PERFORMANCE MIXTAPE is organized by Josh Hoglund and Elise Cowin. Started in 2024, it provides a platform for artists to present new works of performance at various stages of development. PERFORMANCE MIXTAPE values experimentation, diverse approaches and making space for people to come together in community and conversations.
Doors open at 7:00pm on October 4, 1821 S Racine Ave
Featuring:
dark matter(s)
Written and Performed by Eliza Bent, with accordion and singing by Ruth Margraff, and direction by Bonnie Metzger
dark matters(s) is an operatic spiral obsessing over moles, audience behaviour at Q&As, and unexpected betrayals.
Playwright/performer ELIZA BENT is the love-grandchild of Lily Tomlin, Pee Wee Herman, and Mr. Peanut, whose Bentertainments include solo works, plays, adaptations, and hybrid affairs. Residencies: MacDowell, SPACE on Ryder Farm, New Georges, Target Margin Institute Fellow, Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit. BA in philosophy from Boston College, MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. On faculty at Northwestern University’s Radio TV & Film department. Bent’s comedy special Penguin in Your Ear is available on the internet.
https://elizabent.wordpress.com
IG: getbentobox
BONNIE METZGAR is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, director and producer who specializes in creating socially-provocative theater works. She/they served as staff writer for GENIUS: ARETHA, a limited TV series on Hulu with showrunner and longtime collaborator Suzan-Lori Parks, Metzgar has won the Edgerton New Play Award, was commissioned by the NEA, the Goodman Theater, Sideshow Theater, and was formerly Artistic Director of About Face Theatre, one of the largest theaters in the US dedicated to producing queer artists and advancing the cultural dialogue on sexuality and gender identity. Back in the day, Metzgar was the Associate Producer at the Public Theater in NYC where she founded Joe’s Pub. She/they is currently on faculty at University of Illinois Chicago.
RUTH MARGRAFF is acclaimed for writing martial arts operas with Fred Ho (Apollo, Guggenheim, LaMama, Brooklyn Academy of Music, CAMI). Her monologue for SEVEN was introduced by Diane von Furstenberg and Meryl Streep at the Broadway Hudson–translated into more than 20 languages. Her CAFE ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE toured to Greece, Turkey, France, Azerbaijan, Egypt, UK, Romania, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, etc. Ruth’s MIRROR BUTTERFLY opera for Afro Yaqui Music Collective premiered at the New Hazlett (Pittsburgh), Kennedy Center (DC), NET (Tucson), 1st Mesopotamian Water Forum (Kurdistan); and was released on Innova Records. In NYC: Here Arts Center, Joe’s Pub, BAMCafé, Prelude/Segal, Hourglass, LaguardiaPAC; Chocolate Factory, PS122; Chicago: Trap Door, Red Tape, Links Hall, Pivot Arts Festival…Awards include Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA, TCG, TMUNY, NYSCA, IAC, MASS MoCA, Fulbright; published by Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, TDR, Applause, Backstage, Lexington Books, Playscripts, Autonomedia, New Village, New Meridian…She’s been a member of Theater Without Borders, New Dramatists, Playwrights’ Center, Chicago Dramatists and is a Professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Linger
By Sharp Cheddar (aka Nora Sharp)
A body, a flashlight, a raffle, a pop song, an ending.
Sharp Cheddar is a guy you know.
NORA SHARP is a performer, writer, filmmaker, drag artist, comedian, and nonprofit underling who needs to stop doing so much. Across forms and frames, they host audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in unexpected and illuminating ways. Their work has been supported or presented by Queer|Art, the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award, the Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, On the Boards, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Pivot Arts Festival, Links Hall Co-MISSIONS, Notes on Masculinity, Salonathon, the Fly Honey Show, the Cannonball Festival, Open TV, WUSSY Mag, Hambidge, The Croft, and many other stages and spaces both DIY and institutional in their hometown of Chicago and across the country. norasharp.com
@theamtraklor
Linnaeus After Dark or, Indeterminacy
CLAIRE PENTECOST is an artist and writer who researches the living matters of the unified multi-dimensional being that animates the critical zone of our planet. Pentecost’s work is driven by research and inspired by questions of form. She advocates for the role of the amateur in the production and interpretation of knowledge, while a longstanding interest in nature and artificiality predicates her recent responses to anthropogenic climate change.
She is a founding member of Deep Time Chicago, a collective exploring cultural change in response to ecological crisis, and the Anthropocene Commons, an international research network. Pentecost has exhibited work at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany; 13th Istanbul Biennial; White Chapel Gallery, London; 3rd Mongolian Land Art Biennial; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Times Museum; Guangzhou; MCA Chicago; MSU Broad Museum; Museum of Contemporary Photography; DePaul Art Museum; Corcoran Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Transmediale 05; and many others. She is represented by Higher Pictures Generation, New York, and is Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she taught for 25 years. With Brian Holmes she directs Watershed Art&Ecology, an experimental cultural space in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
@comrade-panda