The Runaways

Throughout 2018 The Runaways allotted a portion of our season budget to workshops we called Labs. The purpose of the labs were to incorporate newness into the Runaways fold. New direction and production style, and new people creating, in a collaborative one off environment. We accepted proposals from many sources and shared it among our circles and others to find collaborators. I produced one with Spencer Diedrick and Seraphina Violet Cueller and acted in one produced by Jo Schaeffer and Sarah Patin. I really enjoyed these opportunities to get messy with performance and how it is presented.

photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis

I co-produced The Adventures of Astroman/Ysentia with Jessie McCarty. Written by Daniel Mozurkewich and directed by Gannon Reedy. Another amazing production in concord with Voice of the City in Chicago.

DDADIS 2 in November 2017. Artwork by Gannon Reedy. Photos for DDADIS by Nico Fernandez

For the third show of the 2016/17 season, Logan Berry , Runaways company member, secured a space with High Concept Labs in 2017 as a part of their spring resident artists program. He hoped to workshop Dead Youth, or, The Leaks by Joyelle McSweeney. It was a magnificent poetry play about the anthropocene. Perfectly heady and bonkers and in need of interpretation. I signed on to act in and produce the show. Before the production, I held a reading of Dead Youth in Houston for a small audience, and invited local Houston artists out to enjoy free beer from Karbach and an open mic night following the reading. It went wonderfully and raised us a bit of money for the cause.

First full production meeting for Goddamn Geniuses, by Gannon Reedy and Nate Hanks. Directed by Gannon Reedy, assistant directed by Sarah Patin, set design by Frances McKearn. This production was loud, dumb and magnificent. I produced this production as well, dramaturged and helped finalize the script.

First show of the season, Mary Shelley Sees the Future, was written and directed by Olivia Lilley. It was my third producing stint with The Runaways.

I played Isabella and Jane in this set minimal, movement heavy piece. The performances ran at Outer Space Studios in Chicago during Halloween season, right around when the Cubs won the world series. It was loud.

2016/2017 Season general auditions were difficult to coordinate, but opened the Runaways up to myriad collaborators for the future. Our season was Mary Shelley Sees the Future, Goddamn Geniuses and Dead Youth, or, The Leaks.

DIY Museum was our second big fundraising push of the year. With enthusiasm, Gannon, Logan Berry and Frances McKearn dove into this project and made it a full fledged apocalyptic alternate universe. In the world of the DIY Museum, the Runaways were at the head of a war between the storefront theaters, a hundred years from now. Four Roses sponsored us and we worked with Voice of the City to host the event. This would be the first collaboration with them of many in the next years.

A reading with Olivia LIlley and company. Reading through ‘A Haunting in Pittsburgh,’ part three of Olivia’s memoir-esque series that also featured The Party House.

I was able to direct a piece in DDADIS titled Distress by Logan Dean. It was a wonderful ensemble piece that allowed me to play with directing a ‘devised’ process for the first time and play with more movement than I was used to. It was too dark to capture production stills of the show.

The first Doing Drugs and Dying in Space Ritual was held in the basement of Iridium clothing store in March 2016. Gannon Reedy and I co-produced it and he brought his super special brand of occult/cult weird to the stage. It featured about ten original plays by writers all over the country, but mostly in Chicago. The plays needed to meet specific criteria that forced them to include substances, being in space and death.

The ambiance was unbeatable and it had an absolute air of rock and roll. Half Acre Brewery and many others sponsored the event so we could amp up the appeal of an original play festival in a basement with no bathroom. I think we succeeded in all ways. My first producing project with the Runaways, this event taught me A LOT and would carry me through with passion into the 2016/2017 season.

Photos by Matthew Gregory Hollis

Around January of 2016 Olivia Lilley offered Gannon Reedy and I the reigns of the company. We both accepted and started working on the mission statement and logos and other odds and ends. We landed on this graphic with the help of Kevin Risinger, who created many of our graphics around the time. I hadn’t been with the Runaways for the years of their birth, but I was happy to be there when I was. Gannon, who had helped found the company, truly stepped forward as a strong artistic voice. We shared responsibilities in the company, with my tasks leaning more towards the producing and management of our productions, for a little longer than two years.

This particularly buff arm is brought to you during rehearsals for The Party House. Olivia and I worked closely together throughout the process.

For a few months in the Summer of 2015 leading up to the production, I worked with new collaborator Olivia Lilley on constructing her story of The Party House, wherein I woudl portray her. She worked on the script that verified her personal experiences in 2009, and we workshopped the piece in a real house with an amazing ensemble and choreographer, until its presentation in September 2015. It was a long run and an experience the likes of which will be burned into the memories of everyone it touched. After this show, I joined The Runaways as a company member.

This was my first project with collaborator Olivia Lilley, and my first project with The Runaways Lab Theater. She found me at Salonathon and gave me a beautifully strange and improvised audition for the production of Red Death, an adaptation of the French translation of Phantom of the Opera. I was cast as ballerina Lil James and did a lot of movement work with fellow ballerina Shaina Schrooten, as well as choreographer Cheryl Nowlin. The rehearsal process was collaborative and focused, and we performed in the creepy basement of The Chopin theatre in Chicago IL.