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Performance Wed Dec 16 2015
Neo-Futurists Host New Year's Eve Performance-Party (and Receive NEA Grant)
The Neo-Futurists, Chicago's acclaimed experimental theater group, closed out their second and final weekend of Best of 2015 shows on Sunday and they're getting ready for New Year's Eve with a special Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind performance.
Their 27-year-running late night show, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is seemingly as relevant and cutting edge as ever. Several of their Best of 2015 performances sold out and last week it was announced that the Neo-Futurists' Neo-Access Program and Neo-Futurist Kitchen Festival would receive grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Neo-Access Program is a three-part initiative that includes:
Providing more scholarships for artists of color
A partnership with Victory Gardens Theater to increase theater opportunity and accessibility for individuals with disability
A partnership with Alternatives, Inc to provide theater teachers for their Urban Arts Program
The NEA funding will also support the Neo-Futurist Kitchen Festival, a micro-arts festival hosted in late July.
If they didn't have enough upcoming programming, the Neo-Futurists are hosting a New Year's Eve Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind performance party. The event begins at 9:30pm (a pretty early hour for the historically late night show) and includes beer from Metropolitan Brewery and hors d'oeuvres. The performance begins at 11pm, pausing 10 minutes before midnight for a countdown, and finishing the last mini-plays in the early moments of 2016. The $50 ticket price includes a champagne toast.
For those who haven't attended a Neo-Futurist performance before, the show features 30 sketches and a lot of audience involvement. Sure to hit every emotional note, Too Much Light typically explores non-fictional elements of the performers' lives, current political and social issues, and recent news events. Sketches often rely on word play, physical humor, music, dance, light play, and sometimes small amounts of fire. The sketches are performed in an order determined by the shouts of the crowd, and therefore no two shows are entirely alike.
Tickets to the New Year's Eve Performance should be purchased beforehand. The NeoFuturarium is located in Andersonville at 5153 N. Ashland Ave.