Following The Ruckus Theater's wildy successful, sold-out inaugural Chicago production, the world premiere of Heist Play by Mitch Vermeersch, The Ruckus descends on The Side Project Theatre with a world premiere theatrical mixtape, Tell It & Speak It & Think It & Breathe It. Tell It & Speak It & Think It & Breathe It is performed at The Side Project Theatre, October 25-28 & November 1-4, 2009. All performances are at 7:30 pm, except November 1 at 2 pm. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased online at RuckusTheater.org, by e-mail at tickets@ruckustheater.org or by phone at 773-769-7257.

Co-curated by The Ruckus Artistic Director Allison Shoemaker, Literary Manager Mitch Vermeersch and Artistic Associate Melissa Pryor and made up of bold new work from writers across the country, Tell It... is a collection of fourteen world premiere short plays staged by eleven directors with eighteen actors that find new and unexpected meaning in the lyrics of popular music. The company also uncovers common resonances between songs and the plays they inspire, seeking out the relationships between them sonically, lyrically and visually. Tell It... features accompanying live performances from local musicians, including Elvisbride, Louis and the Hunt and Mitch Mead, each providing their own interpretations of the songs examined.

A compilation of short "pl-ongs" or "s-lays" by theater artists from Chicago, New York, California and Michigan, Tell It... includes work by nine playwrights making their Chicago debuts and four playwrights making their world debuts. Over the course of the evening, audiences will experience work inspired by The Breeders, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Bob Dylan, The Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Paris Hilton, Hot Chip, Joni Mitchell, Neutral Milk Hotel, The New Pornographers, Yoko Ono, Parliament, Peaches, Pearl Jam, John Rutter, Paul Simon, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Cat Stevens, System of a Down, The White Stripes and Thom Yorke.

A portion of Tell It... also examines the impact of song selection on the audience's experience in Play, created by Allison Shoemaker, Joshua Davis, Kathryn Hribar and David Hornreich. During Play-a fusion of theater, music and dance-the audience is invited to don personal headphones and allow their song selection to influence what they experience visually. The Ruckus provides a suggested playlist for the evening, which the audience may download and bring to Tell It...; loaner mp3 players are also available the night of the performance.

"Human beings process music differently than anything else we encounter," said The Ruckus Artistic Director Allison Shoemaker. "As a result, the songs we hear and know and love become deeply entrenched in our personal and cultural histories. Mitch and I were fascinated by the idea of somehow divorcing familiar lyrics from their original context and pairing those histories with new and unexpected meanings and resonances. What happens when you allow the work of another artist to color your visual, auditory and lingual worlds? New characters, new themes, new places, but the original magic somehow lingers, like old flat-top, it comes grooving up slowly."