Current Season

The Baghdad Gentlemen’s Club

Set during the high-stakes reality of the Iraqi Civil War in late 2005 and early 2006, this staged reading follows a network news team when, one night, their translator must leave the country and a new translator is assigned to them. Discover how the team is impacted by this shift, and what we learn about each one of them.

Terry Moran is an American independent journalist and former ABC News Correspondent. Throughout his distinguished career at ABC, Moran served as Senior National Correspondent, Chief Foreign Correspondent, co-anchor of Nightline, and Chief White House Correspondent, spending decades reporting from the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court, national campaign trails, and global frontlines. He is the founder of Real Patriotism, an independent media platform where he explores the stories, struggles, and soul of American democracy during a time when truth itself is clouded with uncertainty. He also hosts the Real Patriot podcast on YouTube. Alongside his platform, you can find Moran posting about politics, his kids’ travel sports, Chicago teams, and favorite Bob Dylan songs on Substack, Instagram, X, Threads, and Bluesky. 

In a genre-bending new production, Manual Cinema presents a triptych of stories about technology. In a medieval monastery, a monk is tormented by a meme-like demon; in 1990’s Seattle, a woman discovers a strange new dating service; and in a post-apocalyptic future, a cyborg battles AI bots to save the last remnants of human language. Told almost entirely without dialogue, and using Manual Cinema’s beguiling pastiche of shadow puppetry, live feed video, and original music, this tour-de-force production explores the fight to be human in a digital age.

Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award-winning performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen.

Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and live music, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.

The company was awarded an Emmy in 2017 for “The Forger,” a video created for The New York Times and named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune. Their shadow puppet animations were featured in the 2021 film remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.

Recent productions include Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, based on books by Mo Willems, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and a revamped production of The Magic City, based on Edith Nesbit’s 1910 novel. In 2023, Manual Cinema completed production on their first self-produced short film, Future Feeling, and toured with folk rock band Iron & Wine the following year.

In Summer 2025, Manual Cinema premiered their latest feature production, The 4th Witch—a bold and imaginative inversion of Macbeth that is now touring.

Lorena “Hick” Hickok was a Wisconsin butter maker’s daughter, an ambitious journalist, the first woman with a byline on the front page of The New York Times—and the live-in lover of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. This musical-in-progress by Katie Dahl follows Hick and Eleanor as they meet on FDR’s 1932 campaign trail and begin a romance that will transform both their lives.

“Most clearly I remember … the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth against my lips.” – Hick to Eleanor, 1933

Clear-eyed and tough-minded, songwriter/playwright Katie Dahl is known for her smart songs, wry wit, and wise spirit. A small-town celebrity on the Wisconsin peninsula where her family has lived for 175 years, Katie is also an internationally touring, radio-charting artist who “delivers razor-sharp lyrics with a hearty, soulful voice” (American Songwriter). In live shows that are both courageously honest and devilishly funny, Katie dives deep into questions of land and love, family and body image, grief and joy. “In unsettled times,” says Peter Mulvey, “Katie Dahl brings us a grounded spirit.”

You may have heard of the great composer F. Mendelssohn. You may not have heard that there were two. Equally talented siblings Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn were each other’s chief supporters and best friends. But under the constraints of an unforgiving world, there was only room for one to be great. Songs Without Words is the funny, tragic, and heartfelt story of one artistic soul inhabiting two very different artists. Featuring a solo actor’s tour-de-force performance as both Fanny and Felix, Songs Without Words wrestles enduring questions of gender and genius, family and fame, siblinghood and the power of art. 

(Sound Design by Peter Clare, Costume Design by Daniele T. Mathews)

Jennifer Vosters (she/her) is a writer and theatremaker originally from Wisconsin, now based in Chicago. Her original play, Songs Without Words (or, The Mendelssohn Play), won the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award from the American Theatre Critics Association in 2024. Wisconsin acting credits include American Players Theatre, Forward Theater Company, Children’s Theater of Madison, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Next Act Theatre, and others. Regional credits include Writers Theatre, Shakespeare Project of Chicago, Lyric Repertory Company, and the Utah, Notre Dame, and Flagstaff Shakespeare Festivals. She is a proud member of AEA and the Dramatists Guild. www.jennifervosters.com

When Life Gives You Lemons

When Life Gives You Lemons is constructed out of an accumulation of materials and memories that scale up absurdity and abstract grief (all the way into laughter).
The piece has seen many iterations over the span of 8 years: It premiered in 2018 in Ann Arbor, Michigan; was reimagined and restaged in 2021 for an artist residency with the Going Dutch Festival/Side Street Studio Arts in Elgin, Illinois; took on new life in 2024 for the 15th annual Midwest RAD Fest in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and will come back to life in 2026 for the 10th annual Door Kinetic Arts Festival in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. Its cyclical nature lends itself to the ever-evolving conundrums of life moving forward.

Credits:
Choreography, Performance & Set Design: Sophie Minouche Allen
Sound/Audio Arrangement: Steve Klingbiel and Bradley Gurwin (2024)
Music: Jacques Brel, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
Prop Assistance: Victoria Nagged (2021)
Lighting Design: Samantha Weiser (2018)

This is not a lifesaving device

This is not a lifesaving device is an earnest and playful attempt at weathering the storm. The work draws inspiration from Jill Johnston’s writing, Jeanine Durning’s nonstopping, Mr. Bean, Bob Eisen, Waiting for Godot, favorite quotes from family/loved ones/movies/performances, and other miscellaneous life tidbits that will go unnamed here but I find charming and important to grapple with at this point in my life.

Credits:
Choreography, Performance, Text & Set Design: Sophie Minouche Allen
Sound/Audio Arrangement: Liz Floo
Music: Lenny Kravitz, “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”
Costume: Karin Minouche Allen

Sophie Minouche Allen is a Chicago-based dance artist who imbues playfulness and nuance in all her endeavors. She performs, choreographs, teaches, and collaborates throughout the city and beyond. In addition to her independent projects, Sophie has had the pleasure of performing with Bob Eisen, Camila Rivero Pooley/INSÉKTA, Helen Lee/Momentum Sensorium, The Seldoms, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape, Nora Sharp, Niko8, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, The Human Experience Dance Project, and many others. Her choreography has been commissioned and/or presented by Symbiosis Arts/SANCTA 2026, CPR Dance: Inhale Movement, 3AM Theatre, Color Club, The College of DuPage, bim bom studios for TIN CAN 2026 and 2024, FACT/SF for their Winter Dance Lab 2026 and Summer Dance Festival 2024, Thodos Dance Chicago/DanceWorks Chicago for New Dances 2024, Bodies of Water, Midwest RADFest, Detroit Dance Exchange, Side Street Studio Arts/Going Dutch Festival, and COMMON conservatory among others. Sophie is on faculty at The Grainger Academy of The Joffrey Ballet, guest teaches for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and offers open classes throughout the city. She also has had the pleasure of teaching with FACT/SF for their Winter Dance Lab 2026 and Summer Dance Festival 2024, DanceWorks Chicago for Dance360, The University of Chicago, The Rooted Space, Chicago Movement Collective, Visceral Dance Center, DISCO RIOT, and many others. Sophie holds a BFA in Dance and BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from the University of Michigan, and is a certified Countertechnique® Teacher. www.sophieminouche.com