This monthly staged reading series continues Three Cat Productions commitment to new work and is meant to be an extension of the Chicago New Work Festival. The reading series is held on the third Monday of each month at the Berger Park Cultural Center first floor . (6205 N Sheridan Road). The series is free and open to the public. All readings start at 7pm.
2019 Readings
“Big Bad” by Katherine Gwynn
March 18, 2019
Ruby is a 13 year-old girl who met something Bad on the way to Memaw’s house. Now her Memaw is a ghost, her Daddy is trying to be a good man, her Mama is dead, and Ruby brings baskets of goodies to something that tried to swallow her whole, hoping for answers. With questions haunting her about blood, shadows, and family, Ruby has to learn what being a monster means–and what exactly she can, and won’t, forgive
About Katherine Gwynn
Katherine Gwynn is a midwestern (born in Kansa City, now living in Chicago) playwright who writes in order to put women, queer people, and especially queer women, center-stage. Her play “Merely Players” was performed April 2015 in the KU Theatre Department, and was awarded the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award from the Women and Theatre Program of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education that following summer. Summer 2016 Gwynn co-wrote “Second Ladies” with Heidi Van for the Kansas City Fringe Festival, which was remounted at the Fishtank Theatre in Kansas City in August. Gwynn was a Resident Artist with the Fishtank Theatre from August 2016-2017. She recently finished a commission entitled “Portrait of a Woman’s Tears” for Rockhurst University (KCMO) which premiered in November 2017 and is a finalist for the 2018 Bay Area Playwright Festival. Her play “Big Big” was a playlab selection for the 2018 Great Plains Theatre Conference. She is Co-Directer for the Coterie Theatre (KCMO)’s “Project Pride” for the second year in a row.
“A Play About A Baby Carrot” By Juliet Roll
April 15, 2019
Nephesh, the Hebrew word for soul, and gezer, the Hebrew word for carrot, are found together in the Torah approximately zero times. But when a grieving mother sees her deceased baby’s soul in a carrot, she must fight to protect it amidst a storm of bumbling parents, well-intentioned mourners and one absentee Rabbi. In Juliet Roll’s A Play About a Baby Carrot, a vegetable tests one woman’s faith amidst the aftermath of tragedy.
About Juliet Roll
Juliet Roll is a Chicago-based playwright who recently graduated from Northwestern, where she studied biochemistry and theatre. Her recent work includes 204 (Victory Gardens college night), Tatter & her Sister & also her Spoon, The Ice Inside an Ear Canal, and Umbriel (Northwestern University). She was part of a 2017 resident artist team with Dog Ear Theatre and Barn Arts Collective, and she received a 2016-2017 Undergraduate Research Grant to study science communication in France for her play Haigneré. She loves lemon juice, science history, and her siblings, and currently gets to pipette for a living. She is so excited to celebrate new work with you all!
“Priceless” by Barbara McDonald
May 20, 2019
Two couples, bound by friendship and blood, get together for dinner one Saturday night. Unbeknownst to one couple, a hidden agenda is at work, as is a disagreement about whether the agenda should be pursued on this particular night. Ultimately, what promised to be a pleasant social evening turns sour, as an intense argument breaks out and things are said that cannot be taken back.
About Barbara McDonald
In a prior life, Barbara McDonald was a lawyer and a judge, but now her passion for playwriting is her primary focus. Barbara’s full-length play “Priceless” was selected as a semi-finalist for the 2017 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. Her short plays, “Good Grief,” “Truth (or the President is an Alien)” and “Eti-Tech” were produced in Chicago, the first two as part of the Women’s Theatre Alliance New Play Development Workshop and Showcase in 2014 and 2015 respectively, and the latter in 2016 as part of The 6th Annual Chicago One-Minute Play Festival. Two of Barbara’s one-act plays “Suspicion” and ”Armed and In Danger” had staged readings at Chicago Dramatists in 2012.
“Dreary Street” by Sagit Sol Epstein
July 15, 2019
A comedy about two Indian American families struggling to accept their dysfunctional life. Gungu, Anisha’s grandmother, has hallucinations from Parkinson’s medication . She is certain that her husband is betraying her with younger women, and drives all the family mad. Shankatala, Rupash’s mom, is desperate for grandchildren and will do anything to make her son get married. Anisha and Rupash meet again after years apart, and their reunion makes Anisha hope for a better life- or not.
About Sagit Sol Epstein
Playwright, director, actor and producer. Wrote and performed in sketch comedy shows on television and stage, most notably prime-time “Domino”, which aired for one and a half years on Israel’s national TV network. Subsequently, I wrote and performed in an Israeli national prime-time TV show called “The First in Entertainment” for one year. In 2006, I founded a theatre company in Israel that has performed over 1,500 shows for children, primarily adaptations of familiar stories, produced as two-actor plays that include custom-designed, half human-scale anthropomorphic animal puppets. Recently moved to Chicago.
“Trust What Is” by Argenis Vegas
August 19, 2019
Trust What Is relates the tale of an ever-curious Pedro as he learns acceptance through the challenges put in his path–from emigrating from Latin America penniless and knowing no one, to navigating a difficult relationship, and eventually facing life-threatening health issues. The audience shares in Pedro’s struggles and triumphs as he seeks to discover himself and find connections with the people he encounters.
About Argenis Vegas
Argenis Vegas, Chicago author and playwright, was born in Venezuela and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 21. His play MORE AND LESS was selected for the Trellis Play Festival at The Greenhouse Theater Center in 2015. He went on to co-facilitate a children’s theatre program sponsored by The Art of Evolution Theatre at Family Focus in Evanston for which he wrote the play MR. D.T. His new play, “TRUST WHAT IS,” is an adaption of his book by the same name. Currently Vegas resides as a playwright in workshop with the Artist Development Workshop in Chicago.
“Son’s House” by Andre’ Richardson Hogan III
September 16, 2019
A retiring blues artist (as well as former preacher) is struggling to absorb his return to the music industry after a sixteen-year hiatus.
About Andre’ Richardson Hogan III
André Richardson Hogan II is a playwright, screenwriter, poet, essayist, visual artist, and theater critic. His plays have received stage readings and productions in numerous theaters which include the American Theater Company, Black Ensemble Theater, Black Diamond Productions, Blackboard Reading Series, Chicago Dramatists, Dramatists Personae, the Field Museum of Natural History, MPAACT, Magnified Gift Theater and Dance Company, Negro Ensemble Company, Nommo PlayLab, Prop Thtr, The Reading Series, Red Harlem Readers, and Three Cat Productions. The Chicago Chronicles, Volume 1, a docudrama of Logan Square residents, was produced as a commissioned work for American Theater Company. An Ode to the Washermen, a short work in one act, was produced by Negro Ensemble Company in association with the Midwest International Theater Festival (NYC) in the summer of 2010. It was also nominated for Outstanding Production of a Short Subject. Several poems have been published such as in The Art of Monteque, Many Mountains Moving, and Segue. Strangers, a collection of poetry, was published by Xlibris in 2009. Sugar for Coffee, a full length drama, was produced and presented by Blue Collar Theater Company in June of 2012. My Love for Words, a one-act, one-man autobiographical drama, was written and performed by Hogan, and produced by MPAACT, in 2013. In 2001, Hogan received a B.F.A. in Liberal Arts from Columbia College, Chicago. He was a resident playwright at Magnified Gift Theater and Dance Company and Timber Lake Playhouse Playwrights Colony in Mt. Carroll, IL., a Literary Manager for Sankofa Theater Company, and is currently an Associate Artist of the Black Lives/Black Lives International Project. He resides at Hyde Park in Chicago.
“Don’t Call Me Shirley” by Paul Moulton
October 21, 2019
It’s 1952, the height of the Red Scare, and Shirley Fluffberger, the third-most successful woman in radio, is in danger of being exposed as a former Communist unless she allows her show “That Dizzy Broad” to transfer to the growing medium of television. Then Shirley’s husband Stanley discovers a dirty little secret about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover which she employs in an ingenious scheme to save the day . . . or so she thinks.
About Paul Moulton
Paul Moulton has been spreading subversion throughout America, via plays and comic sketches, from his home base in Palatine, IL for decades now. Off Off Broadway productions include “Alarm” (ID America Festival, 2007) and “Void!!” (Vignettes for the Apocalypse V, 2011). In Chicago, Artistic Home has included his short plays “Breakroom,” “Change” and “March.” Paul is a founding member and Writer Of Wrongs for Democracy Burlesque, Chicago’s longest-running political sketch comedy revue, and will occasionally portray an undistinguished President onstage for them if needed. Paul’s two ambitions as a writer are to win a Pulitzer and author a play with a two-word title.
WHITE HOUSE! by Timothy Rey
November 18, 2019
Two interlopers wait in the hallway of the White House, but their unannounced arrival brings into question, what it means to be ‘American’ , the idea of truth, and if ‘this house’ should even stand!
About Timothy Rey
TIMOTHY DAVID REY: His plays and performances pieces have been seen and heard throughout the Midwest and in Panama. His most recent plays have been Gloria! (for Acting Out Awareness Educational Theater), selections from T-Dance : A New Monologue Play ( for Chicago Danzetheater 2017 New Playwright’s Festival), The (Almost) Last Picture Show (for Dandelion Theater Company 2017), For Every Ring There Is A Season: A Phone Play (Chicago Calling Arts Festival).His solo perfomrances pieces have been seen at the Milwaukee LBGT Center and many local performance spaces, including Filet of Solo (Lifeline Theater), & Steppenwolf Theater’s Lookout Series.