In Good Company

Join us this fall for In Good Company, a site-specific theater performance traveling to Houston, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, before returning to CHICAGO (Oct. 18-Nov. 9). Designed as an immersive walk through city streets, the performance invites you to reflect on community, democracy, and belonging—one step at a time.

FREE and open to the public.  PLEASE RSVP
Performance Schedule: October 18-November 9, 2025
Saturday & Sundays 3pm-7pm
Location: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623
Includes a meal and a 3-mile walk around the neighborhood.

A theatrical experience unlike any other.
You go on a journey in order to find out why you went.

- Josh Flanders, Chicago Reader

What if democracy isn’t just a system—but a shared movement forward?

Beginning Saturday, October 18th and running Saturdays and Sundays through November 9th, 2025, Chicagoans are invited to experience In Good Company, a theatrical walking performance that invites audiences to rediscover civic imagination, neighborliness, and common ground. Through immersive storytelling, live performance, and shared reflection, this one-of-a-kind event transforms city streets into a stage for community. In Good Company is an immersive, site-specific performance that blends theater, dance, music, and public dialogue. It invites audiences to reflect on what it means to be seen, heard, and connected in today’s divided world. 

When we see the world differently, how do we still move forward together?

How do we rehearse and embody solidarity?

The walks will each begin at 3PM at Theatre Y (3611 W. Cermak) and travel by foot through the neighborhood, returning to Theatre Y around 6PM for a FREE meal together. This performance and meal is entirely free, however the audience is invited to bring bread and/or fruit to share. Each performance will conclude around 7pm.

All performances are FREE to the public thanks to members who donate as little as $5/month ($60/year). We welcome DONATIONS and MEMBERS!

IN GOOD COMPANY is created and performed by Theatre Y's Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine, Dramaturg Evan Hill, Ensemble Member Eric K. Roberts, rapper and Swerve curator The Law of HUEY, Chicago's First Youth Poet Loreate E'mon Lauren, and writer/political scientist Bryan Brickner (full bios below).

The Chicago performances feature Marvin Tate, Emily Bynum, Braniah Townsel, Roesha (Ro) Townsel, The Stone Temple Choir, The Celestial Drumline, and Music Inc.

Theatre Y is a Chicago-based ensemble known for its bold, participatory productions that center community engagement and radical inclusion. In Good Company features local dancers, musicians, and singers, in collaboration with North Lawndale’s own Marvin Tate, Music Inc, and Stone Temple Church. It is presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Germany’s international cultural institute, which promotes cross-cultural dialogue, artistic exchange, and global understanding through partnerships and programming around the world.

The project features a collaboration with Helgard Haug of the internationally renowned performance collective Rimini Protokoll (Berlin), known for radically expanding the possibilities of theater in public space.

About Theatre Y:
Theatre Y is a Chicago-based international incubator that creates connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration. Since 2006, Theatre Y has been a point of convergence for diverse activisms, and all of the uncomfortable conversations that happen as a result, bringing their work to venues ranging from La MaMa’s historical theater to Illinois prisons. Artistic director Melissa Lorraine and the Theatre Y ensemble are committed to continuously re-thinking the ritual of theater as a global, revolutionary practice: assembly, radical hospitality, and vulnerability--as tools of liberation. Newly and permanently relocated to the West Side (on the border of North Lawndale and Little Village), Theatre Y, now in its 19th year of experimental productions, challenging international content, and a member-based FREE theater model, occupies a unique place in Chicago's theater community. More about our history and mission.

IN GOOD COMPANY will be Theatre Y’s 5th devised walking performance -
inspired by walking The Camino de Santiago (a 500 mile pilgrimage across Spain) with 40 Theatre Y community members in 2017.


PRESS

The Camino Project combines
pilgrimage and theater:
Theatre Y’s ambulatory production stretches over six hours and five miles
—and it’s worth your time and effort.
- Chicago Reader

Theatre Y’s You are here:
The Emerald Camino
is a Radical Reimagination of
What Live Theatre Can Be
- Rescripted

Theatre Y’s
Laughing Song: A Walking Dream
is a one-of-a-kind experience.
- Chicago Reader

The Wiz Walk shows us a way forward. Theatre Y’s latest brings us home to Oz.
- Chicago Reader

ARTISTS

Bryan Brickner (Writer / Performer)

Bryan W Brickner is an author and activist known for his works on political theory, religion and cannabis. He has a Ph.D. in political science from Purdue University (1997), has authored and co-authored several books, including "The Promise Keepers: Politics and Promises (1999), Article the first of the Bill of Rights (2006), and The Cannabis Papers: A citizen's guide to cannabinoids (2011). He also co-founded Illinois NORML (2001) and was recognized as a National NORML Cannabis Advocate (2007). Bryan is new to theater, and has served as Theatre Y's grant writer since June 2024.

Helgard Haug (Collaborator / Outside Eye)

Helgard Haug is an author and director.
1990 - 1995 studies ‘Applied Theater Studies / Drama - Theater - Media’ at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen (Germany)
Since 1995 Helgard Haug has worked as a freelance artist in the field of performance art, radio plays, film, installation and media.
2002 founding of Rimini Protokoll together with Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. Since then and until now she works in different constellations under this label. 
The focus of her work is to enable multiple perspectives on our reality.
She transposes rooms or social structures into theatrical formats and vice versa. 
Furthermore, many of her works feature interactivity and a playful use of technology.
Recently, more and more immersive and interactive works have been created for museums.
Productions are taking place in the independent scene as well as in state theatres, museums and festivals. Her works have been produced performed and exhibited at the most prestigious venues in the world, such as: Festival d'Avignon, Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Salzburger Festspiele, Under the radar (New York), Ruhrtriennale, International Arts Festival Perth, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Luminato Festival Toronto, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, Royal Academy of Arts London, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan and many more.
In July 2023, ‘Rowohlt Verlag’ published her first novel.
Since 1995 she is regularly active as a juror, mentor and lecturer.
AWARDS / Full BIO

Evan Hill (Dramaturg / Head writer)

Evan is a dramaturg, researcher, educator, and theater-maker. He is the resident dramaturg of Chicago’s Theatre Y, with whom he has conceived and created several new works, such as The Camino Project and Laughing Song. He has served as associate editor of Yale’s journal Theater. Evan holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, where he is completing his DFA.  His research brings theories of social innovation and creative cognition to examine experimental comic practices and avant-garde humor from the late 19th century to the present. He currently teaches theater at Rollins College.

The Law of HUEY (Writer / Performer)

The Law of HUEY is a Chicago-based artist and community worker. Hailing from the Westside of Chicago, he creates music and performance work that reflects real experiences from Black urban life. His projects focus on mental health, survival, and the systems that shape how people live. He also works directly with youth and community organizations to build local impact. The Law of HUEY uses art as a tool for connection, conversation, and change. HUEY is an acronym that stands for Headstrong Urban Educated Youth. 

E’mon Lauren (Writer / Performer)

E’mon Lauren is a “hood womanist,” a program manager, artist, educator, poet, writer, director, visual artist—-the list is endless. Representing the South and West Sides of Chicago, E’mon was the first Youth Poet Laureate of the city. Her book of poetry, COMMANDO, was published by Haymarket Books, and she’s been featured in Vogue Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and The Chicago Tribune. Her work has been featured in the Chicago Reader, and she was South Shore’s neighborhood captain for the Weekly’s Best of the South Side 2022. E’mon is also host of her own podcast, “The Real Hoodwives of Chicago.” 

Melissa Lorraine
(Director / Writer / Performer)
Theatre Y Co-Founding Artistic Director

Born and raised in France, graduating from Northern Illinois University with a degree in acting, Lorraine became a company member of Studio K in Budapest, Hungary, which led her to co-founding Theatre Y in 2006 with Director Christopher Markle, who died in 2007. 

Lorraine premiered the English language version of Transylvanian writer András Visky’s JULIET with over three hundred performances worldwide. She starred in Visky’s I KILLED MY MOTHER, earning a Chicago’s Best Actress Orgie Award in 2010. For her first Directorial work on VINCENT RIVER in 2011, she was lauded by The Chicago Reader for turning even an “overwritten” and “implausible script” into “probing, harrowing, hallucinogenic truth”. Collaborating with Georges Bigot for one year (2015-16), Lorraine developed the Theatre Y Ensemble of 16 actors, according to the traditions of the Theatre du Soleil. Her production of Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS earned two Jeff Awards in 2024.

In addition to working with fresh and seasoned talent, Lorraine now also collaborates with buried talent, working with incarcerated men who have rehabilitated themselves, obtained multiple degrees inside, and who work tirelessly to re-humanize our punitive justice system through artivism.

Eric K. Roberts (Writer / Performer)

Eric K. Roberts is an actor, photographer, and social worker. He was Creative Director of the podcast “Rhymes & Reasons” from 2012-2018. He is a permanent Theatre Y ensemble member.

Roberts began his acting career in 2012 with the Hyde Park Community Players. He has regularly performed in equity and non-equity stage productions around Chicago. In 2016 he joined Theatre Y, an experimental theater now located in the North Lawndale neighborhood.

In 2019 Roberts co-wrote and starred as Tour Guide in Theatre Y’s devised production “The Camino Project,” a five-mile walking performance inspired by the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain. He was described as “charismatic and vivacious” (Chicago Reader), “engaging and charismatic” (Picture This Post). Theatre Y was awarded a MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund grant to perform “The Camino Project” in Serbia in 2020.

Roberts was nominated for his first Jeff Award (Best Ensemble) in 2024 for Theatre Y’s production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “We Are Proud to Present…,” also nominated for Best Play.

Kimberly A. Sutton - Sound Designer: Kimberly is a sound artist, cellist, and sound designer living in Chicago, Illinois. Her installations and sound design work explore the connections between the physical properties of sound and the cultural signifiers of its content. As a cellist her practice is improvisatory and explores the possibilities of expression and reflection through sound and the immediacy of a meditational connection to her instrument. Recent installations have been shown at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the Chicago Home Theater Festival. She has performed at Experimental Sound Studio, the Hideout and the Empty Bottle in Chicago, Yoshi’s in Oakland, Detroit Contemporary, and the Technosonics Festival at the University of Virginia. She has a BA in Political Science and Music from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recorded Media from Mills College.

Christophe Preissing - Composer, improviser, and collaborator, Christopher Preissing earned DMA and MM degrees from the University of Illinois where he studied with Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano, and William Brooks. Composer-in-residence at Beloit College, Guest Composer at The Latin American Music Center (Indiana University), Artist in Residence at Ragdale Foundation and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Christopher has received awards and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, Illinois Arts Council, Arts Midwest, American Composers Forum, and Ruthmere Foundation. As president of Chicago Composers Forum he produced numerous concerts and programs including two major productions of John Cage's "Musicircus". His dissertation, "Intermedial Relationships Among Component Arts in Combined Art Works," and paper, "Down with Top Down," presented at the University of York, embody his research into collaboration relationships. In 2009 he received a travel grant from Partners of the Americas to present his music in São Paulo. His recent eight-channel, evening-length score and performance for "The Waking Room" was called "an overwhelming, layered barrage of found and manipulated sounds" (See Chicago Dance), and a "brilliant... sound-crazy score... that might best be described as John Cage on steroids." (Chicago Tribune)

Makoto Yamaguchi - Assistant to Lighting: Makoto Yamaguchi was born and grew up in Japan. He is a writer, director, and performer. He became interested in acting and took some minor roles in TVs and films in his native country. When he was in a touring theater troupe, he was introduced to American method acting and decided to cross the ocean to learn theater art here. He attended the City College of New York and immersed himself in all different kinds of artistic expressions as well as theater. He has become interested in the physical theater of Jerzy Grotowski and primitive tribal rituals and has been developing a new form of performance called, “Jazz Theater.” He recently performed a solo piece called, HAMLET IN JAZZ, in the Elgin Fringe Festival and often presents his experimentation at the Friday Night Swerve in Theatre Y. He is very grateful to be able to work with all the people in this wonderful Chicago theater and hopes to continue working there.  

Photos: Michael Tracey, Joerg Metzner, Karl Soderstrom and Joe Barabe
Videos: Justin T. Jones and Kevin Hurley

For press inquiries, interviews, or more information, please contact:

Managing Director Deena Eichhorn: 316-640-4435 / deenaeichhorn@theatre-y.com
Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine: 773-908-2248 / melissalorraine@theatre-y.com
info@theatre-y.com / www.theatre-y.com