Drinking & Writing Theater Founders Return to their Artistic Home,The Neo-Futurist Theater, with an All-New Play, The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer
The Drinking & Writing Theater’s Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda return to their artistic home, The Neo-Futurists with an original production The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer. The all new show opens March 6, 2014 and runs Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. until April 12 at The Neo-Futurist Theater, 5153 N. Ashland Avenue, Chicago.
The farce The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer, written and directed by Sean Benjamin, stars Benjamin and Mosqueda, who were both members of The Neo-Futurists for thirteen years (1996-2009). This play is their first show at The Neo-Futurist Theater since opening their own space, The Drinking & Writing Theater. The show also stars Carolyn Shoemaker-Benjamin, a former company member of Trap Door Theatre and current ensemble member of the Drinking & Writing Theater (featured in A Beer Carol, God vs. Hall & Oates, Barnstormers, and American Variety 1 and 2), and Kevin Alves from
Bruised Orange Theater Company, Commedia Beauregard, and Abraham Werewolf.
Immortal Art and Beer. In The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer, a troupe of actors repeatedly attempt to reenact the historical photograph entitled Edinburgh Ale. The photograph, taken circa 1843 in Edinburgh, Scotland by pioneers in photography Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill, features Scotsmen Dr. George Bell, writer James Ballantine, and Hill himself, drinking beer. The play deals with the attempt by artists to immortalize their works (including the playwright himself) and the hypocrisy of the photograph (Dr. George Bell, known for his social reform in Scotland, who is holding a glass of beer in his hand in the photograph, was a proponent of prohibiting alcohol from the poor).
Tickets are $20.00 and are available at www.drinkingandwriting.com.
A Short History of The Drinking & Writing Theater
The Drinking & Writing Theater was founded in 2002 after Neo-Futurists Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda had great success with their site-specific show Drinking & Writing. Since then there have been five volumes of Drinking & Writing performed in bars and theaters all over the U.S. and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Drinking & Writing Theater has also spawned The Drinking & Writing Radio Show on WLUW 88.7FM, the Beerfly Alleyfight, The Drinking & Writing Festival, and the Tied House Film Festival. Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda also created the documentary The Western Avenue Project (a 4 day hike up the entire length of Western Avenue, the longest continuous street in North America, with a pint in every bar). Recent theater productions include BEER, To Cure A Hangover, A Beer Carol, God vs. Hall & Oates, Barnstormers, American Variety 1 and 2(written by Carolyn Shoemaker-Benjamin and Alison Connelly), and The Brewprints part 1: 40 Scenes on Hops.