WNEP DADA Does New York

Chicago, IL, USA, June 4, 2005 (Xtvworld.Com) -- Soiree DADA: Neue Weltaffen opened recently at the Trap Door Theatre and has had tremendous critical response (including a Critic’s Choice in the Chicago Reader). Directed by Executive Director Don Hall, and assisted by Steve Lund, Soiree DADA: Neue Weltaffen is a callback to earlier, angrier days of DADA and is sixty minutes of sociopolitical tantrums in the existential monkeyhouse and features Jen Ellison, Emily Dugan, Bob Wilson, and Steve Zimmers as a quartet of white-faced, angry DADAists charged to espouse the ways of DADA while destroying perceptions of contemporary hypocrisy.

This is the second year in a row that WNEP has been to fringeNYC – last year’s critical smash Let There Be Light..! was extremely well received by the Fringe audience and press in August 2004. The experience was positive enough for the small company to apply again and, in addition to WNEP, ten other companies from Chicago have been invited to participate.

Other Chicago theater companies invited include The Trap Door Theatre (The Crazy Locomotive), The Neo-Futurists (The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen), Bailiwick Repertory (Marlowe), GayCo Productions (Weddings of Mass Destruction), Jazz Hands Across America (Warfield, USA), Single Box Turn Productions (Little House on the Parody), Ladybird Productions (A Lesbian in the Pantry), Dog and Pony Theatre Company (As Much As You Can), The Leeder Company (Sandy Takes a Break), and Anna Marie Agniel (Slow Children Playing).

The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) is the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 companies from all over the world performing for 16 days in more than 20 venues – a total of more than 1300 performances.

WNEP Theater has been creating unexpectedly imaginative and original theater in Chicago for twelve years, and is one of the most critically acclaimed companies in Chicago theater. Described by critics as "schizophrenic," "chaotic and confrontational," "lunatic," and "tremendously brave," WNEP Theater generates original work casting a critical eye on American values, culture, and perspectives by presenting the grotesque as beautiful, the mundane as unexpected, and asking its audience to change its role from spectator to participant.

Interviews can be arranged by request. Photographs (either physical copies, digital files, or both) can be provided by request or accessed at www.wneptheater.org