CLICK PHOTO TO SEE MORE PRODUTION PHOTOS


To Kill a Teenager: seven sins of the juvenile mind: EXTENDED thru FEBRUARY 27!
Written and Performed by young artists in the Free Street Theater ensemble
Directed and Facilitated by Ron Bieganski  


Opens Sat. Jan. 9  at   2pm                        
Runs January 9 – February 27 (EXTENDED!)
Fridays 7pm and Saturdays 2pm

At Free Street Theater                                                          
1419 W. Blackhawk Ave. on the 3rd Floor at Pulaski Park               
Chicago Illinois 60642                                     
(3 blocks from Division Blue line.  Free street parking)

Click link to BUY TICKETS ONLINE for To Kill a Teenager
$15 General , $5 Students, or pay what you can
(teens and older due to gunplay, razor blood, and misuse of powertools.)
Reservations (773) 772-7248

   

To Kill a Teenager: seven sins of the juvenile mind explores the emotional minefield of adolescence, untangling seven contemporary challenges to becoming adult.  The intense emotional and physical performance emerges from a hellbox of violence, social pressure, anxiety, and cynicism.  [Definition:  Hellbox - street slang for a drawer that opens up to a mess of different things.]

To Kill a Teenager presents the contemporary deadly sins of emotional driving, suicidal pride, sacrificing identity to ease pain, striving for perfection, being a validation junky, assuming invincibility, and thinking life is elsewhere.

Every day Chicago teens appear in the news as victims and perpetrators of senseless violence.  This week, there is news of a 16 year old driving over another teen over a fight about a girl, and three Fenger High School students being arrested for the brutal murder of Derrion Albert in a mob brawl, Last school year, 34 Chicago teens were killed and another 290 were shot.

To Kill a Teenager is a creative psychological exploration of the underlying sins of the developing juvenile mind leading to such catastrophic behavior. 

Cast: Ashley Echevarria, Olawunmi Faleti, Giovanni Gonzalez, Karina Gonzalez, Ashley Johnson, Mark Poore, Celina Rivera, Petra Samardzija
Playwright: The Free Street Ensemble
Director: Ron Bieganski

All performances will have a post-show discussion with the artists. There will be free child care for Sat. Jan. 16 performance at 2 pm.  A special benefit performance will be held on Fri. Jan. 29 at 7 pm for the ensemble’s tour to Thailand to collaborate with Makhampon Theater in Chaing Dao.  The collaboration, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, will result in performances in Chaing Mai and Bangkok in April 2010.


photo: Anita Evans - more production photos

Thanks to: Lester & Hope Abelson Fund for the Performing Arts, Alphawood Foundation, After School Matters, CCAP/Urban Missions, CityArts Program 2 grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, COP from the Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Field Foundation of Illinois, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, The Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, Illinois Humanities Council, Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation, The John D. and Cathrine T. MacArthur Foundation, MacArthur Fund for the Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Polk Bros Foundation, Theatre Communications Group, Woods Funds of Chicago.

Free Street is in residency at Pulaski Park through the Chicago Park District’s Arts Partners in Residence program which unites artists and communities in Chicago’s parks.