A dynamic partnership with Steppenwolf Theatre is underway, as Storycatchers Teaching Artists and the Changing Voices Ensemble prepare for the March 2017 tour of  the Steppenwolf for Young Adults (SYA) production of Monster. The play, directed by Hallie Gordon and adapted by Aaron Carter from Walter Dean Myer’s best-selling young adult novel, will tour to IYC-Warrenville, IYC-Chicago, and the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, offering a total of eight performances within the three residential facilities. [Read more…]

I have spent a great deal of time lately thinking about what we have accomplished as a company — the multitude of young people who have benefited from our storytelling and team-building process during the last 32, now going on 33, years. [Read more…]

The residents at the Illinois Youth Center (IYC) – Warrenville call Storycatchers Theatre’s fall musical the “Big Show” – and for good reason. The production elements are more elaborate than for the other three performances that occur throughout the year at IYC-Warrenville. The actors wear costumes, use props, and perform under traditional stage lighting on a specially-built raised stage for audiences ranging from 50 to 100 people. Additionally, for the past six years, Warrenville youth perform musical numbers with accompaniment from a pit band, consisting of Civic Fellows of the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The sheer number of people who come together to make this show happen, from IYC-Warrenville staff and residents, Storycatchers, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and other organizations, qualify this show as “big.”
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Lamar bounds into the classroom, throwing his arms wide open and grinning ear to ear.

“How ya’ll BEEN!!!”

Lamar’s excitement  mirrors our own as Storycatchers’ Temporary Lockdown Ensemble at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center begins a new season.
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Storycatchers Theatre could not deliver its award-winning programs to court-involved young people without the support of many individual and institutional donors. Right now, the company is poised to make an extraordinary evolutionary leap because of the generosity and vision of Chicago Beyond, a philanthropic venture capital fund that seeks to create opportunity and access that the young people of Chicago deserve in school, career and life.

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“Maestro Muti is very passionate about making the music of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) available to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to experience it,” Coordinator of Civic Engagement Programs, James Hall, explains. “We feel strongly that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra should be an orchestra for everyone, regardless of their current situation in life. We work annually with the Illinois Youth Centers of the Department of Juvenile Justice to demonstrate our belief that music serves a central and vital role in our society.” This mission to make music available to everyone has brought the CSO to Illinois Youth Centers (IYC) in Warrenville and Chicago annually since 2010. This year, IYC-Chicago hosted Maestro Muti and the CSO on Sunday, September 25 for a night of opera and classical music.

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Storycatching will be a monthly column by Artistic Director Meade Palidofsky relating stories that have shaped company philosophy, mission and process over the past 30 + years.

The Dress

Soon we will be hanging the banner for the Sheila Kalish Memorial Theatre in the gym at Illinois Youth Center (IYC)-Warrenville. That banner will welcome audiences for our fall 2016 production of Dear Sky, the culmination of a year’s work. That banner, posted high above the entrance into our red-curtained space, makes me vividly remember Sheila, a generous high-powered attorney, and Lourdes, a short, spunky, tomboyish Latina girl. [Read more…]

NEW BEGINNINGS AND EXCITING GROWTH

As the new Executive Director of Storycatchers Theatre, I am excited to announce the company’s plan to grow Changing Voices, our post-release youth employment project, to a statewide program. Our goal is to lay the foundation for a national post-release youth employment movement combating structural racism and generational poverty.

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After 19 successful years, Storycatchers says a fond farewell to the Teens Together Playwriting and Summer Touring Ensemble programs with the company’s decision to focus its programming on court-involved youth. For the program’s final summer, fifteen teens came together from all over Chicago to tour their original musical One Big Crazy Family to children and adolescents at park districts and other venues across the city. Their drive and enthusiasm inspired all who experienced the production.

Take a look at what the 2016 Teens Together Summer Touring Ensemble was up to this summer, and see the group that made it possible.

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The Changing Voices Ensemble wrapped up a successful summer of programming, which included touring Chicago with their original musical, STUCK. Over the past three and a half months, CV has performed a total of 46 shows for 1,058 Chicagoans at various sites, including UCAN Academy, Heartland Alliance, the Juvenile Probation Department, Summer Advantage Learn & Earn, the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, the 20^th District Police Department, and many more!

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