Behind the ‘Line

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Photos as ownership and nostalgia

One of the joys of seeing live theater is feeling certain ideas reverberate with your own experiences. I have not been to Japan, and yet on seeing Naomi Iizuka’s Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, I immediately thought of my vintage tinted photos of Yellowstone National Park. The play is about many things, not just the complexity of interactions between East and West, but about our attempts to capture and possess things in a ...
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Sharing patron perspectives

Visit our website to learn how to submit your own photos! TimeLine’s current production of Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West explores the role of photography in our experience of life, especially in relation to other cultures and through time. So we invited our ...
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Truth at our fingertips?

Think back. Way back to a time that now seems almost incomprehensible— nearly the last millennium. Can you recall when you didn’t have a camera at your fingertips, seemingly at all times, handily embedded in your cell phone? Remember when you couldn’t—with just a couple ...
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Building a hole

Over the past 11 weeks of Wasteland, we’ve watched as audiences step into the theater and are immediately drawn into the world of the play before one word of the script is uttered. The lights and haze, the sound of insects and wildlife, and most strikingly, ...
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Sometimes it takes a play

The best kind of theatre breaks down boundaries. As chance would have it, the year that I started working at TimeLine Theatre was also the year that my grandparents moved to Chicago and into an independent living home. After two strokes and multiple surgeries between ...
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Shedding light underground

A few weeks ago when Wasteland was still in its rehearsal process, TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers (PJP) talked with Chicago playwright Susan Felder (SF) about her life as an actor, director and now playwright, the experience of working on her first fully produced play, and getting caught in that hole in the ground. Excerpts of this interview appear in TimeLine’s printed Backstory program book; this is the full version. (PJP) You’ve primarily been an ...
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Timing can be everything

Sometimes it helps to be just a little bit lucky. This notion obviously isn’t new to me—I am continually aware of my great fortune to have been around the right people at the right time to start TimeLine in 1997, and how that unlikely connection ...
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Putting it together

The process of putting up a show at TimeLine is always both exhilarating and exhausting. But that may never be more true than when we produce a show away from our home on Wellington Avenue. It’s so exciting to explore a new space and bring ...
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The beauty around us

TimeLine’s 16th season is underway! We are so excited to share this year’s collection of four plays with you—all brand new to Chicago—and to ignite new conversations about how these historical stories resonate with today’s social/political issues. Three weeks ago, for the second year in ...
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Learning from Living History

As my third season working for TimeLine’s Living History Education Program comes to a close, the school year for the Chicago Public School students we work with has also finished up. Our last student matinee and post-show discussion has come and gone, the final written ...
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