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NOW PLAYING!
The following two shows are currently running at the ImprovOlympic Theater. I created and directed both. One is scripted, the other is improvised. Both run on Saturdays. I will have a more detailed and personalized description for each soon enough. For now, click below to read their respective press releases.
Whirled News Tonight presents Newspeak, an improvised satire based on newspaper articles.
Show promise to be fair, balanced and litigation-free.
Sept. 1, 2003??. The Argos Agency is proud to announce its newest improvised production, Whirled News Tonight Presents Newspeak. The show based on newspaper and magazine articles submitted by audience members opens Saturday, September 6th at 8pm at the ImprovOlympic Theater located at 3541 North Clark.
Newspeak is the first production for the Whirled News Tonight team and strives to not only provide a satirical turn on current events, but to provide another, human, point of view of those stories.
When the audience arrives they will be brought to a table with several local and national publications where they can cut out any articles they are interested in and tack them onto several bulletin boards onstage. The cast will randomly choose articles on which to base their improvisation. Whirled News Tonight is Marla Caceres, Alex Eilhauer, John P. Glynn, Sarah Haskins, Jordan Klepper, Arnie Niekamp, Eddie Pina, Steve Waltien, Shane Wilson, Matt Young. The show was created by and directed by Jason R. Chin.
Whirled News Tonight presents Newspeak runs on Saturdays @ 8pm at the ImprovOlympic Theater. Tickets are $12.
The Chicago Reader says this about WNT:
The current incarnation of director Jason R. Chin’s Argos Agency is smart. On the night I attended this show, based on audience contributions of news stories, a sketch involving Bipedal Locomotion Enterprises would have taken a prize for vocabulary alone. The ten-member ensemble also makes casual references to Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and William Golding. And how many twentysomethings can do an accurate Alfred Hitchcock impression extempore?
Instead of going for the broad and vulgar, these folks more often than opt for the microcosmic. A patriarchal defense of polygamy is transformed into a wife lamenting the responsibilities of having multiple husbands. A report about terrorists plotting via Internet cafes sparks visions of subversive activities impeded by spam, pop-ups, and IMing.
The players exhibit a genuine rapport; articulate dialogue unfolds logically, swiftly, and concisely. And despite the news whirling just outside ImprovOlympic on Saturday night, the Cubbies were not allowed to intrude on the action until the appropriate moment.
A Halloween Show Spoofing Romance, Religion and Other Urban Legends
October 1, 2003--. The Argos Agency is proud to announce a new kind of Halloween show. Free Candy! A Halloween Show for Adults premieres at the ImprovOlympic Theater this Saturday at 10:30pm. The vignette-based show satirizes relationships, religion and urban legends and includes several rollicking dance numbers!
For the past five years, audiences and critics have enjoyed the Argos Agency productions of Thriller Theater, this year we offer a different type of show. Eschewing pop-culture spoofs, Free Candy! takes direct aim at modern relationships, urban legends and at fundamentalist religion as espoused by Jack Chick religious tracts.
Jack Chick religious tracts are popular pieces of propaganda handed out in public places in an effort to convert the unwashed to this fundamentalist branch of Christianity. Free Candy has taken the liberty of transferring several of the tracts to the stage without altering a word. With their condemnation of everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Halloween itself (all the participants go to Hell), these vignettes are their own genre of horror. Audience members receive their own Jack Chick tract and a selection of candy.
Free Candy! A Halloween Show for Adults was written and directed by Jason R. Chin.
Free Candy!
A Halloween Show for Adults
Saturdays @ 10:30pm
(special showing on Friday, Oct. 31st & Nov. 1st)
Tickets are $13
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