Theater Oobleck: Five Plays, Five Founders, One Party

By Maggie Hellwig in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 4, 2012 4:00PM

Theater Oobleck has been impressing and perplexing audiences with their bold and eccentric plays for the past 24 years. Along their obscure journey, the company has concocted an opera with a cynical Quasimodo and Beethoven, presented us with conniving musical zombies, and a serial adaptation of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, to name a few.

With the accumulation of diverse plays in their library, it's practical and downright exciting that the group has presented its fans with More If You've Got It: Five Plays from Theater Oobleck. The book includes plays from five of Oobleck's founders: Jeff Dorchen's Ugly's First World, Innocence and Other Vices by Dave Buchen, Letter Purloined by David Isaacson, Mickel Maher's There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, and Necessity by Danny Thompson. Co-founder Terri Kapsalis provides the reader with an introduction, and Tony Award-Winner Greg Kotis pitches in with a preface.

To celebrate the book and its medley of gore, literary allusions and grand wit, a book release party is being held tonight at the Hideout, complete with an abundance of performance. Scenes from Innocence and Other Vices and Letter Purloined will be accompanied with music from some of the authors, as well as a reunion set from Shloinke, and the folk band The Ring of Promised Wonder. There will also be a short preview of the next installment of Baudelaire in a Box. It's free and the Hideout's cash bar is always quite friendly. Go forth and be entertained by one of Chicago's renowned and always original theater companies.

Tuesday 9/4, 7-9 p.m., The Hideout: 1354 W. Wabansia, FREE!