Photos: First Look at The Impostors Theatre Company's THE LAST LIVING GUN in Rehearsal

The Impostors Theatre Company (ITC) will open their fifth season with The Last Living Gun, written by Ryan Stevens and directed by ITC Artistic Director Stefan Roseen, featuring original music by ITC ensemble member Dominick Vincent Alesia. The Last Living Gun runs September 29 – October 14, 2023 at The Den Theatre, 1331 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60622.

Check out rehearsal photos below!

Imagine a world without guns. We’ll give you a moment.

If your imagination needs a hand, picture this: it’s an age where all guns and even metal are a relic of the past, a murmured bit of lore that instills both fixation and fear. When a rumor about the last existing gun in the world makes its way to a guarded courier, she sets out on an assignment to hunt it down. Accompanied by a plucky companion and confrontations of chaotic characters and trials along the way, she will face her own demon in the inevitable path of destruction.

Part Wild Western, part vaudevillian farce, The Last Living Gun crosses genres to expend a story of survival.

The cast of The Last Living Gun includes ITC ensemble members Emily Gulbrandsen as Player One, B Valek as Band Member/Ensemble, and Dominick Vincent Alesia as Band Leader/Ensemble, with Nyajai Ellison as Rose-Of Sharon, Kati Yau as Throatpin, Tessa Marie Hoffman as Player Two, Philip J. Macaluso as Player Three, Gunner Bradley as Player Four, Kayla Higbee as Player Five, and Morgan Braithwaite as Band Member/Ensemble.

Following The Last Living Gun, The Impostors Theatre Company will host The Thaw: A Winter Cabaret on Saturday, January 27, 2024. This event will premiere new music of the Shakespearean variety by ITC ensemble member (and The Last Living Gun Band Leader) Dominick Vincent Alesia, as well as the talents of other ITC ensemble members and artistic associates. In conjunction with The Thaw, The Impostors will fundraise for their next two productions: Beyond the Garden Gate, by ITC ensemble member Mallory Swisher, and the next iteration of their community anthology series, Footholds Vol. 5.

About the Artists

Stefan Roseen (Director) is a Chicago director, playwright, and designer who serves as the artistic director of The Impostors Theatre Company (ITC). Stefan most recently directed for ITC on the Jeff Recommended Miranda: A War-Torn Fable. Additional directing credits include: ITC’s Windwalkers; the Jeff Nominated Hertha Nova; The House of Baba Yaga; Summer & Smoke; Tippy: Stories from the River; Footholds (2020 & 2019); Caged: An Allegory; The Wood; as well as The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan; Art; and The Altercation in the Underworld — Winner “Best Of” for MadKap Productions Short Play Festival. Last season, Stefan was Jeff Nominated as Best Director for Hertha Nova. He earned his degree in Theatre and Studio Art from Valparaiso University where he has since returned to direct. Stefan’s more recent theatrical designs include sets for 25/25, Occidental Express, the Jeff Recommended They, and the Jeff Nominated The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui — all for Trap Door Theatre.

Ryan Stevens (Playwright) is the Playwriting Fellow at Emory University. They received an MA in Theatre from USC and an MFA in Playwriting from UCLA. Stevens has worked with Silver Spring Stage, The Impostors Theatre, Inkwell Theatre, St. Croix Falls Festival Theatre, Queen City Theatre, New American Theatre, Whiskey Radio Hour, Theatre Viscera, Festival D’Avignon, Broken Slate Productions, The Plagiarists Chicago, Stage Left Theatre, Philadelphia Dramatists Center, T. Schreiber Studio, Seoul Players, and Theatre Above The Law, among others.

Dominick Alesia (Composer/Band Leader)  is a composer, lyricist, actor, and writer who has the wonderful privilege of being an ensemble member of The Impostors Theatre Company. As a composer, he has written music for numerous past productions - Hertha Nova, The House of Baba Yaga, and their most recent iteration of their anthology play series, Footholds Vol. 4. He also wrote the book, music, and lyrics to the season four’s Jeff Recommended production of Miranda: A War-Torn Fable, also directed by Stefan Roseen. As an actor, he was most recently on stage this past summer at a theatre in the Ozarks, MO., as part of a summer-long concert musical. He is so excited to be working with such amazing actors and musicians on The Last Living Gun, and is always thrilled to tell the tale of a new work!

About The Impostors Theatre Company

The Impostors Theatre Company stages stories at the crossroads of retrospect and innovation, where the fantastic collides with the everyday. In order to better our discourse, our relationships, and ourselves, The Impostors aim to inspire an urgency for the arts by embracing the art of pretend.

Returning for their fifth season, The Impostors have crafted a new series of productions that explore the intersection of the wide-eyed and world-weary. This season, characters discover liminal spaces, beginning on a well-trodden road to a mythical prize, passing through an otherworldly realm where enchanting and dangerous creatures reside, and arriving back at home, in the attic where forgotten favorites hide. In this series of tales, protagonists must accept their darkest truths to emerge victorious or, at the very least, changed.

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