Theatre MIR brochure by Stacey Lind

BANGbangShoot!

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This fall, Theatre Mir will launch a new web series, BANGbangShoot! This gently surreal tale follows a Chicago theater company, one Theatre Mir, as it struggles to mount a production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of its artistic director. Eight company members sprint and stumble through Chicago’s theatre world and occasionally the fantastic world that lies just beneath its surface. Conceived, written, filmed and performed almost exclusively by company members, BbS! is both a creative outlet for the company and a truly unique vehicle to raise the profile of Theatre Mir.

In the past four years, Theater Mir has as done great things under difficult circumstances. Within is a brief history of our accomplishments, as well as a taste of what we have in store for the future.

The introductory webisodes of BbS! will premier at Theatre Mir’s fall fundraiser (which will be filmed and featured in a future episode of the show), followed by periodic releases of new webisodes throughout the winter. Current fans and new audience members can follow the series as the fictional Caucasian is brought to the stage concurrently with our real-world production.

It is a future we want you to be a part of. As we seek to accelerate our development as a company, we are looking for partners who share our passion for great theater and are willing to contribute their time, energy, talent and resources to its creation. Partnership with Theatre Mir can take many forms. We need board members for counsel and support, donors to help our many projects grow and flourish, and advocates to help expand our presence in America’s finest theater city.

HELP US REALIZE OUR GOALS.

We urge you to keep an eye on Theatre Mir and BbS! as we make history in Chicago.

INCEPTION One sunny Saturday in the summer of 2007, a group of artists came together to lay the foundations for a new Chicago theater company. Among the dozens of agenda items was one small but crucial matter: choosing a name.

ACCELERATION The word mir – a Russian word meaning both peace and world – instantly resonated with the company. Like the space station of the same name, it implied a platform, removed from everyday life, from which to view our world and its conflicts. This small word encompassed everything we believed that theatre could be.

2010 has been a year of dramatic and exciting change for Theatre Mir. Transitions among the board and artistic leadership have provided the company with the opportunity to take Theatre Mir to new levels of prominence in the Chicago theatre community. Our latest initiatives include:

The Caucasian Chalk Circle: Theatre Mir has

teamed with Jonathan Berry, one of the most exciting directors to emerge from the Chicago theatre scene, to produce one of Brecht’s masterworks. It is poised to be one of the most acclaimed productions of 2011.

BANGbangShoot!: When launched, this web-

based series will mark the first foray by a Chicago theater company into this kind of multimedia production.

Theatremir.com Reboot: Theatre Mir is currently in the process of revamping its website to better facilitate communication with the community. Original Works: Theatre Mir seeks to be an

PRODUCTION Our inaugural play in 2008 was David Hare’s The Prisoner’s Dilemma – a sprawling, deeply political polemic exploring the plight of a post-Soviet republic struggling to reconcile its religious and social conflicts on the international stage. The Chicago Tribune noted, “Theatre Mir makes a bold entrance onto the local scene,” and the Windy City Times said, “this is theater – both the play and Mir – with a head on its shoulders.” In 2009, and again in 2010, Theatre Mir was chosen from among dozens of off-Loop companies to partner with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, to help fulfill their mission of cultivating emerging artists and bringing the arts to the public. The Arab-Israeli Cookbook – a series of vignettes assembled from first-person interviews with Israelis

and Palestinians – garnered accolades from the Chicago Reader, which complimented the “finely crafted, deeply felt performances by Theatre Mir’s ensemble cast [using] unsettling understatement to convey the evening’s most harrowing moments.” The dark, dystopian comedy Beautiful City won praise for the company’s “well-matched ensemble of eccentric character performances.” Throughout its history, Theatre Mir has not been content to produce works in a vacuum. From a panel including a Burmese dissident and a former Chicago gang member discussing the intricacies of peacemaking, to a cooking class centered on the cultural history of Middle Eastern cuisine, Theater Mir has worked to provide audiences with the opportunity to build upon the experiences of our productions.

incubator of new plays and works, whether produced by company members, or by friends and colleagues throughout the theater community.

PARTICIPATION Our goals of increasing artistic output and presence coincide with the worst economic climate in decades. But rather than scale back our dreams and aspirations, we have chosen to push harder to realize those dreams. To do that, we need you. We invite you to get to know our stories and us. Question us about Mir’s history and future. And if you believe in our mission and our goals as strongly as we do, we invite you to join us.