The Neo-Futurist Theater

60 Songs in 60 Minutes

Created by a team of experimental musicians and led by Ensemble Member Nick Hart, 60 Songs will make its long-awaited return to the stage. In a race against the clock, the cast attempts to perform all 60 original songs in under 60 minutes, using instruments, technology and found objects. Audiences are invited to stay for the post-show “Wrench Karaoke” which incorporates the Neo-Futurist tenets of chaos, randomness and chance into the act of singing your favorite song.

// quarterly presentations from December 2021 to October 2022 //

// FEATURING NICK MERYHEW, NICK HART, MITCHELL CHAPMAN, JOANNA JAMERSON, LIA KOHL, ANDREW THAM //

Halloween! Nye! Pride!

Continuing a longstanding tradition, The Neo-Futurists will present several themed iterations of The Infinite Wrench during the 2021-2022 Season. Kicking it off in October is a spooky, scary, existentially-dreadful Halloween-themed Wrench. Ring in the New Year with The Neo-Futurists and their race-to-the-finish performance starting at 11 p.m. on December 31 and concluding with a midnight toast. 30 Queer Plays in 60 Straight Minutes, The Neo-Futurists’ annual benefit show for Pride, makes its return to the stage in June 2022 with a full weekend of performances plus a benefit performance. 

// October 2021, December 2021 and June 2022 //

// FEATURING THE NEO-FUTURIST ENSEMBLE //

Chicago International Puppet Theater FestivaL

The Neo-Futurists will once again contribute to this city-wide celebration of performance objects, exploring their own unique perspective on puppets and storytelling. Now in their fourth collaboration with the festival since 2015, The Neo-Futurists will present another sampling of innovative puppet theater that sniffs at the edges of what is called a puppet.

// January 2022 //

Neo-lab Presents: The Neo-Futurists Sell Out

Neo-Lab is The Neo-Futurists’ in-house residency to support the development of a full-length Neo-Futurist mainstage show. The 2021-2022 Season residency will support the development of The Neo-Futurists Sell Out by Ensemble Member Connor Shioshita Pickett, a non-fundraiser attempt to get rich and secure the financial future of our organization, whatever the cost. As American life gets more vicious, more precarious, and more expensive, the cast will have to decide how to prepare for an uncertain (but almost certainly awful) future. Throughout this series of laboratory performances, the cast will try to make money, or try to make their money into more money, by engaging with stunts, schemes, and scams.

// june 2022 //

//FEATURING ENSEMBLE MEMBER connor shioshita pickett//

WILDCATS

In 1960, Lucille Ball took to the stage in her very first Broadway musical. Despite having been on television for over a decade, she found herself extremely unprepared for the demands of live theater. In WILDCATS, power house duo Nick Hart and Ida Cuttler bring this moment in Ball’s career back to life, infusing into it their own personal stories of bursting out of isolation. WILDCATS is a multimedia drag spectacle with a mix of  live moments, audience interaction and bizarre-o filmed I Love Lucy episode recreations.

// May 2022 // 

//FEATURING ENSEMBLE MEMBERs ida cuttler & nick hart. Directed by Halena Kays //

Elements of Style

// Summer 2023 //

Conceived by Mary Kate Ashe and Trent Lunsford

Elements of Style explores themes of language and identity in Strunk and White’s classic grammar guide and in EB White’s greater body of children’s literature. 

Written by Trent Lunsford, Mary Kate Ashe, Joanna Jamerson, and Connor Shioshita Pickett

Choreography by Leah Urzendowski and music by Trent Lunsford