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Executive Director David Hawkanson, Artistic Director Martha Lavey and Producer of Cultural Intersections Sylvia Ewing have announced the roster for Steppenwolf’s annual Traffic Series. Traffic will feature a season of eclectic artists and personalities on the Steppenwolf stage, kicking-off with David Sedaris on January 18, 2008.
“Traffic continues Steppenwolf’s season-long conversation about what it means to be an American - this time with a decidedly made-in-Chicago focus. Traffic provides a vibrant platform for dialogue between our audience and an eclectic pool of artists,” comments Ewing. “From mature conversations with David Sedaris and the Pocketbook Lady to sketch comedy to the family- focused music of Maggie Brown and Sones de Mexico, Traffic provides the opportunity for Steppenwolf to be a place where people come together to for an experience that bridges entertainment and discovery, the familiar and the unknown.”
Tickets to all Traffic events are available Tuesday, October 2, 2008, 1650 N. Halsted Street, www.steppenwolf.org, or 312-335-1650. Additional Traffic events will be announced at a later date.
The 2008 Traffic Series includes:
An Intimate Evening with David Sedaris
January 8-13, 2008
Upstairs Theatre
Tuesday –Sunday at 7:30p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 p.m.
$35
Best-selling author, playwright and commentator David Sedaris, returns to Steppenwolf for 8 performances with new material. Widely known for his books Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked and his regular commentary on This American Life for National Public Radio, Sedaris has been compared to James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Spalding Gray, Mark Twain, and Nathanial West and was hailed by The New Yorker as one of the funniest writers in America.
The Pocket Book Monologues
Monday, January 14, 2008, at 7:00 p.m.
Downstairs Theatre
$35
The Pocketbook Monologues is a collection of stories from women of color that reveals their heartfelt emotions about intimacy, performed in the style of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, but with the Black female perspective front and center. The women’s brutally honest, funny and poignant recollections will take the listener on a roller coaster ride of joy and pain, as they are engage in never-told stories about women’s connections to their pocketbooks. “We talk about everything from menstruation to menopause and everything in between,” says WVON Radio personality Sharon McGhee, also known as “the pocketbook lady.”
A Legacy of Jazz and Poetry
Jazz maven Maggie Brown and Friends explore the legacy of her late father musician playwright and activist Oscar Brown Jr.
Monday, February 4, 2008, at 7:30 p.m.
Downstairs Theatre
$28
A Chicago native, Maggie made her professional acting and singing debut here at the Body Politic Theater. She studied music, theater and voice at Columbia College and has taken her polished vocal style on the road. Since 1991, she began touring Chicago-area schools and nationally on the college circuit, performing her one-woman show LEGACY: Our Wealth of Music. LEGACY is a musical demonstration/lecture about the history and evolution of African-American music. In 1997, with her knowledge of music history and “edutainment” expertise, Maggie helped the Chicago House of Blues to develop their Blues Schoolhouse student outreach program. Maggie is captivating in her presentation and she effortlessly delivers a powerful performance whether singing spirituals, jazz, contemporary hip hop or even rapping.
A Celebration of Chicago Sketch Comedy
Monday, April 14, 2008, at 7:00 p.m.
Upstairs Theatre
$25
kevINda and Schadenfreude together present a night of political, racially-charged, racy sketch comedy to help you laugh your tax woes away. Schadenfreude is a German noun which means “pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.” Schadenfredude has been performing sketch comedy for years. “We really consider what we’re doing a public service,” Kaufmann says slyly. “We’re trying to heighten people’s awareness of Chicago so they understand the city around them.” Schadenfreude has headlined the Chicago Improv Festival (99-07), performed at Lollapalooza (2006) and had their own self-titled radio program on Chicago Public Radio (03-05). They have also performed in Los Angeles at the UCB Theater; HERE Arts in NYC and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Kevin Douglas and Inda Craig-Galván, collectively known as kevINda, have created a smart mix of racially-charged political satire. Their first revue as a sketch duo, These Coloreds Don’t Run, had its very first run in October 2003 in the Donny’s Skybox Theatre, closing on Inda’s 23rd birthday. Since then, they have performs at C’est La Vie Drama, the Black Arts Initiative at the HotHouse, and the Acme Arts Building for Wordplay. The Chicago Tribune called the show “inspired” during its run at i.o. (formerly improvOlympics).
Both groups integrate social and political satire into their comedy sketches and have a few surprises planned for the audience.
East Meets the Rest: Tatsu Aoki and The Miyumi Project
Friday, May 9, 2008, at 7:30pm
Downstairs Theatre
$40
Tatsu Aoki is respected by his musical peers and as a leader in his community. He has organized, curated, and produced the Asian-America Jazz Festival since its inception. Tatsu Aoki unites taiko drumming with drums from a wide range of cultures, fuses it with jazz, contemporary and classic, to create a new sound with his band, The Miyumi Project. Tatsu has performed at the Hot House, Millennium Park and other venues. He is an artist- in- residence at the Japanese American Service Committee
de coraSON “From the Heart”
From Folk to Fusion with Sones de Mexico Ensemble
Friday, May 16, 2008, at 7:30pm
Downstairs Theatre
$25 adults, $15 children 15 & under
Sones de Mexico Ensemble, recently nominated for a 2007 Latin Grammy, is Chicago’s premier folk music ensemble. The group formed in 1994 to keep the tradition of Mexican ‘sones’ alive in its many regional forms. As a performer and recording artist, the ensemble has developed and popularized many original arrangements of Mexican traditional tunes and has experimented cross-culturally with symphonic, Irish, folk, C&W, jazz, and rock music. This is a big vibrant show for the entire family.
Steppenwolf’s Traffic series brings together artists of all disciplines and casts them as storytellers in one night only presentations on the Steppenwolf stage. Traffic provides an intimate and unique intersection of language, lyrics, poetry and music, creating a fresh perspective on expressing the American story. Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ, 91.5 FM) is planning to re-broadcast the one-night only Traffic events as part of its partnership with Steppenwolf.