Theatre & Performing Arts
The Chicago Premiere of “Action at a Distance”
Santa Fe’s celebrated physical theater ensemble, Theater Grottesco, proudly announces a limited Chicago engagement for Action at a Distance … in 2025, November 13 – 16 at Facility Theater, 1138 N. California Ave.
Action at a Distance … in 2025 isa bold theatrical experiment from Fay|Glassman Performance crafted in collaboration with Theater Grottesco. This new production, graphically scored in detail, offers a kaleidoscopic theatrical experience that is closer to music composition and dance, blending six simultaneous plays performed on a 10ft x 10ft stage by four actors. In 2018, the two companies received a national grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters for five weeks of outlandish theatrical research and development. After four months of intensive work in 2025, the fully-developed production comes to Chicago for a limited engagement.
Action at a Distance … in 2025 is an original work of new theatrical form that breaches several of theatre’s conventional boundaries. Using techniques often found in film, musical composition and dance such as innovative physical “jump cuts” and “gestural choreography,” characters and actions depart from common representations of time and space, to create moments of astonishing synchronicity, while actors fluidly transform among multiple characters and interact across disparate scenes.
This dynamic, multilayered performance challenges traditional storytelling, immersing audiences in a constantly shifting mosaic of interactions and emotions. Action at a Distance … in 2025 follows the structural truths when people distraught and disconnected from one another live together, in imperceptible yet finely-tuned synchronicity, as do the actors on this stage. Much like the bustle of a crowded airport, Action at a Distance captures the unpredictability within human connections.
Six original plays happen simultaneously as performed by four dynamic actors who seamlessly switch between narratives using some of the techniques invented by the Fay|Glassman Performance duo, creating an ever-shifting structural mosaic of simultaneous stories, with juxtaposition, montage, irony and satire, brought to life on a 10ft x 10ft stage.
Six plays. One tiny stage. All happening at once. But what does that actually mean?
The plays:
- 1. A family with a crying child frantically prepares to evacuate their home in advance of a hurricane.
- 2. An international human rights lawyer flees her international arms-dealing partner.
- 3. A filmmaker interviews a doctor who volunteered at the Occupy Wall Street tent camp in 2011.
- 4. A union local hosts an address by a revolutionary Venezuelan union leader.
- 5. An artist prepares a gallery installation of the UN negotiator’s office for the 1948 Palestine Mandate, just before the negotiator’s assassination by the Stern Gang.
- 6. A financial mogul is unnerved by a rock, with a photo attached, smashing his window.
The performance schedule is Thursday, Nov. 13 – Saturday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 16 at 3 and 8 p.m.Theater Grottesco and Fay|Glassman Performance are committed to making the performances accessible. As part of this commitment, the companies welcome audiences with a sliding scale of ticket prices from $15 – $30. Tickets are on sale now and available at: LisaFayAndJeffGlassmanDuo.org/tickets.
