At the core of The House’s philosophy is the following mission statement:

It is the mission of The House to unite Chicago in the spirit of Community through amazing feats of Storytelling.

The House is interested in creating community, if only for a few hours at a time. We do this through the ritual of theater. Every night we do a new show WITH (not for) a new audience. They are vital to what happens on stage and they can feel it. They share that feeling with the 140 other people that walk into the theater that night. Maybe they laugh or cry. Maybe they’re moved…Regardless, there was a shared experience that was unique to the collection of people in the audience that night.

Talk a little about the process of creating this piece, and your fellow cast members.

Creating this piece was a joy. Molly Brennan (our director) is a genius. She has a phenomenal way of getting us to be alive, alert and real in the space. We did a lot of workshopping. We worked constantly on the fundamentals of clowning. We worked at being emotionally available. We worked at reacting to each other and to the audience in real and exciting ways.

The script I wrote was, largely, an action script. I wrote what had to happen to move the story forward. I wrote the essentials of the characters and what they do to each other.

However, a lot of what I wrote was very vague. For example, I wrote:

“Three clowns enter driving a make-shift ambulance. This might be a shopping cart or a little red wagon. The clowns give The Old Man the once over. This, no doubt, includes the mis-use of medical equipment and unintentional beating of the patient. This scene should be fast-paced and hilarious. It should be light and ridiculous, as opposed to dark and scary, like the end of Act 1.”

From there, Molly, Paul (the assistant director) and the rest of us would slowly build the work. It was an absolute blast from beginning to end.

What's something not in the official bio?

Something not in the official bio…

Hmmm…

The canary in the show is Rosie. She’s named after my grandmother.

The Magnificents runs through November 3 at the Viaduct Theater.
3111 N. Western Ave.
Chicago IL 60618
Tel: 773.296.6024

The House Theatre
4700 N. Ravenswood Ave.
Chicago IL 60640
Tel. 773.769.3832