Summer at Lifeline Theatre! (No longer the slow season of our year.)

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PROGRAMMING!
The Lifeline Storytelling Project has begun! I’m a huge geek for the personal storytelling form and I’m a 17-year veteran of the solo-performance/storytelling scene. I am super-excited for this opportunity to encourage a new generation to explore this form. Fifteen Lifeline-affiliated artists are currently participating in solo writing/performing workshops with me, which began in April. And now the group has started performing every Monday at Duke’s Bar (right next door to Lifeline at 6920 N. Glenwood). We’ve had performances on June 13, 19 and 27. We’ll skip the 4th of July and resume on July 11th. And then we’re going to have a show every Monday at 7pm for a long, long time! Mark your calendars! Come buy a beer and watch some great (free!) stories.

Participating artists so far include: Diego Colón, Leah Cox, Bryan DiLoreto, Kate Donoghue, David Fink, Eduardo Garcia, Christina Hall, Tiffany Keane, Alex Kyger, Amanda Link, Charlotte Long, Darren Meyers, Joe Schermoly, Anne Sears and Jason Weinberg. Seven of these writers have been on stage one or more times at Duke’s already and the rest are hitting the stage very soon!

The next exciting thing is…

THE 15th ANNUAL FILLET OF SOLO FESTIVAL
It’s a whole storytelling festival! This Festival had a long, proud history at Live Bait Theatre and when they closed their doors a couple years ago, artistic director Sharon Evans approached us about taking over hosting the event. She felt we’d be a great fit because we are also a new work theater. We thought so too! So we dipped our toes in the water last year with a small festival and this year we’ve gotten more ambitious. We’ll be producing at a total of three venues, all within a block of each other here in Rogers Park.

The Festival runs July 21-August 7. We’ll have two shows a night at 95-seat Lifeline Theatre, two shows a night at 30-seat Heartland Studio Theatre (just a few steps up Glenwood Avenue) and the final performance at the 300-seat Mayne Stage (around the corner on Morse Ave). We have three storytellers coming in from New York, one from Los Angeles and for our local acts, we have 16 of Chicago‘s finest storytellers representing the home team. (And a subset of our Lifeline Storytelling Project will do a show in this Festival too!)

Complete details on the festival are here.

GLENWOOD AVENUE ARTS FESTIVAL
The Fest is coming August 20-21 this year. This is the best Fest in the city. Seriously. Not that we’re biased or anything. 100 artists! 36 bands! Fantastic food (all from Rogers Park restaurants). Lifeline will be in the thick of it, as usual, with all our neighborhood partners that come together to make this thing happen! You can check out all the details about what’s going on where at GlenwoodAve.org.

SUMMER INTERNS!
We have six interns this summer at Lifeline. We have an army! And that’s really good because we need one. We continue to enjoy the company (and benefit from the exertions) of Jason Weinberg and Kathleen Weiss, who have each been with us for this past season as well as this summer. Jason assists in almost every area of the theater and has worked on projects for our benefit, our archives, our day-to-day operations and our scene shop. Kathleen works specifically in the shop where she works with Ian, our TD and where she also recently assisted puppet designer Joanna Iwanicka on the masks for Watership Down.

And — new this summer — we have four more fabulous interns: Kate Donoghue, Maggie Humphrey, Charlotte Long,and Anna Marr. Kate and Charlotte recently participated (spectacularly) as readers in our in-house Pride and Prejudice read-thru; Maggie is spearheading a special summer Lifeline fundraising event (news here soon about our Bingo Benefit at the Glenwood on August 25!); Anna is working directly with Lea Pinsky, our Education Director, and will assist with our summer camps. All four gals are also working with every one of us on staff on different projects. Their brains, energy and can-do spirit are an enormous boon to our organization.

With the help of our wonderful interns, we are going slay through our impossible list and get everything done this summer! All of it!