The talented folks at North Lawndale’s Theatre Y invite everyone to come out and experience Obie Award-winning playwright Richard Maxwell’s, The End of Reality.
The play showcases a ragtag crew of security guards wavering between vigilance and distractions of on-the-job chatter as they protect a building from an imminent threat.
In an interview with Jesse Green of the New York Times, Maxwell said the play’s focus on the banality of violence grew out of his despair with George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection and an effort to see if he could break away from the pattern of his past work.
“I never tell people to avoid realism or naturalism or what feels natural,” Maxwell told Green. “It’s just that I’m saying you’re not obliged to pretend that you feel something.”
In Theatre Y’s concept, the audience is the “object” of the security team’s protection, treated as if they’ve come to seek refuge from the menace of the outside world. The theater becomes a disorienting holding pen in which actors and audience together wait out the danger.
Melissa Lorraine, Theatre Y’s co-founding artistic director and director of Maxwell’s play, “invites vulnerability into this satire, and a feminine relationship to violence.”
“We’re proud of receiving the rights to this first ever production of his work without his directorship, and eager to continue shining a spotlight on Chicago’s West Side and its enormous talents!” Lorraine said.
Co-founder of the Cook County Theater Department until he moved to New York City in 1994, Maxwell was born in Fargo, ND, and studied acting at Illinois State University.
Best known for his work with the New York City Players, a company he founded in 1999, it’s said that Maxwell reduces theater to its most essential elements, creating plays that, in the words of critic Hilton Als, oscillate between the “mythic” and the “mundane.”
The End of Reality features North Lawndale’s own Marvin Tate, Willie Round, and Shawn Bunch (Ensemble Members and Artists in Residence for Theatre Y’s Friday Night Swerve) together with Ensemble Members Matt Fleming, Kris Tori, and Arlene Arnone.
Set, lighting and costume design was done by Lorraine (with technical assistance from Makoto Yamaguchi and Steve Stoll), sound design by Kimberly Sutton (with technical assistance from James Clayton Bowman), Fight Choreography by RJ Cecott, Stage Management by Ro Townsel, Assistant Stage Management by Shawn Bunch, graphic design by Jimi Geiyer, marketing by Darien Williams, photography by Karl Soderstrom and Devron Enarson, and facility management and assistance from E.R. Emison and Deena Eichhorn.
The play opened May 15 and runs through June 15. Located at 3609 W. Cermak Rd., showtimes are 7 p.m. Thursdays; 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays.
All performances are free to the public. Donations are welcomed. Reserve your ticket at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/theatre-y/the-end-of-reality
A Chicago-based international incubator that creates connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration, since 2006, Theatre Y prides itself on being a point of convergence for diverse activism and all of the uncomfortable conversations that happen as a result.
Newly and permanently relocated to the West Side, on the border of North Lawndale and Little Village, Theatre Y, is now in its 19th year of experimental productions, challenging international content.