Well hello! After a happy little summer hiatus, Here Chicago is back to do the thing we do. Which is to unite a group of wonderful humans to listen to each other, learn about ourselves, delight in our similarities and dig the differences. We do this with true stories told live and a giant potluck dinner.
Chicago is a city filled with wildly creative, inventive, kind, loving and wise people. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the city that learned to segregate itself long ago, and it continues that practice down the lines of arts, profession, culture, identity, politics, and economics. We hang with people who are like us demographically. And that can be quite awesome. It can also be awesome to hang with people with different perspectives. Here Chicago is an opportunity for common ground. We’ve been connecting great people through the universal arts of food and storytelling in sold-out theaters for 7 years. We give away most (70%) of our seats for free, and otherwise break even to cover production costs. The night offers a platform for the cross-pollination of ideas, the building of unlikely alliances, and the heart-expanding joy of making unexpected friends.
It’s also a night of some damn good theater. In our humble opinion, the stories that get told on our stage are the best in the city. We feature known storytellers, solo performers, writers and comedians along side amazing humans of all professions and persuasions. Many people tell their first public stories on our stage. We are known for being a great place to start, AND a great place for professional performers to be exposed to vast new audiences. Because Here Chicago is a labor of love and makes no profit, we’re not burdened by any objectives besides joyful possibility, which allows some pretty cool things to happen here.
Joey Chacon has been working as a Railroad Conductor for the Belt Railway Company of Chicago for the past 22 years. He also presents Operation Lifesaver (Railroad Safety Program) to schools and businesses in and around Chicago. His involvement with Operation Lifesaver was featured in a segment on WGN News in 2017. Joe is currently studying improv at Second City and iO; and is busy writing his first one man show.
Vijay Bhargava is a self-employed management consultant who focuses on strategic issues in healthcare. He also enjoys living different incarnations as a certified master gardener, actor, singer, ensemble improviser, photographer, and standardized patient at two medical schools. His personal heroes are Underdog, Mr. Magoo, Boris Badenov, and Pope John Paul II. A confirmed scatterbrain who flaunts his own foibles, Vijay is on a lifelong quest to find himself – or exhaust his loved ones trying.
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Karen Clanton is an attorney whose law degree did not stifle the English major lurking within. She has forged a career as a writer in the legal profession, where she develops internal communications strategy for a major law firm. Karen served as the Reporter for an American Bar Association (ABA) Commission examining diversity and has led editorial projects for both the ABA and the Chicago Bar Association. She is a single mom living on the South Side of Chicago chronicling her adventures through stories that can be heard at open mics on the city’s live lit scene..
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Dan Dean is the founder of M Powerment (cancerdudes.org), a non-profit that empowers men to thrive after cancer. He’s a student at the Improv Olympic, does freelance writing, and is a dog trainer. Currently, he’s collecting a book of unicorn drawings, sketched exclusively by folks who work in the service industry. .
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Here Chicago is regularly hosted and produced by Janna Sobel, and for a long time, with Nnamdi Ngwe who Los Angeles may have stolen away from us, but we forgive the city because we’re like that. Nnamdi still joins us when he can, and in the meantime, Janna gets to host with different incredible humans. Her co-host this Sunday is especially incredible! Ana Diaz (that’s her on the left!) facilitates storytelling and poetry workshops to youth in Back of the Yards through a collective she co-founded, Toltecas Checagou. She believes that every time a story is shared is a form of social justice – if black and brown youth don’t tell their stories, someone else will. Most of all, she is overjoyed to be able to offer youth a space where they can create and dream. In collaboration with The Port Ministries, Toltecas Checagou is creating a chapbook and a mural based on stories told by youth in Chicago’s south side. Visit #ThePortMinistries’ Facebook for details on the event where they will unveil the mural. Ana has two furry children, Tlaloc and Twinkie who have trained her very well. She loves yoga, poetry, and deep, meaningful conversations..
We are so lucky. Please join us for a wonderful night. It is made for you, and your presence will make it exponentially better.
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Here Chicago on September 9th
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