Why They Invented Dancing

Chicago’s Umalleniay Productions presents Why They Invented Dancing, written by Mikhael Garver & James Estabrook, adapted from Charles Mee. Garver, who also directs, and Estabrook derived the show from the four Mee “love” plays: Summertime, Wintertime, Big Love, and First Love.

Tessa, the “sane” daughter in a dysfunctional but passionate family of drama queens is the one that is having the most problems finding a relationship, and the examples that her mother (and her mother’s oversexed French boyfriend) and her “I wanna be a pirate” father (and his boyfriend) are setting are falling apart before her eyes. She is so provoked by her family’s lovemaking and fights that she begins to spar with James, a refugee from a “real job” in the real world, who enters exhausted on a bike with a handful of gorgeous Italian pictures, promptly falls in love with her and then promptly falls asleep. When her brother enters with his new roller skating, snowflake tossing, bubble blowing girlfriend, and an old college chum shows up with a dire romantic (not to mention sexuality) crisis of her own, she despairs of ever finding a moment of peace in this hilarious and moving world of engagement hoe-downs, bathtub sex & poetry, a never ending supply of pizza, and live cover versions of classic love songs by on stage band The Tubbs.

Schedule

Fri 8/8 8:45pm
Sat 8/9 2pm
Sun 8/10 4:15pm
Thu 8/14 5pm
Fri 8/15 11:30pm
Sat 8/16 4:30pm