"Mary Minnelli" channels the glamour of a legend in Performing Tonight: Liza Minnelli's Daughter, opening Saturday, April 30, 2011 at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland.
Could "Mary Minnelli" be the Broadway baby's baby? This one-woman show -- with sexy back-up dancers Donnell Williams and Joseph Schupbach -- is a vehicle for Mary to connect with the woman she believes to be her biological mother: Liza Minnelli. If the Chicago run goes well, Mary plans to hit the bright lights of New York City and perform for Liza herself, reuniting Mary with her mother and starting her on the life she was meant to live in the first place. Singing, dancing, high drama and sequins come together in this darkly humorous world-premiere by Chicago writer-performer and Neo-Futurists, Mary Fons.
Creator, Mary Fons, states, "The show is not a simple impression of Liza Minnelli; let me make that perfectly clear. Anyone can do an impression. This show has dance numbers and songs, but it's not a revue. It's more like a reckoning.
Am I
Liza Minnelli's daughter? I might be. Stranger things have happened."
Mary Fons (Creator, Mary Minnelli) has been writing and performing her original work across U.S. stages for almost 10 years. Mary has written many, many plays as a Neo-Futurist for Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, performing them both in Chicago and on tour. As a slam poet, Mary has toured extensively, represented Chicago at the National Poetry Slam ('03, '05) and has performed and workshopped poetry with high school students all over Chicagoland. She co-hosts the PBS show, "Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting" with her mom and has been freelancing as a writer professionally since 2005. She has worked for/at The Poetry Center of Chicago, The Dollar Store, Jellyvision, Paper Machete, Varitalk, The Encyclopedia Show, the Green Mill, No Shame Theater, and colleges from Carnegie Mellon to IIT. She is an original ensemble member of The Gift Theatre Company.
Sonja Moser (Director) has enjoyed collaborating on the production of new plays with
David Adjmi (Strange Attractors), Maria-Irene Fornes (Enter the Night), Ruth Margraff (All Those Violent Sweaters),
Ellen McLaughlin (Helen) and
Sarah Ruhl (Late, a Cowboy Song), among others, and has created her own original stage adaptations of works by Gogol (The Overcoat),
Flannery O'Connor (Good Country People) and
Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt). She also has a passion for classic texts, and has directed productions of The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Philoctetes, and The Game of Love and Chance, and has assisted on Shakespeare productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Shakespeare in the Park and the
American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusettes. She has directed Off-Broadway at The Signature Theater and for
The Public Theater's New Works Now series and at additional New York venues, including HERE, P.S. 122, Location One, The Flea, and The Ohio Theater. Regional credits include: HBO Workspace (Los Angeles), The University of Iowa (Iowa City), and The Islesford Theater Project, a theater collective of which she is the Artistic Director, located on Little Cranberry Island, Maine. Sonja received her formal training as a director under the tutelage of
Anne Bogart and Ro
Bert Woodruff at Columbia University, and currently teaches in the MFA Directing program at ISU.
Mary is assisted onstage by
Donnell Williams who has worked with Second City, Barrel of Monkeys, Hubbard Street Dance and
About Face Theatre; and Joseph Schupbach who has worked with Barrel of Monkeys and Lookingglass Theatre.
Other contributors include: Luke Holladay, Technical Director, and Victoria Golden, Production Manager.Previews Thursday and Friday, April 28 and 29 at 8:00 p.m.
Opening Night: Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.
Regular performances continue through June 4, 2011: Thurs/Fri/Sat at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets are $15, $10 for students/seniors with ID, or pay-what-you-can on Thursdays.
All performances take place at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland
For tickets or information, visit www.neofuturists.org or call 773-275-5255.
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