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.
Up Next:
2018 Upcoming Readings
October 15, 2018 at 7pm
Home is Where by Pat Curtis
Directed by Scott Ozaroski
Featuring: Cat Hermes, Halli Stewart, and Shannon Marie Williams
Seventeen-year-old Caitlin has bounced from foster-home to shelter to foster-home for ten long years. She now finds herself in the home of a newly licensed single foster-mother in the tony Chicago suburb of River Forest. She’s unprepared for such verdant, affluent surroundings and is certain she’ll never fit in. But there’s something about her first-time, single foster-mother, Mickey, whom her caseworker refers to as a “hot mess,” that makes Caitlin feel right at home. Past and present collide and launch Caitlin into a future she had never imagined.
About Pat Curtis
Pat Curtis is a Chicago playwright. Her full-length drama, Joint Attention, was produced by Three Cat Productions at the Berger Park Coach House Theatre in October/November, 2013. Her ten-minute comedy, Sibling Ribaldry, was produced by Second City in October/November, 2012. In addition to playwriting, Pat is an avid theater-goer who believes life’s joyous little epiphanies are as likely to occur in a theater as anyplace else on Earth.
November 19, 2018 at 7pm
Paid In Full by Neil Connelly
Directed by Pat Henderson
In a city like Chicago, it helps to know a guy, or a gal. Favors make the world go round, and rules can be more like guidelines, as long as you have a favor in your pocket. Freddy, rising graffiti artist and co-owner of Abuelita’s diner, is struggling to keep either of his professions afloat, and he’s not having much luck with the gatekeepers in Chicago. As he begs, steals, and borrows to get up in the neighborhood, Freddy bends and breaks rules that aren’t always applied evenly. Freddy, and all the folks at Abuelita’s, must ask themselves who they know, who knows them, and where the favor lies, because in Chicago, favors must be paid in full.
About Neil Connelly
Neil is a founding member of Under the Rug Theatre Company, which produced his play RIDE in the spring of 2016. Neil was a semi-finalist for the Downstage Left Playwright Residency at Stage Left Theatre, and was a member of The Writers’ Room with The New Colony. Neil is currently an RAC Group Member with Chicago Dramatists. When he is not busy writing plays, Neil can usually be found shouting encouragement while pulling his hair out at a DePaul basketball game.
December 17, 2018 at 7pm
Riverview by Rolfe Sick
To grow up in the Carnival world is to know fantasy, excitement, the magical and make believe of the “Midway,” the high flying Ferris Wheel, and the heart stopping Parachute—and then there’s the grease, the sweat, body odor, the unshaven mixed with a little lawlessness amid the boom of the huckster. It’s Riverview, Chicago, 1955. The Berger brothers can’t seem to make it work—three generations of family business seem to be doomed to failure—a stubborn German father, a city of payoffs, a post war generation that’s changing the definition of living. If you can guess the weight of the midway guests, you can guess what happens when two desperate TWIN sisters secretly share the secretary’s job—and attentions of unsuspecting brothers in a Tunnel of Love, and a roller coaster of romance. It’s brother vs. brother, father against sons, and career vs. love—until one tragic ride delivers a message of life’s reality: a merry-go-round can’t go on forever.
About Rolf Sick
Have you ever ridden a freight train West, say Chicago to Denver, or raced a thundering ice boat across Lake Geneva? Or had the exhilaration of watching a”chef to be” create the finest haute cuisine of her life, because you taught her? Well, now you know what drives engaging works from Rolfe Sick.
Rolfe is a native of Chicago and a Chicago Dramatist Network playwright with two full length plays and several short 10 minute works. He is member of the Dramatists Guild and offers his plays on the New Play Exchange.
To see a list of our previous Next Draft Readings, please visit this link.