Info
$ 99
Per MonthWritten by: B.Z. FloridaDirected by: Kayla Menz
Previews: October 9-11, Friday & Saturday @ 7:30pm, Sunday @ 3pm
Show dates: October 16-November 21, Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:30pm, Sundays @ 3pm
Understudy Performance: Sunday, Nov 15 @ 3pm
Industry Night: Monday, Nov 16 @ 7:30pm
Tickets $30
Cast
$ 99
Per Month| Track 1 | Eric Frederickson |
| Track 2 | Bradford Stevens |
| Track 3 | Squeek Rangel |
| Track 4 | Annie Beaubien |
| Track 5 | Hannah Mary Simpson |
| Track 6 | Matt Chester |
| Understudies | |
| Track 1 U/S | Richard Adams |
| Track 2 U/S | Allan Mayer |
| Track 3 U/S | AJ Noon |
| Track 4 U/S | Bailey Neill |
| Track 5 U/S | Christine Watt |
| Track 6 U/S | Eugene Jones |
Crew
$ 99
Per Month| Production Manager | Bennett Petersen |
| Playwright | B.Z. Florida |
| Director | Kayla Menz |
| Assistant Director | Mersedez Hoover |
| Stage Manager | Adriana Rodriguez-Hemphill |
| Assistant Stage Manager | Max Ching |
| Technical Director | Anthony Doyle |
| Scenic Designer | Devin Meske |
| Costume Designer | Valerie Cambron |
| Prop Designer | Randy Rozler |
| Lighting Designer | Piper Kirchhofer |
| Master Electrician | Morgan Watkinson |
| Sound Designer | Gina Montalvo |
| Wig Stylist | Olivia Sis |
Playwright’s Note
If I think too hard about where the world is headed, I feel dread. I don’t need to explain why. Who doesn’t dread the future these days?
And yet I love science fiction. Despite popular belief, it really has no interest in trying to predict the world we might find ourselves in. In fact, it’s deliriously wrong at getting the future right. Pacific Rim, Fifth Element, and Dune are just a few science fiction movies I can think of, which seem to get the future wrong almost on purpose.
That’s the way it should be. Humans are unpredictable, and individuals too damn weird to really be optimized for. Instead of prediction – a pathetic task, more suited to Kalshi than art – the genre offers countless possibilities of what the world could look like.
My favorite kind of science fiction uses those possibilities to ask the big questions:
How is this world different from our own? What does it say about us that we won’t end up just like that?
I hope the play makes you think, and I really hope you enjoy it. But more than anything, I hope it provides you with fodder for good conversation. I’m so thankful I’ve gotten to be a tiny part of Chicago’s storefront theater tradition tonight. I’m thankful you’re taking part in it as well.
– B.Z. Florida
Director’s Note
I love some good Sci-Fi. From devouring the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate throughout my life, to gasping in amazement at the prose in A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers, sci-fi has always been a place of wonder and imagination for me. When it comes to Radical Futures, we blend the realism of men struggling to connect after years apart with the outlandish stories they create together. These other worldly stories give us just enough distance from reality to talk about some of the harder questions in life. What limits will we reach for in order to survive? How is technology affecting us now and how will it continue to weave through our lives? What does progress look like and when does it go too far?
The worlds of this play are brought to life by our incredible team who all rose to the inviting challenges and opportunities for play. So many talented artists and technicians came together to immerse you in the myriad of worlds that B.Z. brought to us. This show would not be possible without each and every one of them.
The future can fill us with a sense of dread and cynicism. But of all the sci-fi genres, I choose to lean into Hopepunk. I choose empathy, optimism, kindness, and community in the face of despair, tragedy, and injustice.
“There is hope now in the wind
And the millions who are marching demanding we be kind
From the new lands the lifeboats might find”
– Frank Turner, The Lifeboat, 2018
Grab a drink, take a seat, and enjoy our glimpse into the future through the lens of the present.
– Kayla Menz
Dramaturg’s Note
A note from the dramaturg: In science fiction, humanity’s curiosity to go beyond itself is indulged in ways bizarre and familiar. A kindly priest who dispenses wisdom in sermon, and who also happens to be a robot. Underpaid wage workers bemoaning tipping culture whilst completing bounties through an app. The power of words, and their ability to kill. Radical futures embraces the weird and wonderful of science fiction genre tropes and grounds them in the familiar. Because as unfamiliar as we find the neon aesthetics and advanced future tech of cyberpunk, we can all recognize the pervasive creep of corporate overreach. We may not feel the dystopia of a post-apocalyptic world, but we see every day the distance growing between humanity and empathy. In the words of Harlan Ellison, “The only thing worth writing about is people. […] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the ‘normal’, the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.”
-Mersedez Hoover
