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By The Neo-Futurists
Neo-Solo: 131 Neo-Futurist Solo Plays from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is the second book of short (very short) plays from Chicago’s experimental theater company, The Neo-Futurists. Known for their long-running, ever-changing hit show Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind , The Neo-Futurists have a faithful following in their home town, and fans throughout the world. Too Much Light is an on-going attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The show is in constant flux, with at least 2 to 12 new plays written by the ensemble each week. Since the show’s inception in 1988, the ensemble has generated nearly 4,500 short plays, performance pieces, and monologues, from which this collection is culled. In addition to its record-breaking run in Chicago, the show had an extended run in New York City and has toured to Seattle; San Francisco; Rochester, NY; Atlanta; Madison; and other cities throughout the Midwest. In 1995, Too Much Light was performed at the first HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and at the International Festival of Young Professional Theaters in Sibiu, Romania. At the 2000 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the show was one of five companies to win the coveted "Fringe First" award, cited for the excellence in writing.
Neo-Solo contains solo performance pieces covering such diverse topics as racial politics, sex between strangers, child abuse, and what it means to be a “male secretary”. Rants, poems, songs, plays without words, straight-ahead monologues, jokes and audience participatory plays are just a few of the forms used by The Neo-Futurists to present their ideas and stories. Neo-Solo represents 131 one-person plays from 14 years of Too Much Light by 25 of the show’s ensemble members, including Greg Kotis, the Tony award-winning author of Urinetown, the Musical; Ayun Halliday, author of The Big Rumpus published this year by Seal Press, and of the critically acclaimed ‘zine The East Village Inky; Neo-Futurists’ founder and artistic director, Greg Allen; punk rock musician John “Jughead” Pierson; and 21 equally talented writer/performers: Dave Awl, Andy Bayiates, Sean Benjamin, Rachel Claff, Bill Coelius, Marjorie Fitzsimmons, Genevra Gallo, Scott Hermes, Chloë Johnston, Connor Kalista, David Kodeski, Noelle Krimm, Anita Loomis, Steven Mosqueda, Rob Neill, Phil Ridarelli, Heather Riordan, Geryll Robinson, Stephanie Shaw, Diana Slickman, and Lusia Strus.
“An example of experimental theater at its finest.”
—Chicago Reader
“...the citadel of metatheater, The Neo-Futurists arguably do as much to explore the very nature of the act of performing than any other resident theater in the United States.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A Chicago institution... a staple diet for hip young audiences.”
American Theater Magazine
"At last solo work that makes individual experience interesting rather than straining so desperately to make it seem universal.
—Chicago Reader
"It’s generally worth having faith in The Neo-Futurists."
—The Onion