Join us this fall for In Good Company, a site-specific theater performance traveling to Houston, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, before returning to CHICAGO (Oct. 18-Nov. 9). Designed as an immersive walk through city streets, the performance invites you to reflect on community, democracy, and belonging—one step at a time.

FREE and open to the public.  PLEASE RSVP
Performance Schedule: October 18-November 9, 2025
Saturday & Sundays 3pm-7pm
Location: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623
Includes a meal and a 3-mile walk around the neighborhood.

Please bring some bread to share!

 


Chicago, IL — Beginning Saturday, October 18th, 2025, and running Saturdays and Sundays through November 9th, 2025, Chicagoans are invited to experience In Good Company, a theatrical walking performance. The walks will each begin at 3PM at Theatre Y (3611 W. Cermak) and travel by foot through the neighborhood, returning to Theatre Y around 6PM for a FREE meal together. This performance and meal is entirely free, however the audience is invited to bring bread and/or fruit to share. Each performance will conclude around 7pm.

In Good Company is an immersive, site-specific performance that blends theater, dance, music, and public dialogue. It invites audiences to reflect on what it means to be seen, heard, and connected in today’s divided world. With Chicago as both backdrop and character, the piece asks: When we see the world differently, how do we still move forward together? How do we rehearse and embody solidarity?

 


The event is created and performed by Theatre Y's Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine, Dramaturg Evan Hill, Ensemble Member Eric K. Roberts, rapper and Swerve curator The Law of HUEY, Chicago's First Youth Poet Loreate E'mon Lauren, and writer/political scientist Bryan Brickner.

Theatre Y is a Chicago-based ensemble known for its bold, participatory productions that center community engagement and radical inclusion. In Good Company features local dancers, musicians, and singers, in collaboration with North Lawndale’s own Marvin Tate, Music Inc, and Stone Temple Church. It is presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Germany’s international cultural institute, which promotes cross-cultural dialogue, artistic exchange, and global understanding through partnerships and programming around the world.


The project features a collaboration with Helgard Haug of the internationally renowned performance collective Rimini Protokoll (Berlin), known for radically expanding the possibilities of theater in public space.

What if democracy isn’t just a system—but a shared movement forward? In Good Company is a walking theater production that invites audiences to rediscover civic imagination, neighborliness, and common ground. Through immersive storytelling, live performance, and shared reflection, this one-of-a-kind event transforms city streets into a stage for community.


Step into an unexpected journey through your city—where the familiar becomes extraordinary and strangers become companions. In Good Company is more than just a walk: it’s a civic ritual, a performance, and a moment to ask what it means to move forward together, despite our differences.

All performances are FREE to the public thanks to members who donate as little as $5/month ($60/year). We welcome DONATIONS and MEMBERS!

 


About Theatre Y:
Theatre Y is a Chicago-based international incubator that creates connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration. Since 2006, Theatre Y has been a point of convergence for diverse activisms, and all of the uncomfortable conversations that happen as a result. Artistic director Melissa Lorraine and the Theatre Y ensemble are committed to continuously re-thinking the practice of theater as a tool of liberation and a revolutionary practice, bringing Theatre Y to venues ranging from La MaMa’s historical theater to Illinois prisons. Newly and permanently relocated to the West Side (on the border of North Lawndale and Little Village), Theatre Y, now in its 19th year of experimental productions, challenging international content, and a member-based FREE theater model, occupies a unique place in Chicago's theater community. More about our history and mission.


POET / WRITER / PERFORMERS

The Law of HUEY

Eric K. Roberts

E’mon Lauren

Melissa Lorraine

Bryan Brickner


PRODUCTION TEAM:

Melissa Lorraine - Director/Performer (she/her): Theatre Y Co-Founding Artistic Director - Born in France, graduating from Northern Illinois University with a B.F.A. in acting, Lorraine became a company member of Studio K in Budapest, Hungary. Co-founding Theatre Y with now deceased Director Christopher Markle. Premiered the English language version of Transylvanian writer András Visky’s JULIET with over two hundred performances worldwide. Starred in Visky’s I KILLED MY MOTHER, earning a Chicago’s Best Actress Orgie Award. Lauded by The Chicago Reader for turning even an “overwritten” and “implausible script” into “probing, harrowing, hallucinogenic truth,” for her Directorial work on VINCENT RIVER. In 2013 Lorraine directed the world premiere of THE BINDING, a collaboration between Theatre Y and two acclaimed Serbian/Hungarian choreographers, which was a cover feature of the Chicago Reader. Collaborating with Georges Bigot for one year (2015-16), Lorraine developed the Theatre Y Ensemble of 12 actors, according to the traditions of the Theatre du Soleil. She now leads this ensemble to discover a common language and a new way to work, searching for a way to make theater without the “dictator”. In 2018 she began to research Movement Therapy for Trauma Rehabilitation, and works with men serving life sentences at Stateville Correctional Center towards reinstating parole in Illinois.

Evan Hill - Dramaturg: Evan is a dramaturg, researcher, educator, and theater-maker. He is the resident dramaturg of Chicago’s Theatre Y, with whom he has conceived and created several new works, such as The Camino Project and Laughing Song. He has served as associate editor of Yale’s journal Theater. Evan holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, where he is completing his DFA.  His research brings theories of social innovation and creative cognition to examine experimental comic practices and avant-garde humor from the late 19th century to the present. Artistically, he is collaborating with Theatre Y, the Goethe Institute, and Helgard Haug of Germany's Rimini Protokoll to create Double Exposure: a multi-city project interrogating solidarity as an embodied, time-based social practice across ideological divides.  He currently teaches theater history and dramaturgy at Rollins College.


Kimberly A. Sutton - Sound Designer: Kimberly is a sound artist, cellist, and sound designer living in Chicago, Illinois. Her installations and sound design work explore the connections between the physical properties of sound and the cultural signifiers of its content. As a cellist her practice is improvisatory and explores the possibilities of expression and reflection through sound and the immediacy of a meditational connection to her instrument. Recent installations have been shown at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the Chicago Home Theater Festival. She has performed at Experimental Sound Studio, the Hideout and the Empty Bottle in Chicago, Yoshi’s in Oakland, Detroit Contemporary, and the Technosonics Festival at the University of Virginia. She has a BA in Political Science and Music from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recorded Media from Mills College.

Christophe Preissing - 

Makoto Yamaguchi - Assistant to Lighting: Makoto Yamaguchi was born and grew up in Japan. He is a writer, director, and performer. He became interested in acting and took some minor roles in TVs and films in his native country. When he was in a touring theater troupe, he was introduced to American method acting and decided to cross the ocean to learn theater art here. He attended the City College of New York and immersed himself in all different kinds of artistic expressions as well as theater. He has become interested in the physical theater of Jerzy Grotowski and primitive tribal rituals and has been developing a new form of performance called, “Jazz Theater.” He recently performed a solo piece called, HAMLET IN JAZZ, in the Elgin Fringe Festival and often presents his experimentation at the Friday Night Swerve in Theatre Y. He is very grateful to be able to work with all the people in this wonderful Chicago theater and hopes to continue working there.  

For press inquiries, interviews, or more information, please contact:

Managing Director Deena Eichhorn: 316-640-4435 / deenaeichhorn@theatre-y.com
Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine: 773-908-2248 / melissalorraine@theatre-y.com
info@theatre-y.com / www.theatre-y.com