Sideshow Theatre Company

Jonathan L. Green is a busy man. Sure it's the holiday season, but if you're running a small storefront theater that just got a $25,000 grant and you have a Chicago premiere in the works for spring, suffice it to say, it's hard to get face time, and Green, artistic director and founding member of Sideshow Theatre Company, is in this precise position. We were able to exchange a couple of emails to help get a sense of the two-and-a-half-year old Sideshow Theatre Company.

The following can stand for an introduction, from Green's email: "Have you ever had Sideshow Wine? [I haven't.] I'm not even sure they make it anymore. [They do.] As a wine, it was okay. But there was something about the name that struck a chord with us: it's not the main event, it's the human curiosity off to the side."

In its short history however, Sideshow Theatre Company has quickly clamored for center stage. It's unique in its mission of focusing on new plays about familiar topics, or in Green's words "shared stories." He goes on to say, "our most intriguing, arresting work as artists [comes] from a pllace of shared stories […] And that's the feedback we continuously get from our audiences: people are caught off-guard and touched deeply in a seemingly ordinary moment when they feel that connection with the collective unconscious."

Their three productions so far have indeed touched upon some of the questions and artistic works most central to people throughout history, ranging from a one-man show based on Dante's Inferno to a modern retelling of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to an attempt to get the whole history of western art into 90 minutes, to their upcoming project – a new take on the Medea tale. "That's what I mean when I talk to people about our shared stories," writes Green, "not just the narratives we all know, but the questions we all have."

Of course, you can't spend your whole life tapping into the broad history of human imagination. So Sideshow has a little sideshow of its own, a remarkably successful fundraising and community-building project called the Chicago League of Lady Arm-Wrestlers (CLLAW).  "It started as just a little fundraiser for Sideshow" writes Green, "people pay an entrance fee and then there's an open bar at the event and you can bet CLLAWBUX on the different wrestlers to win prizes." But it has since grown into an important part of who Sideshow is. Their planning their fifth event now and, according to Green, "We have folks coming to our productions who would never have heard of Sideshow if they hadn't heard of it from our wrestlers." Of course, once you hear of the wrestlers you're not likely to forget them: "Sarah Impalin, Bea Arthuritis, Armgelina Jolie, and the list goes on and on."

Familiar and yet surprising. This arm wrestling doesn't seem so strange after all.

Find out more about Sideshow Theatre Company by visiting their website or becoming a fan on Facebook.

Benno Nelson

You can read more of Theatre In Chicago contributor Benno Nelson's writing at The@er (http://the-at-er.blogspot.com)

Full Storefrontal

Read the other articles in Benno Nelson's "Full Storefrontal" series that focuses on small theatre companies around Chicago on the Full Storefrontal page.