Sketchbook Festival

During its extraordinary eight years, Collaboraction's annual Sketchbook Festival has received more than 5,000 short plays submissions and has presented 138 world premiere short plays for more than 30,000 audience members. This year, Sketchbook expands its scope and scale, making the versatile Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St., its new creative home, from April 16 - May 10, 2009.

Set in an open space with no fixed seats, this year the audience will move about freely as 14 world premiere short works, all seven minutes or less, are presented in an interactive evening underscored by the conceptual theme of the New American Fable. Intertwined with the world premieres will be DJs spinning and new live musical performances each night from such artists as Jon Langford, Leroy Bach, Eric Zeigenhagen, Miles Polaski, Anacron, Andrew Fraker, TJ Travelbee, Charles Kim, Darren Spitzer and more, along with group participatory art projects and multi-media interludes.

Sketchbook 2009 Introduces Devised Work
For the 9th annual Sketchbook, Collaboraction pushes the limits of the innovative festival, presenting not just playwright-generated work, but also devised pieces. Collaboraction put out a nationwide call for plays, and for the first time asked for concepts and proposals as well, whether written, visual or sonic, all provoked by the question, what is The New American Fable?

From thousands of submissions from artists across the globe, Collaboraction selected 14 new works - seven playwright-generated submissions and seven devised-work submissions -that will bring Chicago the most exciting, eclectic and daring Sketchbook to date.

"Now that we have established Sketchbook as one of the premiere short play festivals and emerging theater artist incubators, we're expanding the festival in content and form through the introduction of the new Devised Work category, which allows for more risks on stage and more collaboration amongst artists," stated Anthony Moseley, Executive Artistic Director of Collaboraction.

The 9th Sketchbook Festival will be comprised of a continually reshuffled program so that no two nights are the same. In advance of every performance, Collaboraction will post that night's program online. Every performance will be a random mix of devised work and plays, totaling seven pieces (with two exceptions: Sunday, April 26 will be all seven plays and Sunday, May 3 will be all seven devised works).

Known for her wildly imaginative and hilarious work, Chicago playwright and Artistic Director of The Strange Tree Group Emily Schwartz returns to Sketchbook for her fifth year with a new solo puppet show set in World War I titled "The Dreaded Zepplin." Critically acclaimed director and writer Sean Graney, Artistic Director of The Hypocrites, unveils an ambitious new work, "What Am I Supposed to Be?" featuring a cast of 40 actors.

Collaboraction co-founder and member Sandra Delgado presents a devised work, "para Carmen," about a woman in the moments leading up to and immediately following her death, driven by a live musical performance of Lhasa de Sela's song "De Cara a la Pared." From a devised work about a woman's physical and psychological experience in the dentist chair,

"Fix Your Teeth, B*tch," to a postmodern urban detective story, "Who Put the Dead Bird in My Mailbox," the 9th annual Sketchbook presents a captivating evening celebrating all forms of artistic expression.

Photographer Ensemble
An ensemble of 14 photographers will document the Sketchbook experience from the beginning to the end utilizing their own artistic perspective. Each photographer has been paired with one of new works to design a photo to represent that world premiere. Using each image, along with a New American Fable image from their personal portfolio, 14 diverse versions of the Sketchbook postcard will be created and distributed. The photos will be incorporated into the video design of this year's festival, and the photographers will be onsite throughout the run to capture the individuality of each evening and each audience. All images will be posted to Collaboraction's website, www.collaboraction.org, each week. 

The Sketchbook Festival runs April 16 - May 10, 2009 at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter Street. General admission tickets are $25. Industry and student tickets available for $15. The Festival Pass is available for $40 and allows unlimited admission into the festival, subject to availability. For tickets and more information, visit www.collaboraction.org or call 312-226-9633.