I'm a performer, director and writer based in Chicago.
Represented by Paonessa Talent 773.360.8749
Upcoming Shows
Jessie Rose Trip music video where you can be the director! See the complete video and read more about it here: http://nokiaconnects.com/2012/02/29/direct-your-own-music-video-with-the-nokia-asha-302/
Promo for Stuff Theater from Norton.
Enter for the chance to see our improv actors, opera singers, and artists bring your Facebook page to life in a LIVE, 24-hour, completely unrehearsed and unscripted performance, Nov. 30, 2011 from 9AM EST - 9AM EST. Enter for the chance to have your Facebook wall performed here: http://on.fb.me/tn679v
facebook.com/stufftheatre
Who’s that skank hanging on Timmy Mayse at 0:51? It’s me!
Maybehip.com came to our first preview and filmed a video about 40 Whacks. There are clips of the show and some interviews with me and Aggie.
Tonight at midnight at iO! The Improvised Star Trek live show. Come geek out and have a drink with us. $5
Next week’s cover, up online now. Get the story from the artist who created it.
I told him we used his cover of Fame to open Mary Kay Letourneau players and he drew this for me.
The first “Women Guerrilla” corps has just been formed in the Philippines and Filipino women, trained in their local women’s auxiliary service, are seen here hard at work practicing on November 8, 1941, at a rifle range in Manila. (AP Photo)
This sculpture by Barbara Hepworth reminds me of Neon Genesis but it could just be on my mind. Earlier today I saw a guy sporting a Nerv backpack.
Lights Out Alma
Cast: Lynnae Duley, Kimber Hall, Aggie Hewitt
2009 Annoyance Theater
Created collaboratively with the cast, Lights Out Alma takes place in te 1930s and 1960s and is about three friends driven to betrayal and murder and the consequences of their actions.
Originally developed as a one act for the Annoyance’s Triple Feature program, the show was extended into a full length play and given a six week run. Lights Out Alma was selected by The League of Chicago Theaters for a Theater Thursday event.
Poster by Griffen Eckstein
Brunch Punkx
2012 Annoyance Theater
Kellen Alexander, Christina Boucher, Neal Dandade, Chelsea Devantez, Steve Hnilicka, Scott Nelson
Music by Lisa McQueen
Music direction by Tara Trudell
This cast had a very long run last year at the Annoyance in Skiing is Believing and wanted to work together again so they brought me on board and we created Brunch Punkx.
Lisa McQueen wrote incredible music to compliment the musical theater sensibilities of the cast. Best described as Rent plus Blues Brothers.
The songs are catchy and the lyrics sharp, and musical theater aficionados will enjoy playing “Guess the Pastiche” with the musical numbers that lovingly pay tribute to other musicals. The cast is fantastic, and each actor embraces their damaged yet lovable character with enthusiasm and likability.
- Gaper’s Block
poster by Griffen Eckstein
photo by Tina Smothers Photography
Mary Kay Letourneau Players
Kate Duffy and Katie Rich
2011 Chicago Sketchfest
2011 Second City deMaat Theater
2012 iO Theater
Mary Kay teams them up with director Irene Marquette (40 Whacks), who manages to weave the duo’s love of icky news stories and complex characters into a show that swivels neatly back and forth between scenes involving the strange (an architect can’t understand how his rendering resembles the Twin Towers) and the familiar (a woman uninvites her best friend to her wedding).
The pair playfully skews the audience’s expectations in a series of unpredictable scenes, and director Marquette weaves them together seamlessly.
- Dyan Flores, Gapers Block
photo by Billy Bungeroth
Jimmy of Nazareth
2011 Annoyance Theater
written by and starring: Jimmy Pennington
cast: Michael Brunlieb, Rachel Farmer, Mark Logsdon, Jo Scott, Matt Ulrich
Jimmy of Nazareth follows Pennington from his humble beginnings as an unemployed college graduate living with his fiance in Nazareth, Pennsylvania on an epic journey of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and emergency psych wards - a darkly funny tale of resurrection after the death of innocence.
Was originally approached to develop a one man show and ended up creating a one act play where his fiance, parents, brother, therapist and Howard Hughes make sense of what happened to Jimmy post-college.
Jimmy talks about the process on Mark Colomb’s Poor Choices Podcast.
Poster by Mike Marunowski
40 Whacks
Cast: Ellen Stoneking, Noah Gregoropoulos, Jennifer Estlin, Sherman Edwards, Chelsea Farmer, Mike Maltz, Cristin McAlister
Music: Lisa McQueen
Written: Aggie Hewitt
2010 Annoyance Theater
A musical based on the Borden murders and trial, I directed the show and developed it with writer Aggie Hewitt. Originally scheduled to run for 8 weeks, 40 Whacks opened as part of the 2010 Just for Laughs Festival and ran until the end of October that year.
Reader Recommended
New City Recommended
2010 Orgie Award Winner for “Production Joie de Vivre”
What amazes most about this production is its restraint. Marquette has adhered to a little more class and period consciousness than one usually sees in Annoyance productions. Higher production values in scenic design and costuming, coupled with hints of ragtime in McQueen’s musical score, give the audience a stronger sense of old-timey mass murder–all the better with which to sail into the production’s more off-the-wall, anachronistic moments.
- Paige Listerud
Chicago Theater Beat
Poster by Griffen Eckstein