Last weekend marked the opening of The Infinite Wrench, the Neo-Futurists’ new late night show. Following the revoking of the rights to Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, Chicago’s longest continuously running show, by its creator, the Neo-Futurists have revamped their late night offerings, exploring new structures while still tackling the challenge of performing thirty plays in sixty minutes.
This past weekend when I attended, audience members were randomly assigned colors upon entry, and these colors corresponded to sections of the evening’s “menu” of plays. Each of the five colors was represented by an object onstage (a pink plastic flamingo, a blue tutu, a green mermaid tail, and so on), accompanied by slips of paper, each with the title of a play written on it. The audience was tasked with shouting out their assigned color whenever it was time for the next play to be chosen, and a slip of paper would be selected at random from whichever color the audience shouted first (or loudest). That play would then be performed. The audience’s objective was to be the first group to have all the plays in their assigned color group performed first. The winning group (which, I am proud to say, was my team, blue, at my performance) had their photo taken, to be hung in the Neo-Futurists’ space forevermore. This element of competition was equal parts silly and engaging, and added even more randomness than the previous practice of assigning plays numbers.
The Neo-Futurists embrace the mess and chaos of their performance style. The performers were undeterred by continuing the show while, say, soaking wet or covered in shaving cream. Similarly, they make no attempt to conceal the organized madness of scene transitions, as performers hustle to bring out props and rearrange set pieces, complete with cries like “oh shit, where’s the thing!?” In our daily lives, most of us try to contain our hot mess and present a polished front, which makes it all the more refreshing to be among the honest acceptance of scrambling to make things work.
Some of the plays are funny. A personal favorite involved Tif Harrison putting on lotion and then trying to open a bag of chips and a jar of salsa. The struggle. Is. Real. Other plays are heart-wrenching—a news report from a now that does not exist, one with universal healthcare, clean water for children in Standing Rock and Flint, and more, throws the gaps between what is and what we wish would be into painful relief. Some are very abstract, and some very visceral, and all are poetic in their way.
But the real adventure is that with the selection of plays ever rotating, any given night may or may not feature the same play as another night, and even if it does, it will performed in a different order. In live theatre, every performance is different, even when the script and actors are the same, but the Neo-Futurists take this principle to another level, and for that reason, The Infinite Wrench, like its predecessors, is worth seeing again and again.
Ticket Information
All performances at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago, IL
Every weekend except December 15-17 and 22-24, 2017
Tickets at the door: Cash only, $9 plus the roll of one six-sided die ($10-15)
Advance tickets: $20 with a $1-6 cash rollback; tickets online at the Neo-Futurists website.
Pre-sale tickets and more information at The Neo-Futurists website or 773.878.4557
All photos by Evan Hanover, unless otherwise noted.
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