Open Space Arts Announces Four-Play QUEER EXPRESSION Series For 2024-25
LGBTQ+ themed plays to include three new Chicago premieres and the classic AS IS Open Space Arts - Queer Expression series announcement.
By: A.A. Cristi Jul. 23, 2024
Open Space Arts has announced a four-play QUEER EXPRESSION series for 2024-25 LGBTQ+ themed plays to include three new Chicago premieres and the classic AS IS CHICAGO – Open Space Arts has announced programming for its QUEER EXPRESSION series of four LGBTQ+ - themed plays.
QUEER EXPRESSION, which will include film presentations as well as stage productions, is one of two series the company entering its second full season of operations will present in 2024-25.
The other, ARTS JUDAICA, will consist of a series of plays to be announced later. The two series will serve the company's stated mission “to combat prejudice through the transformative power of creativity. Through our ARTS JUDAICA and QUEER EXPRESSION programs, we confront homophobia and antisemitism head-on using theater, film, and the arts.”
The QUEER EXPRESSION series will present three Chicago premieres by emerging LGBTQ+ playwrights, and one classic of gay theater. AS IS, by William Hoffman - the AIDS themed drama that premiered in New York in March 1985 - will be performed in March 2025, in observance of the play's 40th Anniversary.
The series will open with LIGHT SWITCH, the hilarious and heartbreaking story of an autistic gay man's journey toward love and acceptance over the span of twenty years. LIGHT SWITCH is by Dave Osmundsen, an autistic gay writer. It premiered in 2022 at the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a Providence, Rhode Island company with a mission to serve neurodiverse actors and playwrights and audiences, including those with sensory concerns. Michael D. Graham (director of Open Space Arts' ROSENBERG) will return to direct LIGHT SWITCH. LIGHT SWITCH will open to the public and the press on Friday, September 13 and play through September 29, 2024.
The series will continue in November with PLOT POINTS IN OUR SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT, by Miranda Rose Hall. The play, which premiered in 2018 in New York City at Lincoln Center's LCT3, is a two-character play about the breakup of a love affair between a cisgender lesbian and a self-described “genderqueer trans person who is not a woman and is not a man, but is kind of a man, who loves lesbian jokes.” THE NEW YORK TIMES' Jesse Green said it was “never less than intriguing… Transgender people deserve to see that joy onstage. And lots of other people can share the feeling by analogy.” PLOT POINTS IN OUR SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT will be directed by Teri Talo and will open to the public and the press on Friday, November 1 and play through November 17, 2024.
The third play in the series will be the dark comedy MERCY KILLING, by Alandra Heilman. The play, which premiered in 2018 at the Awesome Theatre Company of Oakland, California, concerns Mercy, a barista who is also a serial killer, and her girlfriend. Greta Zandstra will direct. MERCY KILLING will open to the public and the press on Friday, February 7, 2025, and play through February 23, 2025.
QUEER EXPRESSION will conclude its 2024-25 series with a 40th Anniversary production of William Hoffman's AS IS. AS IS portrays the effect that AIDS, a relatively new epidemic at the time in the 1980s, has on a group of friends living in New York City. It was one of the early plays and subsequent TV movies depicting how the epidemic was affecting gay Americans. AS IS opened on Broadway in March 1985, shortly before Larry Kramer's play THE NORMAL HEART opened. It ran for eight months on Broadway and was later produced as a television film. It won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Michael D. Graham will direct the Open Space Arts production. AS IS will open to the public and the press on Friday, March 28, 2025, and play through April 13, 2025.
Performances are at Open Space Arts's hyper-intimate 20-seats theater at 1411 W Wilson, in Chicago. Individual play tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for students or seniors, and $15 for OSA members; and season passes are available for all four plays at $60.00. Tickets and season passes will be on sale soon at https://openspacearts.org/ Information on all Open Space Arts events is available at https://openspacearts.org/ and Pride Film Fest events at https://openspacearts.org/qe-film-fest%2Fbest-of-fest.
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