ops. You may have seen ChiIL Mama's Rock Tots tent at Do Division and Burger Fest this summer or Beat Kitchen festivals last fall and winter. Check out our past photo features at the bottom of this post. For just $8, you can rock out for 4 hours, get crafty, punk your hair, paint your face, and have a ton of fun with your birth through 10 year olds. Be there! We'll be bringing you loads of CD give aways, original live show videos and photos, video band interviews, kindie music reviews, and more, year round.
Check out ChiIL Mama's original, video interview with Suzi here. We're particularly stoked for superstar Suzi Shelton at noon, in from NYC, with Chi-Town's own queen of the Kindie scene, Little Miss Ann.
After 7 days on the picket lines, CPS and CTU reached a compromise on the Chicago teachers' strike and classes resumed Wednesday. We still have a long way to go, to create a stellar school system that's fair and fabulous for all neighborhoods. Public support for the teachers was huge. The city had to take notice at the public outcry to fix what's dysfunctional, provide basics, limit over the top standardized testing and stop selling off our schools for private profit. One of my favorite stories about the end of the strike came from my son's 6th grade teacher. When news of the strike's end came on Tuesday, Mr. Z and his wife were at home, doing a happy dance and singing that the strike was over, when they heard a little voice from the other room saying "Boooooo." Their pre-school daughter wasn't quite as elated to be going back to school as her dad was. Our kids had mixed feelings. They were glad to get back to friends and back to school-especially my studious son, Du-Jay, who read, wrote and kept up with school work every day we were out. The kid even took homework to RIOT FEST! I figure that's how the kids of punk parents rebel, eh? Still, we had a great strike break. We spent family time at the free lakefront archery range and the beach, walked the picket lines with the teachers, kept up with reading and educational games, and Sage went to 4 days of camp at Girl Scouts' Journey World. We're very relieved the walk out didn't last for weeks like the last CTU strike in the 80's, which dragged on nearly 20 days. ChiIL Mama will be celebrating the end of the strike with some sweet back to "back to school" features including:
Pinch me I'm dreaming: Back to School With Dream Dinners
Back to School Funky Fun With Gutzy Gear
Back to School Back to You With Kmart
Brief Basics of What We've Won Via CTU:
Chicago Teachers Union members’ determination and your support during the strike forced the Board of Education to agree to:
Hire over 600 additional teachers in Art, Music, Phys Ed and other subjects
Maintain limits on class size, increase funding for smaller classes
Add a parent voice on class size committees
Make textbooks available on the first day of school
Increase racial diversity in hiring at CPS
Lessen the focus on standardized testing – keep the focus on teaching instead of tests
Provide more attention from school Social Workers and Nurses
Increase funding for Special Ed teachers, social workers, psychologists, classroom assistants and counselors in schools with high caseloads.
The strike is not the end of the fight for the schools Chicago’s students deserve. We need a better school day, not just a longer one. We will keep working together to stop the Mayor’s plan to close 100 schools. The Board of Ed will continue starving schools in low income neighborhoods, denying them air conditioning, libraries, playground facilities and resources unless we fight back. We need your help to continue the fight for Educational Justice in Chicago.
We are in this together – for the schools Chicago students deserve.
We are happy to transition back to school and finally settle into a routine. As you know the House of Delegates of the CTU voted to suspend the strike but they didn’t yet vote to approve the contract. Most everyone we heard from expressed great relief that their kids are back in school. There remain different opinions regarding the purpose of the strike and what it signified or didn’t. The press keeps asking who “won” and who “lost?” People have asked what the kids got out of it. These are complicated questions. If nothing else, the events of the past ten days have worked to elevate the discussion around public education in this city and nation, which is a good thing. We think this will prove to be an intangible positive but we don’t think it can be distilled to a “win” or “loss”.
Regarding some of the details, CPS added two extra weeks to the school year this year, so our kids will not have less school than they had last year. Many are happy with that change. We do not know when or if the missed days will be added to the calendar but will let you know as soon as we find out.
Despite some of the wins touted by both sides, RYH still has the same concerns we had two weeks and two years ago.
There is still no sustainable plan to fund education; We would like to help get a state-wide referendum on the ballot in 2014 to ask the public if they want a graduated income tax; We want to look more at TIF reform to see how changes can be made to improve funding to the school
There is still no mechanism to employ democratic decision making in how policies are formed at the district level with our mayoral-appointed school board. We need policy experts, teachers, parents, community leaders, etc. to help shape public education here. For too long in Chicago, decisions have been made in a vacuum. That’s why we’re continuing to work on an elected school board campaign.
We hope you will sign up to help on one of these campaigns this year. We need your help. Consider making adonation to help power our efforts this year. We have a multitude of costs and need support to take trips to Springfield, create materials and signage, run our website and much more. Think about making a $10 or $25 donation to help us fund these campaigns this year and please email us at info@ilraiseyourhand.orgto help join the effort to transform public education.
UPCOMING EVENTS
9/27 (1pm) Last chance for public input on new CPS Arts plan; Art Institute, Ryan Ed. Ctr., 159 E. Monroe 1pm. Free but preregister here.
9/27 - (6pm-8pm) RYH co-sponsoring a discussion with Jonathan Kozol at NW Law School on his new book: “Fire in the Ashes: Twenty Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. He is the author of "Savage Inequalities" and a nationally known voiceo on the perils of corporate education reform.
Northwestern Law School - 375 E. Chicago
9/27 (7pm) Author
Kevin Kumashiro (contributor to CREaTE piece about teacher evaluation) is having a talk on his new book:
Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture.
Teaching Rahm from Right We were embarrassed that Mr. Rahm Emanuel spent 1 million dollars to spin the strike, with an ad staring himself. Think how many school supplies that would have bought in underserved communities!! Check out the full story here on Huffington Post.
