As a part of our month-long series, Force & Motion, the Runaways Lab presents a dreamy art installation cum-theatrical performance that investigates desire and memory in the age of mass surveillance. It’s called The Blue Hour. Using poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert’s intoxicating poetry collection L’Heure Bleue, which was written from the perspective of Judy in Wallace Shawn’s play The Designated Mourner, the Runaways will transform the Comfort Station into a zone of multisensory experience and reflection. With an unconventional cast of writers, dancers, and philosophers, this one-night-only performance is not to be missed.

Produced by: The Comfort Station, The Runaways Lab, and Black Ocean Press

Bios: The Runaways Lab is for audiences who hate theater and for audiences who love theater but are sick of it. The Runaways was founded in 2012.

Eileen Colwell (Judy) is a hospice nurse and a long-distance runner. She lives in Chicago.

Maryse Meijer (Judy) is the author of Heartbreaker and Northwood. She lives in Chicago.

Kathleen Rooney (Judy): A founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of the typewriter poetry on demand collective Poems While You Wait, Kathleen Rooney is the author, most recently, of the novel Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St Martin’s Press, 2017) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette & Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018). She teaches at DePaul University and can be followed at @KathleenMRooney

Eleni Sauvageau (Judy) would like to thank you for reading her bio and coming to see this show – live performance is IMPORTANT! You can listen to her voice on the NeoScum podcast and watch her stream on twitch.tv/itsmigdalltime. Lots of love ♥

Sara Zalek (Judy) is an artist, choreographer, and curator rooted in Butoh and investigations of personal identity. She is obsessed with time travel, psuedoscience, the supernatural, and the intentional act of transformation.​ saratonin.com butohchicago.com

Jessie McCarty (video artist & co-director) is an undergraduate at School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a passion for musical theater/metaphysics. As a writer and filmmaker, Jessie is interested in the relationship between dialogue and reality. They have worked with and interviewed artists such as Chicago based rapper Cupcakke and composer Duncan Sheik.

Elisa Gabbert (writer) is the author of three collections: L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems (Black Ocean, 2016), The Self Unstable (Black Ocean, 2013), and The French Exit (Birds LLC, 2010). The Self Unstable was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Elisa’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Boston Review, the Paris Review Daily, Pacific Standard, Guernica, The Awl, Electric Literature, the Harvard Review, Threepenny Review, Real Life, Catapult, Jubilat, Diagram, and many other venues. She lives in Denver.

Logan Breitbart (director) lives in Chicago with Eileen Colwell, a hospice nurse, and Chomp, a shih tzu. His writing and performances have been featured in Belt Magazine, Mana Contemporary, the Poetry Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the Old Capitol Building in Iowa City, and other places. He is interested in unnatural theater.

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Tags: Chicago, Comfort Station Logan Square, Eleni Sauvageau, Elisa Gabbert, Force & Motion, Force and Motion: The Runaways Lab presents the Blue Hour, Illinois, Jessie McCarty, Kathleen Rooney, Logan Breitbart, Logan Square, Maryse Meijer, Sara Zalek, the Runaways Lab