Subtitled The Anti-Violence Project, the work by Paula Gilovich and the About Face Youth Theatre Ensemble is directed by Sara Kerastas.
Presented by About Face Theatre Company, Queertopia plays to July 25 at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted in Chicago. After completing its two-week run at the Center on Halsted, Queertopia will go on a free, city-wide tour to a number of Chicago youth communities July 28-31.
According to About Face, "Queertopia imagines and performs a future just beyond our grasp. Through the intertwining stories of Flea, a transgendered boy who falls for a straight girl and feels the pressure to take T (testosterone), Teddy, a woman-identifying queer person dealing with harassment and Lexi, a half-Serb/half-Bosnian straight girl turned bisexual."
Sara Kerastas, About Face's education programs director, said in a statement, "This show moves beyond the politics of the present and the standard anti-violence story-the tokenizing and victimizing of queers in American culture, where gay identity is often defined by a lacking. We're moving to a place where queers are complex, fierce and real."
Visit aboutfacetheatre.com or call (866) 811-4111 for tickets or information. *
The About Face Youth Theatre (AFYT) was created in 1998 as a safe space for open dialogue and community. About Face Theatre is one of Chicago's most acclaimed theatre companies, and is a national leader in the development of new work exploring gender and sexual identity. Since its founding by Kyle Hall and Eric Rosen in 1995, the company has premiered more than 30 new plays by writers and directors who have been recognized with several Tony Awards, The Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The MacArthur Fellowship and dozens of Joseph Jefferson Awards.
It well-known world premieres include Doug Wright's Pulitzer and Tony-winning I Am My Own Wife; Moisés Kaufman's production of Tennessee Williams' One Arm (a co-production with Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Tectonic Theatre Project); Mary Zimmerman's M. Proust, and, with Lookingglass Theatre, Eleven Rooms of Proust; Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty's Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein (a co-production with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Original Cast Album recorded by Jay Records); the multi-award winning musical Winesburg, Ohio by Eric Rosen, Andre Pluess, Ben Sussman and Jessica Thebus; and the cult hit Pulp by Patricia Kane.
