FAT BOY – New Work
February 2-12 2012
Written & Directed by Teo Castellanos

Award-winning artist Teo Castellanos returns to 7 Stages with his social commentary on poverty, hunger and American consumerism. Fat Boy incorporates, B-Boy style movement, music, and spoken word to shine a light on the “me” era. Teo Castellanos got the inspiration for his new theater piece Fat Boy from someone who was anything but: a crippled beggar at a train station in Mumbai, five years ago. Castellanos, traveling with his wife and 14-year-old daughter, was overwhelmed by the scale and intensity of poverty in India — the seemingly endless rows of people sleeping on sidewalks, the children begging in the streets. The stress and guilt he felt were exacerbated by the young man pushing himself along on a makeshift cart, following Castellanos and his family through the crowds.

The piece explores the contrast between the greed, materialism and seemingly relentless desire for more that Castellanos sees as driving American culture, with the desperate need, necessary frugality and — sometimes — contentment of other, less materialistic and prosperous countries. “The idea was how fat our nation is,” Castellanos says. “We’re wasteful in so many ways. We’re constantly consuming, and mass consumption leads to weight gain, which leads to ill health. I think we are in a state of ill spiritual, emotional and mental health. We’re in constant fear of not having enough.”

Get a Sneak Peak at Fat Boy

Fat Boy Preview

Workshop with Teo Castellanos

This workshop led by acclaimed actor/writer/director Teo Castellanos offers participants an opportunity to develop original material or works-in-progress through movement. Work with universal rhythms, imagination, atmosphere, and archetypes will spark creativity and shape the developmental process. Participants will work barefoot or with dance shoes and will need to wear movement clothes. Teo Castellanos is the artistic director of Teo Castellanos D-Projects, a dance/theater company influenced by ritual and hip-hop.  Saturday, February 4. Ages 16 and up.

Lay of the Land
Written & Performed by Tim Miller
November 10 – 13

Gay and human rights activist Tim Miller returns to 7 Stages with his all new queer tale. LAY OF THE LAND is Tim Miller’s saucy, sharp-knifed look at the State of the Queer Union during a time of trial! LAY OF THE LAND friskily gets at that feeling of gay folks being perpetually on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu! LAY OF THE LAND is a “lay” in all kinds of ways: a sex-assignation, a queer citizenship map, and of course a narrative ballad with a recurrent refrain! The L.A times calls Lay of the Land, “a vivid must see achievement.”

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SPECIAL EVENTS for Lay of the Land

Thursday November 10, 2011 -Post-show Talk-back

Friday November 11 – Post show After Party join us for wine, cheese and live music.

Saturday November 12, 2011 11 am-2 pm – Tim Miller Workshop THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR PEOPLE TO GATHER TOGETHER AND EXPLORE CREATING ORIGINAL PERFORMANCES

Saturday, November 12,2011 – Post-show Talk-back

GET LAID!
Queer Citizen Tim Miller on the Lay of the Land
by Tim Miller

I have always had the ability to regard the lay of the land and I will be sharing some of my kinky perspectives with Atlanta at 7 Stages with my show aptly called LAY OF THE LAND . When I was a very little boy- at a time when my favorite wooden puzzle was called RIDE A COCK HORSE – there was a kiddies show I loved called ROMPER ROOM. It was on for decades and if you are over twenty-eight years old, you probably had a Romper Room period in your life. Each episode had a segment in which the kindly woman Miss Something or Other would reach out to greet various kiddie viewers in TV LAND – by first name only – using her magic mirror. She would look directly into the camera and thus into our child-souls. She would hold up a mirror to her face, and would look lovingly into it. We would get some TV psychedelic-spiral special effects, and the glass part of the mirror would disappear and there would just be an open circle with a handle – and she would say several names. (“I see Jimmy and Bobby and Susie and Billy …”) There were never many Lakeeshas or Javiers mentioned when I was a kid. It was uncanny if you heard your name read on TV. (“I see Timmy being stripped naked and pawed by handsome, hirsute coal-miners….” Wow! Miss So-And-So saw me!) I have always had this ability too. I can really see the LAY OF THE LAND and know what is happening everywhere in queer America. I just hold that mirror in front of my eyes.

After Proposition 8 passed in California and my home state joined the other 45 H8 states – including Illinois- where gay folks are denied these fundamental rights, I found myself marching with a quarter of a million folks in hundreds of cities in all fifty states protesting the anti-gay laws that passed on Election Day 2008 in California, Florida, Arkansas and Arizona. I was preparing to premiere the very first chunk of a brand new show here in Chicago at Links Hall and I knew I was going to have to access the Romper Room mirror to see WTF is going on in our lunatic asylum of a country. Voila LAY OF THE LAND, my saucy, sharp-knifed look at the State of the Queer Union during a time of trial! Careening out of that Marriage Equality street protest to my sexy misadventures performing in 43 States, to, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, to my life as a grade-school flag monitor, to choking on cheap meat caught in my 10 year old gay boy’s throat, LAY OF THE LAND friskily gets at that feeling of gay folks being perpetually on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu! LAY OF THE LAND is a “lay” in all kinds of ways: a sex-assignation, a queer citizenship map, and of course a narrative ballad with a recurrent refrain! (my favorite way-down-the-list definition for “lay”!)

I travel a lot. At least 30 states a year. I sometimes feel like a performing “queer Johnny Appleseed- which is a bit redundant since Johnny Appleseed is widely thought to actually have been gay. Johny Appleseed was a Walt Whitmany queer fleeing the bourgeois family duties back east for adventures in the world of men in the west! Yeehaw! Plus those apples he was planting weren’t baking apples. Nope, they were only good for hard cider drinking and partying. Johnny Appleseed was a queer Dionysus bringing joy and fermentation to the new nation!

As I do the Lord’s work trying to undo homophobia- seriously- I often call on my animal spirit guides. Since I do a ton of University gigs all over the country as I throw my luggage together for my college engagements, I often imagine that all the animal mascots of these institutions of higher learning I work at are gathering to help me. Just as the mice and birds in Cinderella’s Disney garret pimp her up for the Ball, I visualize the animal mascots of the Upper Midwest preparing me. I see Illinois State University’s Reggie Redbird getting in on the Disney action and dressing me in my So-Out-They-Are-In cargo pants that I have had to sleep in on the nasty carpet at O’Hare during many airport snow storms. I see University of Minnesota’s Goldy Gopher with his scary teeth pulling my roller bag out of the closet. I see Northwestern University’s Willie Wildcat fluffing my naturally curly hair, I see Wisconsin’s Bucky Badger – the sexiest of all the mascots because he has been seriously working out and is wearing no pants! – meeting me for a quickie in the airport public restrooms reserved for closeted Republican Senator to help me face the horrors of changing planes in Dallas or Dulles!

I hold up that Romper Room mirror and I can really see the Lay of the Land. I see everything, my gaze flying over the states. I can see French Lick, Indiana and Morehead, Kentucky. I see Fort Gay, West Virginia and Nellieburg, Missisippi. These are real places! Is this a queer country or what? I can even see the Statue of Liberty all the way from Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago! Have you ever noticed how butch, how gender-fuck the Statue of Liberty is? Uh oh, I see Liberty is choking. America is choking on that MSG-laced piece of tough homophobia trapped in our national throat. I quickly fly through the mirror to New Your harbor and do the Heimlich maneuver on the Statue of Liberty, which is not easy through all that cooper! The Statue coughs up a nasty chunk of homophobic gristle that is choking our nation and also four Supreme Court Justices who stand between us and freedom: Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, who explodes in a toxic cloud when he hits the water.

The Statue of Liberty whips off that tired copper Mu Mu and Planet of the Apes tiara and lifts that suspiciously vibrator-esque lamp and I hear Liberty sing out the new slam poetry written there on that statue.

“Give me your fierce faggots
your strong dykes.
Your huddled queer masses yearning to love free
Give me your working-class femmes with Lee press-on nails
Your activist queer boys who make out in jails.
…. your cowboy homos in buttless chaps and such
your U-hauling lezzies who move in together too much!
Give me your hope! Your heart. Your queer self possession.
Your families, your future and fierce sex transgression.
I lift my lamp beside this open closet door.
Come out shout out where ever you are.
Welcome.
We’re home.”

DRACULA: The Rock Opera
April 19-May 13
Created by The Little Five Points Rock Star Orchestra
Composed by Rob Thompson, Naomi Lavender, Sam McPherson and Chris Love
Directed by Del Hamilton

The vampire craze is far from over, after sold out performances of Haus Von Dracul pt 1, last year’s hit of Atlanta. The Little Five Points Rock Star Orchestra and 7 Stages team up again to bring you Dracula. Sink you teeth into this Rock Opera inspired by Bram Stoker’s classic novel.

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KRAMPUS XMAS SPECTACULAR – A World Premiere Krampus Tale
DECEMBER 8, 9 & 10 2011 @ 9 PM
Created by 7 Stages & Java Lords
Directed by Heidi S. Howard

Make naughty the new nice this season as Krampus, German’s twisted counterpart to Saint Nick, returns to 7 Stages. This year Krampus and his motley crew of rock and roll friends go on a search for the true messiah. Rock out with your stocking out this Holiday season.

Your holiday tradition returns with an all new story!  Krampus is back and meaner than ever. Following his abduction of a certain little match girl named Gretchen, the Krampus and his reluctant companion are pulled up to that office christmas party in the sky, where they will witness first hand the deciding moment that will change mankind forever.

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Other Events
The Freaks Come out at Night Krampus Krawl, Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Krampus Krawl is back a bigger then ever. This year we join forces with our friends at Fabrefaction as we celebrate not only Krapmus, but their production of Rocky Horror. So get out your Freak Glam on and Krawl with us through Little Five Points on Saturday Dec 3 starting at 6:30 PM. For Details please call 404.523.7647

Thanks to our Sponsor

All Blues – World Premiere
September 22 – October 9 2011
Written by Robert Earl Price
Directed by Dale Daigle
In Co-production with Washington College, Chestertown, MD

All Blues is the true story of Ray Sprigle, a white journalist who sets out to report on the black experience in the 1948 Jim Crow South first-hand, by disguising himself as a black man for 30 days. Assumption, observations and injustices are explored using the music of Oscar Brown, Jr. and Miles Davis.

Show times:
September 22 – October 9, 2011
Thursday- Saturday at 8:00pm
Sunday 5:00 pm
Tickets are $30 (All Inclusive of taxes and fees)

Group, student, and senior citizen rates are also available.

All Blues Washington College Cast – This cast will perform Sept 22 – 25 in Atlanta

Del Hamilton – Ray Sprigle

Bob Ortiz – John Wesley Dobbs

Karen Somerville – We Are Healed

Polly Sommerfeld – Slight

Mike Zurawski – The Man

Chorus
Marta Wesenberg
John Lesser
Phaedra Scott
Harris Allgeier
Zach Weidner.

Atlanta Cast of All Blues – This cast will perform September 29 – October 9

Del Hamilton – Ray Sprigle

Dorothy Bell – We Are Healed

Johnell Easter – Slight

Michael Molina – John

Patrick McColery – The Man

Read All Blues Press Release

I was a Negro in the South for 30 Days

Fifty years ago, Ray Sprigle of the Post-Gazette posed as a black man to experience firsthand what life was like for 10 million people living under the system of legal segregation known as Jim Crow.

As he wrote in his 21-part series,
“I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days”:

“I quit being white, and free, and an American citizen when I climbed aboard that Jim Crow coach. . . . From then on, until I came up out of the South four weeks later, I was black, and in bondage — not quite slavery but not quite freedom, either.’’

Read the full Story

SPECIAL EVENTS FOR All Blues

Friday, September 16, 2011 – Sneak-Peak Performance at the High Museums Friday Night Jazz

Sunday September 18, 2011 – Sneak-Peak Performance at Apache Café

Friday, September 23, 2011 – 40 Acres and a Mule: A Discussion on Racial Healing

Saturday, September 24, 2011 – Art House Production Party 8 PM Tickets are $50 the evening will include a performance by  Jed Drummond, food from The Wrecking Bar & Stir it Up

Sunday, September 25, 2011 – Artist Talk at Hammonds House with Photographer David S. Johnson & Robert Earl Price 3 PM – 4 PM

Friday, September 30th, 2011 – Open Mic Jam AfterParty artists, musicians, poets, activists and audience have an opportunity to respond to the show through this experience. Michael Milina will host the “open mic” featuring Dorothy Bell

Saturday, October 1, 2011 – Master Workshop – New Music, New Moves, New Anthem: Creating a new National Anthem for a new America 1 PM – 4 PM

Friday, October 7, 2011 – Where the Blues Was Born AfterParty a mix up performance of excerpts from Michael’s book “Where the Blues was Born and his CD “Heart”

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HIDDEN MAN – World Premiere
March 8-25
Written by Pamela Turner with Russell Blackmon
Directed by Del Hamilton
In Co-Production with University of Georgia

A young artist arrives in 1980s Atlanta knowing three things for certain: he’s gay, he’s an atheist and he is destined to kill himself. Howard, a religious conservative preacher, created Paradise Garden in North Georgia, a folk art garden with messages from the Lord. These two unlikely artists become unlikely friends. Hidden Man is based on the true story of Robert Sherer and his mentor, Rev. Howard Finster.

Hidden Man Contains adult nudity.

Photographer: Adron Farris

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