THEATRE Y HAS A NEW HOME

4546 N. Western Ave.

 CELEBRATE WITH US!

SEPTEMBER 22ND AT 7PM

To celebrate our new home, our recent travels, our amazing community, and the turning of the seasons, we’re throwing a party!  

Join us for an evening of curated performances featuring some of Chicago's most talented artists, Gin, cider, pies, seasonal cocktails, raffle tickets and other fall favorites. 

BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE

                        THEATRE Y IS THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE A NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH RED TAPE THEATRE

                                                            AT 4546 N. WESTERN AVE. IN LINCOLN SQUARE

The 3300 Square Foot Black Box Performance Space Will Host Our Next Ensemble Show, Federico García Lorca’s YERMA, October 27th Through December 10th. YERMA is a Co-Production with Red Tape Theatre. YERMA is a New Translation From the Spanish by Theatre Y Ensemble Member Héctor Álvarez, Directed by Red Tape Theatre’s Artistic Director Max Truax, and Featuring the Theatre Y Ensemble. The New Space Will Host the Upcoming Season Programming for Both Companies.

You've joined in our work. You've joined in our conversations. You've joined us next door and spaces abroad.  We are so pleased now to welcome you to our new home at 4546 N. Western Ave.

These three storefronts are 3,300-square feet and offer a flexible black box performance area with an audience capacity of up to 75 seats, a spacious lobby, and rehearsal space for both Theatre Y and Red Tape Theatre to utilize. Located in the heart of Chicago’s incredible Lincoln Square neighborhood, our new home will host both companies’ upcoming seasons, as well as staged readings, off-night and late night shows, classes, and other programming and events for the community at large.

Our move to the New Space follows the biggest year yet in Theatre Y’s ten year history which saw the formation of the Theatre Y Ensemble, a production of Macbeth, its first dance piece Fatelessness, a performance of The Ghoul Exhibition at Rhinofest, a 500 mile journey across Spain’s Camino de Santiago to perform its one man show An Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences (Underneath the Lintel) and the development of its first fully devised work to be premiered in 2018.

The move into this New Space also coincides with Theatre Y’s transition toward a Free Theatre Movement over the next few years in partnership with Red Tape Theatre. More announcements about Theatre Y’s upcoming season will be coming soon! 

Theatre Y Proudly Presents

Federico García Lorca's

YERMA

October 27 - December 10, 2017

Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:30pm / Sundays @ 4pm  at Theatre Y's NEW HOME-  4546 N. Western, Chicago

Directed by Max Truax, with original Music by Jeff Award winning composer Nicholas Tonozzi, and a new adaptation from the Spanish by Theatre Y Ensemble Member Héctor Álvarez.  

The second of Lorca’s three rural tragedies, Yerma is the story of a woman driven to extremes by her desperate desire to have a child. Trapped in a passionless marriage with a husband who shows no interest in having children, her maternal longing becomes an obsession. Like much of Lorca’s other work, the play casts a critical eye upon what he called “the grotesque treatment of women” and the repression of female sexual desire.   In Max Truax's production, the barrenness of Yerma’s marriage reduces her home to a prison, under the controlling force of the male gaze, personified by an ever-present male chorus. This is the "tragic poem" of a woman stretched between the burden of her family's honor and an all-consuming appetite she can't name or hold. With much of Lorca’s poems performed as songs with original music by Nicholas Tonozzi, Theatre Y’s new immersive staging unearths the agony and anguish that propel Yerma toward her tragic fate. 

Federico García Lorca (Poet/ Playwright/ Freedom Fighter) was born on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, Spain. Considered one of Spain's greatest poets and dramatists, Lorca went to Madrid in 1919 where he entered the Residencia de Estudiantes, or residence of scholars. While at the residence, he met and befriended artist Salvador Dali around 1921. Dali would later design the scenery for the Barcelona production of Lorca's play Mariana Pineda (1927).  Lorca's two most successful poetry collections were Canciones (Songs), published in 1927, and Romancero gitano (the Gypsy Ballads), published in 1928. Romancero gitano was especially daring for the time with its exploration of sexual themes and made Lorca a celebrity in the literary world. In the 1930s, Lorca spent much of his time working on plays, including a folk drama trilogy Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) in 1933, Yerma in 1934, and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) in 1936.    The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 and Lorca found himself caught in the middle of the conflict.  He was shot without trial by supporters of General Francisco Franco on August 19 or 20, 1936, in Granada.

Max Truax (Director):  Max is the Artistic Director of Red Tape Theatre, where he has directed A Hedda Gabler and Brand.  He previously served as Artistic Director of Oracle Productions until 2016, where he directed No Beast So Fierce, The President, The Mother, The Sandman, Woyzeck, The Ghost Sonata and Termen Vox Machina. His production of The Mother received several Jeff Awards, including awards for Best Production and Best Ensemble.  Max has been a Resident Director at Trap Door Theatre since 2008, where he has directed No Matter How Hard We Try, The Balcony, They Are Dying Out, Hamletmachine, A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians, and No Darkness Round My Stone. His production of A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians performed at the Fun Underground Festival in Arad, Romania and at the Bagatela Theatre in Krakow, Poland. Max studied visual art, performance art, and post-modern choreography at Oberlin College, and he received his MFA in Theatre Directing from California Institute of the Arts.

Nicholas Tonozzi (Composer & Music Director):  Nicholas is a composer and music director based in Chicago as well as an active singer.   He was awarded the 2014 Joseph Jefferson Non-Equity Award for Original Music in a Play for his work on The Mother with Oracle Productions. He was honored with a second Jeff Award in 2015 for his original music in The Jungle also at Oracle.  He earned a second nomination in the same category that year for Oracle’s production of Circle Machine.  In 2014, Mr. Tonozzi worked as music director and composer for Trap Door Theater’s production of Regarding the Just which enjoyed a run in Chicago before touring in and around Paris, France.  This was Tonozzi’s second show featured in Paris following in the footsteps of Trap Door’s production of  Me Too, I am Catherine Deneuve.  Other credits include No Beast So Fierce, Hamlet Machine, Twelve Ophelias, and Anger/Fly.  Nicholas, a tenor, may currently be heard singing as a cantor, chorister, and soloist with the Schola Cantorum Cathedralis of Holy Name Cathedral.  Tonozzi returns to the Ravinia Festival in 2017 for their Lord of the Rings movie/concert series.

Katie Stimpson (Actor/ Yerma):  After briefly pursuing a degree in anthropology Katie ended up with an eclectic theatrical training from a Buddhist college, Naropa University, where her studies included Lecoq physical theater and ritual theater, Tibetan movement and meditation practices, Afro-modern dance and ballet, and vocal training from the Roy Hart Theatre.  Her experience as a whole, combined with extensive travel and continuing studies in meditation post-graduation, has largely been a process of letting go of ego and surrendering to play.  She is humbled and grateful to be a part of the Theatre Y ensemble - a company that is deeply spiritual and relentlessly committed to beauty.   Katie has previously worked with Theatre Y as Irina in 3 Sisters and as a "terrifying yet sympathetic Lady Macbeth" (Alfred Thomas,  City Desk 400) in Macbeth: Fear in the Night.  She is honored to portray Lorca's Yerma.