Award for Best Performance and Best Actress
by Círculo de Críticos de Arte de Chile (Chile) in 2018
Audience Award for Best Stage Direction
by Premios Clap (Chile) in 2018
Maeterlinck Prize of the Critics (Belgium)
category « Best Solo Show » in 2020
Nominated for the Maeterlinck Prize of the Critics (Belgium)
category « Best Actress » in 2020
Grand Prize at the XXIX International Festival of
Bieslko Biala in 2022 (Poland)
In the backstage of a theater, an aging actress named Chayka struggles to remember why she is there. A young woman arrives to remind her: tonight she must play the part of Arkadina in Chekhov’s The Seagull. As her memory fades, not knowing quite who she is nor the part she is meant to be playing, Chayka is determined at least to give this last performance. In her struggle and descent, reality and fiction intersect. This multi-award winning production, told in a dreamlike style, is a duo performance for one actress and one puppet, and is the first piece from the Belgo-Chilean company Belova ~ Iacobelli.
Dates/Times:
Friday, January 26 at 7 pm
Saturday, January 27 at 7 pm
Sunday, January 28 at 3 pm
Location: Chopin Theatre (mainstage), 1543 W. Division St.
Cost: $40/$30 students & seniors
Ages: 13 and up
Running Time: 60 mins
ADA Accessible? Yes
In 2012, the Chilean actress and stage director Tita Iacobelli met the Belgo-Russian puppeteer Natacha Belova in Santiago, Chile, at the La Rebelión de los Muñecos Festival. In 2015, again in Santiago, they created an experimental theater laboratory for contemporary puppet theater. When the two-month experience was over, they decided to develop a play together. Chayka was the first production, created in June 2018 in Santiago de Chile, followed In September 2021, by LOCO at the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles in Belgium. In October 2022, the performance Sisypholia, by Natacha Belova co-directed with Dorian Chavez, was presented at the International Biennial of Living Arts Toulouse Occitanie in France. belova-iacobelli.com
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The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival advances the art of puppetry by presenting sophisticated programs vital to the cultural life of Chicago. Engaging and inspiring the largest and most diverse audiences for puppetry possible, the Festival is the biggest event dedicated to puppetry in North America and traditionally offers more than 100 activities annually including performances, workshops, artist instensives, free neighborhood events and symposia to audiences up to 14,000 over 11 days each January. The organization is also home to other key initiatives, including the Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab, that nurture the development of puppeteers and deepen the field locally, nationally and internationally with the ultimate goal of promoting peace, equality, mutual understanding, and justice locally and globally.
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