I (Jack Midnight) share brain-space with an improvisor/financial advisor named Mark. We both live in Chicago with our girlfriend(s) Paris Green/Megan. I was born a year and a half ago with the the creation of the Belmont Burlesque Revue; Mark was born May 19, 1965 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He's lived in Chicago for the last 20 years. I have been married and divorced several times; Mark has been married and divorced only once. He is now living in sin with his girlfriend. As am I.
The two/four of us have two cats that don't have alter egos. One is old, thin, beautiful and scranky. Her name is Cosette. 80% of the people that hear this ask me (rather smugly) if this is after Cosette from "Les Mis," like I'm some horrible theater fag. Which I partly am. But no, Cosette was what she was named when I adopted her from the Tree House animal center, a no-kill adoption center for cats and dogs here in Chicago. She was already 10 years old, and you don't rename a cat when they're ten. It just gives them another reason to ignore you.
Our other cat has multiple names, but only one personality... lazy. He's fat (21 lbs), black, and most likely gay. He really likes to have his butt played with. It's a little too unhealty. Plus, he likes to be spanked. Not really hard, but kinda hard. Which is weird. But it makes him thrust his butt even higher in the air, giving you WAY too much brown-star, and makes him PURRRRRRRRR.
So, about his names. He was two years old when we adopted him from the Treehouse. Cosette had freaked out when we moved to a much larger apartment. Too much space for one lonely kitty. But she hated other cats. So we talked to our vet and the people at the Treehouse, and they told us we should get a) a male; b) a mellow male; and c) a mellow male with no claws. Because Cosette is an Alpha Female with claws. We were shown and adopted Rune. But that name was way too new-agey for us, so we named him Kato, after the Bruce Lee character in the Green Hornet. It should have been after Kato Kaelin, OJ's free-loading moocher.
Kato was a moderately sized cat when we adopted him, but began to grow at an ENORMOUS rate once we brought him home. We theorized that, much like a goldfish grows when you move it to a larger bowl, we have adopted Kato from a place where he lived in a pretty tiny cage, and now he had the run of a 1400 square foot apartment. He, apparently, feels as though he needs to fill this space, too. Which led us to name him Fatboy. Oddly, he no longer answers to Rune OR Kato. He only answers to Fatboy. He knows the truth about himself.
So, the four/six of us live in Lakeview, not far from Wrigley Field, but far enough.
By day, I work for an Un-named Huge Corporate Entity in their Financial Services wing (I'm basically a stockbroker, but now we call it Financial Advisor. Hoity-toity, don't you know). By night, I perform with an improv troupe named Black Sheep at The Playground Theater (www.the-playground.com), the nations first not-for-profit improv co-op. I also direct improv and occasionally teach classes. Currently, I'm directing a troupe named Cowlick. Both the Black Sheep and Cowlick will get entries later.
Finally, Megan/Paris Green and I/Jack/Mark work together on the Belmont Burlesque Revue. This stemmed out of a failed burlesque experiment Megan produced and we performed in a few years ago. Megan had wanted to do a show very similiar to what we're doing now, but we ended up in another type of Burlesque-style affair altogether. Then, a little over a year ago, we decided to restart this vision, this time as part of WNEP's Around Midnight series. When WNEP became itinerant, the group of us (myself, Uncle Al and the Bombshells) decided to take the show independant. So Megan and I now self-produce this under our own production company, Full Deck Productions. We've produced a few improv and sketch shows under this production company, as well as a couple of original plays and musicals, so this was no huge task.
Our goal has been to try and give our audience a burlesque show as close to an old-school burlesque show as we can. It's not a Vegas-style revue; it's a much more intimate affair, being staged at the 60-seat Playground Theater (3209 N. Halsted). The furthest an audience member can be from you is maybe 18 feet. That makes the quality of the work different than a show at the 300-seat Lakeshore Theater. I've done my spiel there with the Lavendar Cabaret; it was great. But it was different. With us, we're right on top of you, often interacting with you. It makes the audience part of the show.
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