Following its hit world premiere of The Spin, written and directed by Spenser Davis, Interrobang Theatre Project is pleased to announce additional online programming for its Eleventh Season: Off The Record, exploring what happens when the world stops and life becomes virtual.
This winter, Interrobang will stream archival footage of its Jeff Award-nominated one-man drama Here Lies Henry by Daniel MacIvor, newly staged by Artistic Producer Elana Elyce* and featuring Scott Sawa. The revival of ITP’s very first production was shuttered last winter by the COVID-19 pandemic. ITP’s 2020-21 season will conclude next summer with Nostomania, a world premiere commission about the agony of missing home by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace, co-directed by Managing Artistic Director Georgette Verdin and Artistic Producer Elana Elyce.
Interrobang is also pleased to welcome two new artistic associates: Matthew Martinez Hannon* and LaVisa Angela Williams*.
Comments Artistic Director Georgette Verdin, “We might be tethered to our computer screens, but we still have meaningful stories to tell. We’ll shine light on the quiet whispers, sneaky texts and secret rendezvous. We believe the truth is told when you think the mic is muted, so we’re canceling the mute button. Welcome to Season 11.”
Here Lies Henry and Nostomania will stream via BroadwayWorld. Tickets for Here Lies Henry go on sale Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at interrobangtheatreproject.org. Tickets for Nostomania will go on sale at a later date.
ITP is also pleased to offer The Uncharted Series, featuring exclusive content for monthly members via Patreon. Watch the ensemble try on new identities, share hidden gems and explore new mediums all while wearing the same pajamas since Christmas! For additional information and membership levels, visit patreon.com/interrobangtheatreproject.
*Denotes Interrobang Theatre Project Ensemble Member or Artistic Associate.
Interrobang Theatre Project’s 2020-21 Season includes:
February 5 – 25, 2021
HERE LIES HENRY
- By Daniel MacIvor
- Directed by Artistic Producer Elana Elyce
Henry's got a lot he has to tell you, he just can't guarantee that it's all true. In the spotlight, with only the audience as his witness, Henry grapples with his choices and failures in a scramble to make sense of his life before it's too late. Daniel MacIvor's gripping one-man play offers a provocative take on love, death, beauty, truth, and of course, good old-fashioned lying.
Summer 2020
NOSTOMANIA – World Premiere!
- By Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace
- Co-directed by Managing Artistic Director Georgette Verdin and Artistic Producer Elana Elyce
A one creature oceanic meditation on home and exile at the edge of the continental shelf, between a 12-year-old girl and a 500-year-old Greenland shark.
About the Artists
Daniel MacIvor (Playwright, Here Lies Henry) is originally from Cape Breton and currently divides his time between Toronto and Avondale, Nova Scotia. Daniel has written numerous award-winning theatre productions and his work has been translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, German and Japanese. Daniel received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for his collection of plays I Still Love You and in 2008 he was awarded the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre. He is also the recipient of an Obie Award and a GLAAD Award for In On It, as well as a Canadian Screen Award for his feature film script Weirdos.
Elana Elyce (Director, Here Lies Henry; Co-Director, Nostomani) first worked with Interrobang in 2011, appearing in The Argument by Gregory Moss. She joined staff as producer for the 2012 production of Here Lies Henry by Daniel MacIvor and went on to produce the first two productions of Season 3. Originally from Detroit, she began teaching and directing while still a teenager with Detroit’s Summer Youth Arts program, working with teens and young adults, and did so for fifteen years in various organizations, schools and camps. Within that time, opportunities to direct adults began with a Detroit production of A Son Come Home by Ed Bullins with Urban Spirit Theatre Company. Since being in Chicago, she has directed multiple readings and short plays, as well as a critically acclaimed production of The Vagina Monologues with Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre in Evanston. Elana also acts, writes and coaches, is a company member with The House Theatre of Chicago and is the Business Manager of The Chicago Inclusion Project. www.elanaelyce.net
Scott Sawa (Henry, Here Lies Henry) is overjoyed that ITP is releasing this video presentation of our play, after a shortened run due to Covid. Scott's not a braggart, so he won't mention he was nominated for a Non-Equity Jeff Award for Solo Performance for this role. Recent work includes ITP’s The Spin. In the before times, his favorite roles were Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret (Cowardly Scarecrow); George/Valentina (u/s) in Casa Valentina, and Bob Neal in Ten Dollar House (Pride Films & Plays). Other favorites: Poseidon, Bewildered! (Hell in a Handbag); Hey! Dancin! Hey! Musical! (Factory); Nightmare in Paradise, Fight Night, The Most Ado: A Party Play (Nothing Special). TV/Web: Chicago Fire, RedLine to Howard. Scott is currently preparing a podcast, “You’re On In Five! The Art of Understudying”, co-hosted with ITP icon Elana Elyce, featuring conversations with Chicago actors about their experiences and technique as understudies, to be released in early 2021. www.ScottSawa.com
Ismail Khalidi’s (Playwright, Nostomania) plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater ‘05), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre ‘10), Foot (Teatro Amal ‘16), Sabra Falling (Pangea ‘17) and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre ’18). He has co-adapted two novels for the stage with Naomi Wallace; Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre ‘18) and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville ‘19). Khalidi co-edited Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG ‘15) and his writing has been featured in American Theatre Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Mizna, Guernica, The Dramatist and ReMezcla. Khalidi holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is currently a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater.
Naomi Wallace (Playwright, Nostomania) is a playwright from Kentucky. Her plays—which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and the Middle East—include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Vision of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party, The Liquid Plain and Night is a Room. Her stage adaptation of William Wharton’s novel Birdy was produced on the West End in London. In 2009, One Flea Spare was incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater, the Comédie- Francaise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in 300 years. Films: Lawn Dogs, The War Boys, Flying Blind (co-written with Bruce McLeod). Awards: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award, and the 2012 Horton Foote Award for most promising new American play. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Wallace received the inaugural Windham Campbell prize for drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Wallace is presently under commission by The Public Theater and Birmingham Repertory, UK.
Signature Theater, the Off Broadway company that has historically mounted a season of plays, produced three of Wallace's plays in 2014-2015, including the world premiere of Night is a Room.
Georgette Verdin (Co-Director, Nostomania) has been working with ITP since 2014. She is a freelance director, theater & speech educator and arts integration specialist. She was the founding theater teacher at Polaris Charter Academy, an Expeditionary Learning School in West Humboldt Park, where she taught full-time for eight years. Recent directing credits include Tribes (Nina Raine) at Western Michigan University, Jeff recommended productions of Out of Love (U.S. premiere, Elinor Cook), Grace and Recent Tragic Events (Craig Wright) and Time Stands Still (Donald Margulies), as well as the 2013 & 2016 Yale Drama Series winners Still (Jen Silverman) and Utility (Emily Schwend). Georgette has also worked with Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, Facility Theatre and Chicago Dramatists, among others. Georgette holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Performance from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA and a Master in Directing from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She is an associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
New Artistic Associates
LaVisa Angela Williams has been designing costumes in Chicago for the last 10 years and has a variety of categories under her belt including short film and photoshoots. You can also find her designing clothing for fashion editorials and helping young actors with styling for print work. Her favorite genres to design include contemporary, fantasy and sci-fi. Outside of fabric, her favorite design materials are leather, metal, heat plastics and foam. Though designing, sewing and rigging produce great works, they also produce fun byproducts! LaVisa also takes these fun cuttings and found objects and combines them into mixed media art boxes and card making kits! These are designed as meditative self-care for busy creatives and non-artists! Portfolio: LaVisaWilliams.com.
Art Boxes: ArguablyAdulting.com.
Matthew Martinez Hannon is overjoyed to be joining Interrobang Theatre Project as an Artistic Associate in 2021 after appearing in ITP’s The Spin and Teach Me during 2020. A native of San Diego, California, Matthew recently graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University's MFA Acting program. He previously studied at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy, and earned his BA (double majoring in Theater & Performance Studies and Psychology) from University of California, Berkeley. He has acted, directed, produced and taught regionally in Southern and Northern California, as well as Chicago. Currently residing in Chicago, Matthew is embarrassingly guided by Mariah Carey and proudly represented by DDO Artists Agency.
About Interrobang Theatre Project
The recipient of 2019's Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre award, Interrobang Theatre Project, now in its eleventh season and under the artistic leadership of Georgette Verdin, has been hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a “company to watch” and by Time Out Chicago as “one of Chicago’s most promising young theatre companies.” Chris Jones called Foxfinder, which kicked off Interrobang’s 2017-18 season, “...a ripping good yarn,” earning it 3.5 stars from the Chicago Tribune. Foxfinder also garnered seven non-Equity Jeff Awards nominations including Best Director and Production of a Play, and took home two awards for Best Original Music and Set Design. The company also earned seven non-Equity Jeff Nominations for their seventh season, including Best Director, Production of a Play, Solo Performance and acting nominations for Lead Actor, Actress (win) and Actor in a Supporting Role (win). Productions have included the world premiere of Calamity West’s Ibsen is Dead (Jeff Recommended), the Jeff Recommended Here Lies Henry, The Pitchfork Disney, Orange Flower Water, Recent Tragic Events, The North Pool, The Amish Project, Falling, Grace, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, I Call My Brothers and Out of Love.
What’s an interrobang?
An interrobang is the combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, joining the Latin for “question” (interro) with a proofreading term for “exclamation” (bang). Through the plays we produce, Interrobang Theatre Project aims to pose worthwhile and exciting questions which challenge our understanding and assumptions of who we are and the world in which we live.
For more information, please visit interrobangtheatreproject.org.