Closing Night Artwork!

Au Revoir Mouse in a Jar!

Paul G. Miller

Red Tape Theatre Company

Playing with Plays – The Discussion

Red Tape Theatre’s panel, Playing with Plays, was presented on Sunday, October 11, alongside the world premiere of Mouse in a Jar. The play was developed in our Fresh Eyes Festival and our guests represented a diverse group of companies devoted to new work.


Panelists included:

• Stephanie M. Acosta, Founding Artistic Director of the Anatomy Collective
• Daniel Caffrey, Artistic Director of Tympanic Theatre Company
• Daria Davis, Red Tape Company Member and director of Mouse in a Jar.
• Jason W. Gerace, Artistic Associate of American Theater Company
• M.E.H. Lewis, Playwright and Ensemble member of Stage Left and Infamous Commonwealth
• Martyna Majok, Playwright of Mouse in a Jar.
• Richard Perez, Associate Artistic Director of Chicago Dramatists
• Dav Yendler, Artistic Coordinator for About Face Theatre

Mission Statements were a recurring theme in the discussion. About Face Theatre’s xyz festival and Tympanic Theatre’s Bastards of Young selected scripts focused on queer issues and science fiction respectively. American Theatre Company’s play initiatives focus revolve around the question “what does it mean to be an American.” Each company receives hundreds of submissions and depend upon their missions to select works for further development. Emerging playwrights were encouraged to target their submissions to companies with similar focus rather than bending their work to a conflicting mission or aesthetic. Companies seeking experimental and non-linear works have to engage in extensive outreach to like-minded playwrights. Mr. Perez commented that 30 years ago Chicago Dramatists felt the odd man out for focusing on new work, whereas now they part of an exciting local and national movement.

When asked about the process of securing a second production the panelists agreed that the focus on emerging work made this a challenge. They agreed with Ms. Davis’ statement that a play is not “done” when the first production closes and that a second production can allow a playwright to utilize what they learned from the first audience. Mr. Gerace stated that for this reason the second production is as important as the first.

Mouse in a Jar is Jeff Recommended and runs through October 31.
Purchase tickets through our website.

Paul G. Miller
Managing Director

Jeff Recommended!

Mouse in a Jar opened last night after a gut-busting tech week and three sold out previews!

We are thrilled to announce that the production has been Jeff Recommended!

The Jeff Awards has been honoring outstanding theatre artists annually since it was established in 1968. With up to 50 members representing a wide variety of backgrounds in theatre, the Jeff Awards is committed to celebrating the vitality of Chicago area theatre by recognizing excellence through its recommendations, awards, and honors.

Come see Mouse in a Jar, Thursdays through Sundays till October 31. Tickets are available through our website and selling fast!

Playing with Plays - Meet our Oct 11 Panelists!

Playing with Plays

Sunday, October 11, following the 3:00pm matinee of Mouse in a Jar.

Join Mouse in a Jar's playwright, Martyna Majok and Director Daria Davis in a discussion with local theatre artists on the topic of creating new and original work. Moderated by Red Tape's Paul Miller, this is an event for theatre practitioners and theatre enthusiasts alike.

Our panel includes:

Stephanie M. Acosta, Founding Artistic Director of the Anatomy Collective. With TAC Stephanie has directed the multi-disciplinary performances such as Many Things are Destroying Me, the Prometheus Myth, Orphan Works Series w/Chicago Underground Library & Monster/girl. Currently showing Gone created in partnership with the Chicago Parks District for Chicago Artists Month, running Oct. 2-17.

Daniel Caffrey is Artistic Director of the Tympanic Theatre Company, which he founded in 2007. He has worked as a writer, director, and occasional actor with companies including Chicago Dramatists, Dramatis Personae, Dream Theatre, Hobo Junction, iO, The Side Project and Victory Gardens. Upcoming projects include Bags Of Blood (WildClaw Theatre), Yukon Cornelius (ARFTCO), Folkfire (Tympanic), and writing and directing for Tell It & Speak It & Think It & Breathe It (The Ruckus).

Jason W. Gerace is Artistic Associate of American Theater Company. At ATC Jason has assistant directed Speech & Debate (Jeff nomination for Best Direction, PJ Paparelli) and the 2008 production of It’s a Wonderful Life under the direction of Damon Kiely; He has produced and directed the inaugural production of the Chicago Chronicle project directed the most recent remount of Oklahoma, produced and directed in this year’s Big Shoulders Festival, produced the first 10X10 Festival, and is curating the upcoming 25 Festival of new plays.

Internationally produced playwright M.E.H. Lewis is author of Fellow Travellers (Jeff award), Creole (5 BTA nominations), and Burying the Bones (Jeff nomination), an ensemble member at Stage Left and Infamous Commonwealth, resident at Chicago Dramatists, and member of the Dramatists Guild. She's currently workshopping Musica Mundana with InFusion and preparing for SLT's production of Here Where It's Safe.

Richard Perez is the Associate Artistic Director for Chicago Dramatists. He recently ended his seven year tenure as the Producing Artist Director of the Bloomington Playwrights Project in Indiana. In that time he oversaw the production of over thirty new mainstage plays, with at least sixteen of those being world premieres.

Dav Yendler is a director, illustrator, playwright, and graphic designer living in Chicago. Originally from Northern California, Dav moved to the city to explore the fascinating new theatre that only this city can make. As Artistic Coordinator for About Face Theatre, Dav works closely with Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar to develop AFT’s most innovative work.

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Tickets are available through our website.

Stage Violence - A Fine Line

Have you ever seen a fight on stage and just not believed it? Have you ever seen someone fall on stage and worry that they may be really hurt. These are the two extremes directors and actors strive to avoid in presenting any sort of violence onstage. The audience must believe that the fight is real, but must never believe that anyone is truly hurt. To master this thin line of believability, the process begins with rehearsal.

In the initial rehearsals, a fight choreographer is utilized. Their job is to break the fight into beats. In these beats, the actors know exactly where they are at all times. Usually the appearance of violence is the job of the receiver. It is not the person who throws the punch who must “sell” it, but the person being punches who must provide the reality in their reaction. If a person grabs someone by the lapel and pins them to the wall, it is the person pinned who is supporting their own weight and who is giving the appearance of struggling and gasping for breath. Throughout the rehearsal process, these beats are rehearsed over and over and over until the involved actors can go through the beats without hesitation or trepidation.

It is important to note here that stage combat is not always a complex choreography. In Enemy of the People, there was a simple move made by Cliff to intercept Sandy when she becomes overexcited at Tammy’s discovery of the polluted spa. What appeared to be a simple matter of stepping in between the two ladies, had to be choreographed as intricately as a sword fight or a slugfest. If Cliff is too early in his interception of Sandy, the scene loses the intensity. If Cliff is too late, Sandy runs over Tammy.

Once the scene is choreographed and rehearsed to the point that the show is ready to open, there is a new process of preparation which happens every night before the start of the show. Fight call is a walk though of all the stage combat in the show just before the show starts. Usually this is done at a slower speed, building up to full speed with each repetition.

When you see physical staging in Mouse in a Jar or any other Red Tape show, you can be certain that the safety of the performers in the primary objective. Every move is well rehearsed to make you believe that the fight is real. Every move is well rehearsed so you can fear for the safety of the characters without fearing for the safety of the actors.

Errol McLendon
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009
Tickets are available through our website.

Chiaroscuro Mouse

“‘s not a game’s a plan not like you’d understand. Jerk.”

When I first heard Mouse in a Jar almost a year ago, what struck me was the playwright’s visceral application of language and image like “a scene told in chiaroscuro.” I felt plosives, guttural vowels and words repeated ‘til they were gibberish. And each of these utterances seemed to further my understanding of the complex relationships between the characters. In that initial encounter, I experienced much more through the implicit meaning rather than explicit meaning in the dialogue. I wasn’t surprised then to learn that the playwright, Martyna Majok, is also a poet.

In Mouse, images are fragmented by language and experienced in surprising ways. Soldiers are “boots” or “Men With Boots.” A daughter recalls life before she had a mouth or her eyes had met. “Boots kick out the lights,” she says. Martyna’s sophisticated use of metaphor is as moving as it is unexpected. And these image-fragments accumulate as Mouse bursts with connotative expression.

Her use of repetition strips away explicit meaning until there are only consonants and vowels and the tension between people. In the opening scene, the word ‘peel’ is used six times in six lines, saying more about what the characters are doing to each other, rather than the act of preparing food. The same is true of the word ‘jerk.’ Through brute repetition, words transcend their meanings and become little primal utterances of unmet emotional needs.

There is much to admire in the sheer vitality of Martyna’s language. It is language which demands to be expressed in more than words. I’m very excited to see, that after almost a year, Mouse is finally being realized in a full theatrical production with Red Tape Theatre.

Rob Oakes
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Tickets are available through our website.

In this Basement

A lot of people ask why Mouse in a Jar is an important play to me, why I've been drawn to the text. I think I am more than willing to talk about how caught up I was by Martyna's language the moment I turned over page one, what a visceral punch her text packs, what a treat her rich and complex world of rhythm, image and sound are to me, I am less likely to mention that I see scraps of myself in her story.

Now it is important to note that this is not a play about domestic violence. If it was the story would follow a more conventional path dumping us off at the moral: hitting people is bad. Instead this story happens to be grounded in a darker family dynamic, but the narrative investigates how these people chose to negotiate their lives against the backdrop of dysfunction, not the dysfunction itself.

That being said, it's probably worth mentioning that I often come home from rehearsal with my stomach in knots because some of the work we do unearths shards of memory for me. A different time in my life where one false move only seemed to lead to another to another to another, until I found myself painted pretty desperately in to the corner not even sure what a way out would look like.

It's a gut reaction as the viewer to boil these women's problem's down to victimization, but we are doing the story a huge disservice if we allow that. The truth here is that people are frustratingly complicated and they want things that often seem to nullify or eclipse other desires.

What is love in this basement? There's nothing cheap or shallow about it. It's got the same complexity as any other love, perhaps the stakes are just higher, perhaps there's just so much more to lose here. But I would guess that's not the truth, we all want the same things when we love someone, consistency, reciprocation, perfection. Often we will turn a blind eye to the imperfections of our partners or the complaints of others just to hold onto the dream of our love. I think it's hard to admit how little perspective we can have in those situations, how much we will sweep under the carpet for a shot at connection. That's what's going on in this basement and sometimes those knots in my stomach as I bike home are in recognition of my own story and sometimes there about all of us.

Daria Davis
Company Member and
Director of Mouse in a Jar

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Tickets are available through our website.

Haunted Hijinx

Halloween is right around the corner. It may be one of my favorite holidays these days. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid though. When I was 10 yeas old, I remember going to Amlings Haunted House with my mother, my father, my aunt and uncle. Back in the day, Amlings was THE place to go for garden fare in the northwest burbs and it had one of the best haunted houses in the Chicagoland area.

I don’t remember much about the haunted house with the exception of one room, a room with five doors. To get to the next room, I had to choose a door. I remember opening the fourth door only to have a person dressed as Frankenstein behind bars let out a loud groan, which scared the living hell out of me. My uncle howled with laughter. I eventually opened the right door and went to the next room of haunted hijinx, but I’ll never forget those doors.

Our lifetime presents us with a myriad of doors. Some are easy to open and walk through. Others, however, terrify us with real or imagined consequences that can debilitate us. For example, maybe we want to start our own gig, but is it worth leaving a comfortable job that pays well and has good benefits? Should we stay single because we don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable or settle in a relationship because our biological clock is ticking? An MBA sounds great, but what if I can’t pay off the loans? I’ll start writing that script, novel, play, etc. tomorrow. I’ll give up smoking, start working out, drink less, love more, try harder on January 1. Sound familiar?

While it can be hard enough to walk through scary doors ourselves, convincing someone else to walk through the door with us adds a whole new challenge.

How far would you go to win someone’s love? What steps would you take to protect someone you loved from danger? What would you do to save someone who didn’t want to be saved? Would you walk through the door when you had the chance?

Mouse in a Jar, a new play produced by Red Tape Theatre, poses these questions. It opens October 5th. I invite you to check it out so you can think about these questions and how you would answer them.

Robert A. Lynch
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Purchase tickets through our website.

Digging Deep

Now that we are rounding the corner and tech looms on the horizon I'm enjoying these last few days of rehearsal with just the cast. Our rehearsal room may be a massive gym, but the feeling when we get down to work in there is intimate and warm. It is not necessarily unique that we've grown into a close knit group, that is what rehearsal does to people, but the process of cracking this new play has afforded us an opportunity to dig deep within the text and each other. As we fold our designers into the day to day of rehearsal, I'm eagerly anticipating expanding our conversations. I can't wait to see what we all get up to as the gym transforms into a tiny New Jersey basement.

Daria Davis
Company Member and
Director of Mouse in a Jar

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Tickets are available through our website.

Meet Fip: Actor Ben Gettinger

When reading Mouse in a Jar for the first time, what are some of the first images or words that resonated with you?
Dampness, mold, meat, blood, puss, scars, and stench.

Mouse is a new work, has that changed how you approach the script?
Yes. Everyone is intensely engaged, discovering how to bring this piece to life for the first time. It's not like doing an established play, where we ask ourselves what's our take on this piece? What else has not been touch upon? Other than the well known themes, what facets do I want to bring to light? In a new piece I am obliged to ask myself on a deep level and really search to find, what is this at it's core? It is just not as clear, because it has not been done before and there is a greater responsibility to find it.

What feels like the greatest challenge for you in this play?
The writing is highly stylized, the cadence so unique, and the suffering is layered so richly; A world is created which is unreal, dark, but surprisingly beautiful. Because my imagination runs rampantly I can easily be swept up by the world and start playing my character, Fip, very obscurely. Almost too obscure for anyone to relate to. The challenge is to exist in this abstract world, while playing the real emotional undertones that will connect with the audience and help ease them into this strikingly different environment.

How would you characterize the world of the play?
A festering, moldy sausage locked in a basement oozing its acrid grease over a handful of innocent human souls, corroding all sense of the word, purity.

Have you learned anything new so far in this process? (about you, about your character about the world)
Yes definitley. There are a lot of street kids that migrate into Chicago in the summer. I would always just look at them as dirty, wandering, begging hippies, who can't get over thier ideals enough to just get a job. However, now I am playing one of these punks in a play and after researching the lives of runaways I understand why they do wander aimlessly. They come from broken homes and have suffered immensely from all froms of abuse. I came from a practically perfect, loving american family. For me it is easy to adere to the starndard of living that my society would classify as normal. It's really sad because they just have not been conditioned to function in the adult world. By making the effort to investigate the lives of those that are extremely adverse to that of my own, I have discovered new areas of understanding and empathy in my being. I am much more likely to toss some money into their hats on the street.

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009
Tickets are available through our website.