Never Be Bored
1 October 2019
Next!
The Neo-Futurist Theater of Chicago. A Softer World by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau; Oh Wonder by Oh Wonder; Cut.
Sometimes serious, sometimes funny, maybe musical, often fourth-wall-breaking, occasionally interactive, generally autobiographical short plays. Many of them. Performed for you, in some order—some for the first time, some not, some for the last time ever, as part of The Infinite Wrench, a show performed by the Neo-Futurist Theater of Chicago three times a week, every week (except, I think, for a few weekends in December). Each play begins when a member of the ensemble reads out the name of the play, the stage is set, and then the play name is read again; each play ends as a member of the ensemble shouts "Next!"
I first encountered the lovely world of neo-futurist theater through Northwestern's neo group TBD, who drew inspiration from the original Chicago theater. Since then, I've gone to see the original Neo group perform at their theater, a short walk from the Argyle red line L stop (pro tip: before the show, get pho at Nha Hang, a BOYB Vietnamese place right next to the station and conveniently right next to a liquor store). While the Chicago group is the original, there are also now Neo-Futurist theaters in New York and San Francisco; when I saw the San Francisco theater, I learned they shout "Curtain!" to end plays, and I can't wait to go see the New York group and find out what they do.
I love this type of theater because you really never know what what you're going to get. Will it be two minutes of heartbreaking monologue about a personal trauma? Will it be two minutes of a song while an ensemble member raps about Al Gore? Will you be given a salted slice of tomato as a snack? Will someone get a tattoo on their ass? (These are all things that I, personally, have witnessed at neo-futurist shows.) As they themselves would say: "If you've seen the show once, you've seen the show once!"
Part of what I like about the Neo-Futurist Theater is the dedication to the form. Even as the individual plays performed each week change, the structure—the reading of the title, the shouted "Next!"—stays the same. And within those artistic constraints, so much tonal whiplash is possible. It's something I also like about the webcomic A Softer World by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau. Most comics are just three photographic panels with text overlaid—and yet some are sarcastic, some melancholy, some dark, some funny, some just beautiful.
Another interesting aspect to The Infinite Wrench is that none of the individual plays were specifically written to go together, but every week some number of new plays are introduced to the show and some are taken out, and that's the show. It reminds me of the writing process for Oh Wonder, the self-titled debut album of the duo of Anthony West and Josephine Vander Gucht. Starting in September 2014, they wrote and released one single a month; after a year they added an additional two and called the fifteen songs an album. The music video for "Lose It" wins my vote for Best Music Video Ever, and the idea of it is something I think a neo-futurist would appreciate.
Neo-Futurist plays are written and performed by the ensemble, and based on their own lives, which gives the theater a lovely sense of honesty and vulnerability. Some plays are relatable, some are not, all begin and end in the span of a couple minutes. I like Cut videos for this too, especially their "Keep it 100" series, which have 100 people respond to the same prompt—like sharing their favorite lyric, or the last search on their phone, or a secret.