It all began in 2015, when Olivia Lilley made a deal with the devil.
So she persisted.
In fact, Lilley could play the avant-garde game so well that three years later Brün offered her the position of artistic director at Prop. She and I met there one night to talk shop.
“Five or six years into it, the lady punks began doing their stuff in the space,” Lilley continues. “I wish I was there to see it, but it sounded very sexual and incisive and ritualistic.”
“It was a company that did a lot of artist-led works, so seasons at Incubator usually revolved around lead artists’ crazy projects,” she explains. “It wasn’t like, ‘This is the play, this is the cast, this is what we’re doing.’ Those people were in conjunction with [experimental playwright] Young Jean Lee and her teachers—folks like Jeffrey Jones, and Mac Wellman, who’s sort of the godfather of downtown theater.”
Lilley is the type of artist who will rent out an entire house in Pilsen so she can produce a show about a year in her life.
Through 4/15: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Mon 9 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-742-5420, propthtr.org, $20.
