Sideshow Theater Presents The Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers Benefit 5/7

Sideshow Theatre Company is bringing girl power back with a vengeance for the sixth time with The Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestler's CLLAW VI! As arm wrestling leagues pop up all over this great country, Sideshow is proud to produce and host the Chicago League's sixth match benefiting Sideshow Theatre Company and Gilda's Club Chicago. The Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers have been described in a recent Washington Post article as the most awesome "fantasy sports league in which outrageously dressed, bawdy femmes" battle it out for the championship. Time Out Chicago recently featured CLLAW V as your "perfect weekend" activity, describing it as a "Road House-inspired" event that is sure to be a "kick-ass performance." Check out the highlights from CLLAW V in our upcoming segment on Chicago Revealed, airing May 7th! Join the sassy CLLAW ladies for the event that fuses an open bar, arm bending strength, shady referees and audience participation into a perfectly insane evening fundraiser!

CLLAW VI will be held on Friday, May 7, 2010 at The Mystic Celt at 3443 North Southport Avenue. Tickets are $25 and include access to a three hour open bar from 9:30pm-12:30am. Not interested in the open bar? A suggested donation of $5 will get you into the event, and a cash bar is available. The doors open at 9:00pm, and at 9:30pm, the lady wrestlers enter, and the battle begins. Final match and champion-crowning is at 11:30pm, at which point the regulation arm-wrestling table is open to all comers who wish to try their luck. For more information and further details, brave the intensity of the CLLAW blog at www.cllaw.wordpress.com, or Sideshow's website at www.sideshowtheatre.org.

The Main Event

Our wrestlers intensively train year round for just a moment of guts and glory on the arm wrestling table. Watch returning wrestlers Katie "The Hurricane" Curic, The Armored Bear, The Great Pumpkin and The Cutting Edge dazzle you on stage with their uncontrollable arm strength and indispensible spirits. With Master of Ceremonies Rokke L. Squelch and a couple of questionable referees to control them, twelve ladies in outrageous costumes come together to vie for that most cherished prize: the CLLAW VI title. Who will de-crown three-time champion The Killer Bee? What newcomer will knock everyone's socks off? Scream, shout, hoot and holler for your favorite wrestlers and watch the matches unravel towards the championship round.

Since its first match in early 2009, CLLAW has crammed a year's worth of charitable chaos into four previous events, and the sixth event promises to be the biggest match yet. Sideshow's previous CLLAW events have helped fund raise for Chicago based non profits including Cornerstone Outreach, Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, New Leash on Life Chicago and Rock for Kids. Our sixth match, and second at the Mystic Celt, promises to combine entertainment and intensity, tension and hilarity, upsets and new champions, all benefiting a good cause.

CLLAWdience Participation

Not content to leave the fun in the arms of its competitors, CLLAW gets everyone in on the action. Audience members have the opportunity to purchase CLLABUX, the official currency of CLLAW, throughout the night. With their CLLAWBUX, onlookers can bet on their favorite wrestlers to prevail, and maybe slip a few to the referees and judges to even the score. All CLLAWBUX purchased also go towards fantastic raffle prizes! Past prizes have included a full case of Half Acre beer, one full produce share for 2010 from Simply Wisconsin, theatre tickets to theatres such as Goodman and Lookingglass, restaurant gift certificates, and more. Other high points of the evening include the "Audience Favorite" voting, in which the most charismatic losing wrestler is given a second chance to compete, and there's always the chance that one of the wrestlers will challenge an innocent bystander to enter a new world of arm related pain. Also surveying the carnage will be a cadre of special guest judges, whose word is law in the world of CLLAW. Past guest judges have included Susan Messing, Craig Uhlir, and Jim Carlson, to name a few. A guest representative from each charity is always invited as a celebrity judge as well.

All for a good CLLAWSE

A portion of the CLLAW VI proceeds will benefit a fantastic local charity, Gilda's Club Chicago. Opening their signature red doors in 1998, Gilda's Club Chicago provides a free, warm and welcoming meeting place where men, women and children diagnoses with cancer, and family and friends, join with others to build social, emotional and informational support as an essential supplement to medical care. Membership and programs are free of charge, and include support and networking groups, lectures, workshops and social events in their home-like, cozy clubhouse. Created in the memory of Second City alumni and Saturday Night Live cast member Gilda Radner, whose life was cut short by ovarian cancer, Gilda's Club now plans over 20 locations in North America and has helped countless number of people in the process. To learn more about Gilda's Club Chicago, visit www.gildaschildchicago.org or call them at (312) 464-9900.

Proceeds will also benefit CLLAW's creator and producer, Sideshow Theatre Company NFP is an Illinois-based company incorporated in November 2007, whose mission is to mine The Collective Unconscious of the world we live in with limitless curiosity, drawing inspiration from the stories, memories and images we all share to spark new conversation and bring our audience together as adventurers in a communal experience of exploration. Proceeds from CLLAW VI will help fund the opening of the first production of Sideshow's 2010 - 2011 season, Kathleen Akerley's Theories of the Sun, opening October 2010. Learn more about Sideshow Theatre Company at www.sideshowtheatre.org.

Dates • Times

CLLAW VI will be held on Friday, May 7, 2010, at The Mystic Celt at 3443 N Southport Avenue. Tickets are $25 and include access to a three hour open bar from 9:30pm-12:30am. At 9:30pm, the lady wrestlers enter, and things get really real. Final match and champion-crowning at 11:30pm, at which point the regulation arm table is open to all comers who wish to try their luck. For more information and further details, brave the intensity of the CLLAW blog, at www.cllaw.wordpress.com, or Sideshow's website at www.sideshowtheatre.org.

For more information on CLLAW VI, or Sideshow Theatre Company, contact Managing Director Megan A. Smith at megan@sideshowtheatre.org, by phone at 312-206-8959, or visit our website at www.sideshowtheatre.org.

About Sideshow Theatre Company

Sideshow Theatre Company NFP is an Illinois-based company incorporated in November 2007, whose mission is to mine The Collective Unconscious of the world we live in with limitless curiosity, drawing inspiration from the stories, memories and images we all share to spark new conversation and bring our audience together as adventurers in a communal experience of exploration. Sideshow's first production, Dante Dies!! (and then things get weird) by Walt McGough was hailed by the Daily Tribune as ‘vivid, intimate, and visually arresting' and Time Out Chicago called Sideshow ‘impressive young talent at play.' Since then Sideshow has produced three world premiere plays, including Everything Freezes, another winter's tale by Walt McGough and Jonathan L. Green, and Ekphrasis: Cave Walls to Soup Cans, by E. Warren Perry Jr. Sideshow just finished producing Pulitzer Prize nominee Janet Burroway's Medea With Child. Sideshow also produces CLLAW, the Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers, an interactive fundraising event that benefits Sideshow Theatre Company and several other local charities. Past events have benefited Cornerstone Community Outreach, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, New Leash on Life and Rock for Kids. Sideshow's next production, Theories of the Sun by Kathleen Akerley opens October 2010. Also in October 2010, catch Sideshow at the DCA Incubator Series, for a sneak peak of Strangerland, an ensemble devised original work informally inspired by Camus' The Stranger. For more information on Sideshow Theatre Company, contact Managing Director Megan Smith at megan@sideshowtheatre.org, by phone at 312-206-8959, or visit our website at www.sideshowtheatre.org.

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