PRODUCTION HISTORY
To Kill a Teenager, 2010
2009/10 Season
ENCOUNTER CULTURE, A SERIES OF PUBLIC PERFORMANCES
June-July 2009
A performance of individual and group micro-performances encompassing movement in direct response to their immediate environment such as audience and location. The youth explored repetition as a pathway to ritual and ceremony through movement in space and place. Locations: The Art Institute of Chicago sculpture gardens; the Crown Fountain and the Wrigley Square and Millennium Park Monument at Millennium Park; various lines on the EL train and numerous locations in Chicago’s downtown area.
TO KILL A TEENAGER, SEVEN SINS OF A JUVENILE MIND
January 9-Feb 6, 2010
A free-form ensemble production featuring vignettes, monologues and songs. Free Street youth explored the emotional landscape of their age group in an attempt to identify behaviors leading to violence. Through rigorous workshops, they were able to map the challenges in transitioning from youth to adult. The youth identified these challenges as the contemporary seven deadly sins of their generation: Emotional Driving; Suicidal Pride; Sacrificing Identity to Ease Pain; Striving for Perfection; Being a Validation Junky; Assuming; Invincibility, and; Thinking Life is Elsewhere. Performed at Free Street Theater.
ABE’S IN A BAD WAY
March 20-April 10, 2010
An ensemble production immersed in the last moments of Abraham Lincoln’s life depicting Lincoln going through five stages of grief in his final moments: shock, anger, bargaining, loneliness and acceptance. Based on the youth’s explorations on Lincoln’s mental depression, the difficulties facing the fragmented nation he was elected to preserve and the influence of his words. The youth created and performed the play within a string-based musical installation they invented. Performed at Free Street Theater.
PERFECT SON BOON, A CULTURAL EMBASSIES PRODUCTION IN THAILAND
April 19 – May 6, 2010
In collaboration with the Makhampom Theater of Chiang Dao, youth and staff from both companies and created an original performance that toured smaller communities in the Chiang Dao and Chiang Mai province area. Together with the Thai youth they chose “Perfection” as the theme to base their artistic exchange. The final production built around the ideas of perfection in five scenes, performed in both English and Thai. Both youth groups also created original music using Thai tonal structures with found instruments.
2008/09 Season
JUXTAPOSE, A SERIES OF PUBLIC PERFORMANCES
June-July 2008
Free Street’s summer youth artists performed a series of movements in opposite response to their immediate environments. Site-specific performances saw the youth form a perfect square in the daytime crowd of Daley Plaza, or introducing spectacle into public spaces. Locations: The James R. Thompson Center; Daley Plaza; Millennium Park; various lines on the EL train and numerous locations in Chicago’s downtown area.
SUB-PRIME YOUTH
January 24-March 21, 2009
An ensemble play created by Free Street youth in response to the crumbling communities around them. Based on their real life experiences and research on events leading up to the housing market crash and its impact on immigrant communities, this play is a story about Mexican-American family that deals with the loss of their home and the foreclosure of the American Dream. Performed at Free Street Theater.
STIRRED
April 18-May 19, 2009
An ensemble play based on detailed explorations on the Civil Rights Movement, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, with the play centering on the history of the U.S. education system and the academic disenfranchisement that students of color have faced dating as far back as slavery. Performed at Free Street Theater.
