(a)Symmetry Cycle

A 3-Play Cycle Produced and Written by Chelsea Marcantel

World Premiere: July 2010 at the Viaduct Theatre in Chicago

Production Manager – Matthew Chapman | Co-Producer – Robin Kacyn | Managing Director/Dramaturg – Eric Hoff | Art Director – nk Mooneyham | Original Music – Matthew Bivins | Sound Design – Matt Chapman | Lighting Design – Jess Harpenau

Science Consultants – Adriana Eisner, Sean Farley, Sean Fontenot, Dr. Jonathan Kirscher, Johannes Pollanen, Mike Glista, Dr. Rick L. Jenison

Play 1

NUMBFEEL: GirlsBoysBodiesBiology

Alice’s history is the variable that can reduce her otherwise stable life to chaos, especially when he shows up on her doorstep after seven years, looking as impossible as the day she left him.  It’s about what attracts us to each other and what drives us apart.  It’s about what happens in between the extremes.  Pheromones, hormones, smells and tastes, oxytocin, serotonin, how much control we have over who we want and how much our bodies determine that without our input.  The terror of thinking you might have stumbled upon the truth.  Strife.  Control.  The science of sex appeal, the science of bond.  Love in the atoms of us.

Directed by Lavina Jadhwani | Visual Art – Molly Hayes | Stage Manager Drew Durfee | Featuring – Marissa Cowsill, Carol Enoch, Brett Lee, Michael Mercier, Austin D. Oie, and Emily Shain

Play 2

DUMBSPEAK: The Chemistry of Falling Apart

As Isaac fights to save his relationship and Lill hunts for a way out of hers, no one around them is safe from the devastating fallout of human manipulation and irreversible disintegration.  It’s about chemistry and evolution, sexy molecules.  It’s about entropy, the tendency of all things to fall irreversibly apart.  About people who are made of the same stuff and fighting the same fight, but because of the choices they’ve made, putting them together is like trying to wear your right glove on your left hand.  Energy in systems.  Devils in the details.  Thermodynamics, the mysterious way we know the good and do not choose it.  Dissolution.  Decrescendo.

Directed by Eric Hoff | Visual Art – Austin D. Oie | Stage Manager – Claire Bader | Featuring – Dan Krall, Stacie Hauenstein, Drew Longo, Meghan Reardon, Kristen Secrist, and Mike Steele

Play 3

BLINDSIGHT: A Neurological Rebeginning

Six people in six hundred pieces debate the scientific merits of forgiving in order to reforge new, stronger relationships.  It’s about blindsight (seeing without knowing you can) and alexithymia (feeling without knowing you are).  It’s about all of the things we’re doing to ourselves and to each other without any awareness.  And all the ways we hide from ourselves.  How we’re all powerful beyond our wildest imaginings.  How we create truth in spite of evidence, belief and disbelief, miracles and misunderstandings.  It’s about what we can do when we forget what we know and have known.  It is skeptically hopeful.

Directed by John Ross Wilson | Visual Art – Liz Gresey | Stage Manager – Allison Queen | Featuring – Ryan Patrick Dolan, Jason Feriend, Bergen Anderson, Roy Gonzalez, Megan Gotz, Mallory Nees, and Kelley Ristow

REVIEWS

 “This funny, agile narrative is both moving and revealing… Marcantel develop[s] an affecting textual echo chamber: snippets of dialogue are recycled, passing fluidly from the mouth of one character to the next and accruing into drifts of relationship-speak, as universal and inevitable as the body’s chemical responses.” — TimeOut Chicago

“An ambitious achievement.” — TimeOut Chicago

BUY THE BOOK

The Complete Text of all 3 plays, with accompanying visual art and production photos (click here)

REPRESENTATION

ICM Partners

Di Glazer (Theatre)

Heroes & Villains Entertainment

Benjamin Blake (Manager)

Chris Coggins (Manager)