Ellen Steves

playwright

Ellen Steves is a writer and producer from Los Angeles. A graduate from Columbia University's MFA program, she studied under Lynn Nottage, David Henry Hwang, and Chuck Mee. She is the co-founder of Chap.Three, a production company that focuses on putting women in the spotlight.

Justin J. Sacramone

director

Justin J. Sacramone is the associate artistic director of Sideshow Theatre Company and a Chicago-based director who focuses on new work. Most recently, he directed the 2020 workshop of Ellen Steves’ Thin Mints. He has directed for Raven Theatre, Red Theatre, Orlando International Fringe Festival and has assisted Robert Falls at Goodman Theatre, Lili-Anne Brown at 16th Street Theatre, Steve Scott at Eclipse Theatre, and Derek Van Barham at Pride Films and Plays. He is currently developing new works with playwrights Ellen Steves and Preston Choi. He has dramaturged the world premiere of HeLa and the U.S. premiere of X, both at Sideshow. Justin holds a BFA in theatre from Salem State University. He spent 10 years with the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild. He is a member of the 20/21 Observership Class with Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and a nominator for the Kilroys List.

justinjsacramone.com

A HEAP SEE

by Dawn Renee Jones

directed by Arti Ishak

Koua is a fast-moving whirlwind. By age 24, she had survived the “American War” in Laos and refugee camps in Thailand. Now, this mother of six is on a quest to better the life of her children in St. Paul Minnesota where she will face her greatest obstacle. Her neighbor Anita witnesses the epic undertaking Koua must face to keep her family together.

CAST

Yuchi Chiu - Han

Hannah Marie Dahl - Xiong

Carmen Liao - Koua

Liam Oh - Jerry/Elder Two

Shariba Rivers - Anita

Stephanie Shum - Niam/Grandmother

Alex Wu - Loong/Elder One

Laney Yoo - Mim

Friday, April 23, 2021

7pm

Dawn Renee Jones

playwright

Dawn Renee Jones has been writing, directing and/or producing some form of media for a very long time. Her writing career began on Madison Avenue where she wrote print and broadcast advertising for a broad range of national products and agencies. A recipient of the Ruby Prize for Playwriting for her play A Heap See, and an alum of the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit, she has written screenplays for Warner Brothers, Bryanston Pictures and Columbia Pictures. Her feature screenplay Man of the Word, an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine, won the FilmColumbia Festival for Best Screenplay. Dawn Renee has directed main stage productions at numerous Twin Cities theatres. She is the founder and director of many arts initiatives including Midwest Jazz Society (Arts Midwest) and Alchemy Theatre (Minneapolis); the Burrell Fellowship, an academic residency for playwrights of color; and the Young, Gifted & Black Collective, a black theatre history and performance program for students of African heritage at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches theatre history and playwriting. Dawn Renee’s MFA in creative writing with emphasis in playwriting is from Goddard College.

Arti Ishak

director

Originally from Detroit, Arti Ishak is a multidisciplinary artist and community organizer. Recent acting credits include Kiss (Haven), Witch and Buried Child (Writers Theatre), Men on Boats (American Theater Company), Venus in Fur (Circle Theatre), Fantastic Super Great Nation Numero Uno (Second City), and A Story Told in Seven Fights (Neo-Futurists). TV credits Chicago Med (NBC). As a filmmaker, Arti wrote and directed short film "Shukran Bas," a satire about Arab American representation. Arti has served on the board of the Muslim Writers Collective’s Chicago chapter and is currently a staff member with The Chicago Inclusion Project. She is one of the founding organizers with MENASA MidWest, an action network and advocacy group for Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian American artists working in theater, film, and television. She is represented by Paonessa Talent Agency.

artiishak.com

Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom

playwright

Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom creates fairy tales for sun-kissed women. A mixed-media artist, writer, intuitive healer and entrepreneur, Mallory was a finalist for the 2019 National Playwrights Conference at The O’Neill and is the recipient of the Tutterow Fellowship through Chicago Dramatists Center for New Play Development. Her talents have been nurtured in writer’s rooms at Victory Gardens Theater, The New Colony, and Jackalope Theatre. Her play A Laying on of Hands was featured in The Story Theatre New Play Festival. Mallory is a contributing playwright to The Refracted Theatre Company’s podcast The Swell. She is the author of Fairy Tales for Sun-Kissed Women, an anthology of healing fables and immersive audiobooks. Windy City Reviews hailed her as a “craftsman of the English language” for her debut novel, Reasons for Being, going on to say that “Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom’s writing is as clear and beautiful as springtime in a meadow… You’re amazed at the beauty around you and inhale the delicate natural musk to make it a part of your very being.” Mallory was a guest lecturer at the University of California-Davis and Illinois Humanities. Her artwork was recently featured at The Freedom and Movement Gallery in Chicago. Mallory’s passion for diverse representation, mindfulness, and mysticism resonates across the vast universe of color she leaves on the page, the stage, and the canvas. For more information about this multifaceted artist, visit mallorybackstrom.com.

Regina Victor

director

Regina Victor (they/them/theirs) is a Black director, multidisciplinary artist, and arts critic. One of New City’s Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago two years running, they are currently serving as the inaugural associate producer at Court Theatre. Victor has helped develop world premieres by Antoinette Nwandu, Anna Deavere Smith, Sarah Ruhl, Loy Webb and more. They co-founded Rescripted, an arts journalism platform, in 2017 and have written for other publications including American Theatre, Playbill, and the Chicago Reader. Other notable artistic collaborations include work with Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TimeLine Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre, and Sideshow Theatre where they are an ensemble member.

reginavictor.com

FABULOSO!

by Makasha Copeland

directed by Micah Figueroa

Armed with All Purpose Cleaner and the resilience of that cockroach from Wall-E, three maids and a middle-schooler are tasked with removing the stains from Oak Hill Resort. When their boss is found dead in the master suite, this cleaning crew must launch their own investigation. Who killed whomst, and who gives a shit?

Friday, August 20, 2021

7pm

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Makasha Copeland

playwright

Makasha Copeland is a playwright, actor, comedian and your babysitter during those formative years. Their plays Extreme Home Makeover and Fabuloso! have been developed and produced with San Diego REP, Vertigo Productions, the Agnes Nixon Festival, and Teatro Espejo (upcoming). They are a 2021 Ars Nova CAMP resident artist, a comedy residency where they are co-writing a televisual play with Chase Doggett and Gabrielle Silva. They are also a member of sketch comedy group Resting Witch Face at iO and Second City. They graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in theatre and Latinx studies, where they performed, wrote and improvised with The Titanic Players, Griffin’s Tale, Mee-Ow and Out Da Box.

Micah Figueroa

director

Micah Figueroa is Chicago based actor, director, choreographer, and teaching artist. He was assistant director for Act(s) of God at Lookingglass Theatre, and has been a fight and intimacy director at Steep, Haven, and First Floor Theatre, as well as Dallas Theatre Center, and Shakespeare Dallas. As an actor, Micah can be seen in DREAM with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in the Park in August 2021. He was most recently in The Very Hungry Caterpillar with Chicago Children’s Theatre, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, and Moby Dick at Lookingglass Theatre, Tall Girl and the Lightning Parade at Walkabout Theatre. Regionally Micah has worked with the Alliance Theatre, South Coast Rep Theatre, Arena Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Shakespeare Dallas, Theatre Three, Kitchen Dog Theatre, and the Dallas Theatre Center. Micah holds a degree in theatre studies (directing and playwriting) from Southern Methodist University.

THE WHISPERER'S APPRENTICE

by Walt McGough

directed by Sydney Charles

In a world where storytelling is magic, an ancient kingdom is collapsing. Two young siblings flee to the forest to find the one woman who could help stave off chaos, but who now hides away, haunted by mistakes and regrets. Will the tale that shapes the world be left broken, once and for all? The Whisperer's Apprentice is a magical, theatrical story about stories themselves, focused on who wields narrative power, and what it costs them to keep it.

Friday, September 17, 2021

7pm

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As a companion event to this reading, playwright Walt McGough will lead a group of hale and hearty Sideshow artists through a weekly, live-streamed and completely ridiculous campaign of Dungeons & Dragons. Capturing a different (and dice-rolling) kind of magic, this campaign will immerse audiences in an excited, serialized new form of collaborative storytelling, and highlight just how much is possible when some of the best artists in the city work together to save the world.

Walt McGough

playwright

Walt McGough is a Boston-based playwright and a founding ensemble member of Sideshow. He is the founder and lead dungeon master for First Time at the Table, a company that runs online sessions of Dungeons & Dragons for new players. As a writer, Walt has held fellowships with both the Huntington and New Repertory Theatre Companies, and was a finalist for the 2016 Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award. His plays include Non-Player Character, Chalk, The Farm, Priscilla Dreams the Answer, The Haberdasher, and Dante Dies!! (and then things get weird). He has worked around the country with companies such as The Lark, San Francisco Playhouse, the Huntington, Red Theatre Company, New Rep, the Kennedy Center, NNPN, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Fresh Ink, Sideshow, Orfeo Group, Nu Sass Productions, Chicago Dramatists, and Argos. In 2015, his play Advice for Astronauts was selected as the winner of the Milken Playwriting Prize. He previously served on the artistic staffs of SpeakEasy Stage Company and Chicago Dramatists. Walt holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA in playwriting from Boston University.

waltmcgough.com

firsttimeatthetable.com

Sydney Charles

director

Sydney Charles is very grateful to go on this adventure with Sideshow Theatre. As an actor, she was most recently seen at Goodman Theatre in the acclaimed live-streamed show I Hate It Here. Other Chicago credits include Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! and Wally World (Steppenwolf Theatre); Theatre for One: Here We Are and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Court Theatre); Lottery Day and Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 (Goodman Theatre); Color Purple (Drury Lane); Nina Simone: Four Women (Northlight Theatre); Flyin' West (American Blues Theater); The Wiz (Kokandy Productions); and Dessa Rose (Bailiwick Chicago). Regional credits include I Hate It Here (Studio Theatre). Television credits include South Side, The Chi, Shameless, The T and The Haven. Her other work includes assistant director and dramaturg for Bug (Steppenwolf Theatre), associate director for His Shadow (16th Street Theater); and associate director for The Shipment (Red Tape Theatre). She is the recipient of 3Arts "Make a Wave" award, a Black Theater Alliance Award, Chicago Reader's "Best Stage Performer" runner-up, a four-time Jeff Award nominee, and has been featured twice as part of NewCity's "50 Players of the Year." Sydney serves on the Central Region Board for the Actors Equity Association. Proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Represented by Stewart Talent.