The Sparrow is out on DVD. It costs $15 and you can buy it at thehousetheatre.com/swag. It will take 4-6 weeks for delivery.

The story of Emily Book, a small-town girl returning home ten years after a tragic accident that claimed the lives of her entire class. As the town struggles to accept the strange girl who reminds them of what they lost, Emily attempts to hide the special powers that make her different.

Watch the preview

You should vote for House. Click here!

And while you’re at it, you get nineteen other votes and there are a lot of great organizations you can vote for.

This, I quickly learned, is not how House does The Nutcracker.

Some of you may remember The Nutcracker at House when they did in the fifth season. I didn’t see the version that year, but from what I learned at the reading Tuesday night the show is being completely re-vamped. Members of House, Phillip C. Klapperich, Jake Minton (playwrights), Tommy Rapley (director), Kevin O’Donnell (musician), and guest readers piled into the office to sit down with the first draft the revised script. I have been to play readings at school and I was happy to see that the relaxed, friendly atmosphere that I feel in my community at school is something that House appreciates as well. But, the great thing about this show is that it is completely appropriate for the entire family at Christmas. But, as was pointed out at the reading, there are profound, genuine, tragic, and beautiful emotions in the show that are relevant to an adult audience member.

All I can think is, too bad I’m only here for the summer. Maybe I’ll come back up on my Christmas break.

Laura

I got there with my friend Emily, an intern at City Lit. We are broke, as we are unpaid interns, so we were happy to be going to see a show for free. We got into the lobby filled with people milling around in colorful lighting sipping on drinks. So, we got a drink. A $9 drink. And we only finished half of it before we were shuffled into the theater and told to throw them away.

Fuerza Brute is an exciting show. It mixes extreme physical control with the loose-ness of dancing without inhibition. And people were letting themselves get carried away. I knew people were into the show when a man behind me took his shirt off and started swinging it around his head. The older lady opposite of us did not look pleased.

But–we could take pictures. This is what we saw…

The discussion after the show was great. Tamara Levinson, John Hartzell, Marcelo Curotti, Eugena Schilling and Martin Buzzo from Fuerze Bruta talked with The House. The most interesting thing about the show seemed to be that the artists did not want people to try to extract too much meaning. It is just about fun and getting the audience to relax.

What a way to start an internship at The House.

Laura

The House logo is — BLAM!! — in a Russian graphic design magazine.

Famous!

Look at those fresh-faced kids! This article was posted in the July 29, 2002 issue of the Sun-Times. But The House received its articles of incorporation 9 years ago this week.

What does this mean for YOU?

Join the birthday celebration! Get $9 Pit tickets at Girls vs. Boys all weekend.

It’s so easy. Just go to the BOX OFFICE, click BUY TICKETS, and enter the code NINE when checking out to get the deal on the Pit tickets (usually $15). Tell your friends!

Even. more. awesome. is a way you can support your favorite little theater company that could while also getting something (not a tote bag!) in return. Check out these hot options.

Sign up to donate $9 a month for one year and get a free 2010/11 subscription.

Donate $19 a month for one year and get TWO free 2010/11 subscriptions.

Donate $29 (one time only!) and get entered to win a free subscription.

And don’t forget: not only do you get the $75 subscription — 3 shows! perks! Swag! — you get this fantabulous season screen-printed poster made by Delicious Design League. Can you beat it?

1. Satisfaction of altruism.

2. Continued source of entertainment for the next year.

3. Free House merchandise

4. Art that will be the envy of all your friends.

All for just $9 each month?

Yup.

Happy Birthday House!

To become a member and get tickets to 3 shows of our season, plus the special holiday remount of the House’s The Nutracker, plus this awesome poster, designed by Delicious Design League, check out: http://thehousetheatre.com/box-office/member

The Girls vs. Boys VIP Launch Party

Saturday, April 17, 2010 — 10pm-midnight.
Following the April 17 performance at 8pm.

Usagi Ya — Pan Asian Cuisine and Sushi Bar
1178 N. Milwaukee – around the corner from Chopn
in the downstairs lounge

$25 admission

Your admission helps support new work at The House Theatre of Chicago.

Come hang out with the cast of Girls vs. Boys.
Admission includes 2 drinks + appetizers and a chance to win FABULOUS PRIZES, including a subscription to our 2010/11 season.

And there will be a raffle rabbit.

All VIP guests will get $10 off subscription to The House’s 2010/11 Season (regularly $75)

BUY TICKETS TO THE VIP LAUNCH PARTY

You could win:

2) Tickets to a Chicago Wolves Hockey Game
(1) Year membership to the Chicago Botanic Garden
(2) Tickets to a performance at Theatre Building Chicago
(10) Free lessons with the Chicago Ballet Arts
(2) Tickets to the Chicago Sinfonietta
(2) Tickets for free admission for 4 people and 4 free drinks at Chicago’s legendary blues club Kingston Mines\
(1) VIP tickets to the Shedd Aquarium
(1) Gift Certificate to Fireside Restaurant
(1) Family pass good for four general admission tickets to the Museum of Science and Industry
(4) Admit One tickets to the North Shore Chamber Orchestra
(1) Free pass for 4 to the Shedd Aquarium

Holy Cow.

Oh, right.  Chris Mathews here.  I almost forgot.

I’m one of the writers of our next show, Girls vs. Boys.  We had our first preview tonight, and I’m still trying to take it all in–or eject it all out.  Take your pick, I suppose.

I don’t think I have anything new to share about the neuroses of the playwright on a first night with an audience, nor do I really want to even go there.  And truthfully, I’d be fictionalizing for you if I did.  This isn’t our first rodeo and I know the score–I know what previews are for–but the nerves come from fearing that the people in attendance don’t.  And don’t you dare underestimate me and think I would underestimate you by making this post a moralizing lesson in “what previews are for.”  C’mon.  We’re way past that.

But previews at The House are kind of a new bag for us.  It’s been a luxury of budget and development that’s historically been just a little out of our reach.  We have the rent $ to schedule like, three previews before opening, the first one always gets cancelled cause no one knows how to do the dance right, and then the previews themselves are little more than dress rehearsals barely held together by anything more than the fact that we know we can’t cancel tonight because we had to cancel last night.  There’s always some breakthrough realization or dragon to slay.  And then we get to opening by the hair of our teeth and hope that everything sticks.  It’s fun.  Hey New Work.

But this season, and with GvB in particular, we’ve been able to schedule and take advantage of a more paced-out preview and response process.  We just left our first preview of GvB tonight (we get 6!), and y’know, it went well.  It went fine.  It went Great!  Our cast is kind, optimistic, and has talent oozing out of every pore; the design team is badass and engaged in just the kind of collaborative conversations that make me love working with this company.

But y’know, we’re not nearly done.  It’s strange (and can be frustrating if you let it) to watch a show that you know is already out-dated by the list of notes and changes you’d like to incorporate from last night’s run, but haven’t had time to do so (because you have to prepare for the preview–haha, it’s a cruel catch-22).  ”Strange” isn’t even the right word, “disorienting” is better, because you’re trying to watch a show that doesn’t exist yet.  You NEED the audience there to jolt you back into the present to help you see the show that IS there now.  To pull your head out of your ass.  I guess to help you fully understand just how much work you still have to do, how much longer your list keeps getting.  Aye-yie-aye.

The fear, let’s get back to the fear, shall we?, is that the kind patrons who have come to see an early showing of our work are going to go to the bar and tell all their friends or write on their blog about how awful everything is.  (And to the credit of their good taste, there’s still plenty to claim awful.)  But I guess that wouldn’t make them very kind patrons, would it?  Hopefully they know exactly what they’ve signed up for: to be a part of the show’s development, and that includes getting to see the unfinished parts, the experimental parts.  And hopefully that comes with a faith that the really stupid thing you saw tonight in that one scene isn’t still going to be there when the last of the changes has been posted on the dressing room door five minutes before opening curtain speech.  At least, I hope it’s not still there.  If it is, we should go to the bar and bitch about it.

Wait a minute!  Am I moralizing?!?! I’m sorry–I guess that’s the stuff that I need to remember watching previews.  And here I am BLOGGING ABOUT IT.  AGHHHGHGHG!!!

But you know what?  Who needs fear?  Scared people, that’s who.  Let’s not be scared people.  Let’s be awesome people.  Because it’s awesome people that come to see our shows.

And now it’s 2am and I realize why they call their blog that.  I should go to bed and get ready for all the changes we’re going to make tomorrow (we wrote a new song today and it’s cool!), and cope with the fact that there still won’t be time to make all of them [sigh] before we have our second preview.

I hope to see you at The House.