Photo Flash: An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein

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Sheldon Alan "Shel" Silverstein was a Chicago native who, after being expelled from the University of Illinois for failing grades, earned his bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University in 1953. He was then drafted into the army and stationed in Kyoto, Japan and South Korea for two years. He used the drawing skills he honed in adolescence working as cartoonist for the Pacific military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

His early writing career did not include children's literature at all, and he was a contributor to Playboy magazine for many years as a poet and satirist. After his editor, Ursula Nordstrom, encouraged to him write his first volume of children's poetry, he decided he wanted to continue and "Uncle Shelby" was born.

While his iconic body of children's literature will be remembered in perpetuity, this production presents another less known facet of his playfulness. An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein is equally as zany, pointed, and poignant but significantly more perverse than his beloved childhood tales and poems. It is a joy to bring his other world to life for an audience that grew up with him.

Photos by Tom McGrath