Chicago is known for being a pioneer in the storefront theatre movement, in which small, upstart theatre companies take over gutted-out storefronts or other similar spaces to stage their productions. Fittingly, North Park’s theatre program is designed around the storefront model, providing students with hands-on training in the full spectrum of skills required to stage plays in such intimate and unique settings.
One such Chicago-based theatre company is InGen, whose “ensemble of artistic engineers” is composed of more than a few North Park alums. Founded by Tai Palmgren and North Park alumnus Joseph Schupbach C’06 in 2012, InGen has produced 14 full productions, two staged readings, and one festival. The founding members include seven North Park graduates, while 23 in total have worked with the company.
InGen’s driving concept is to “create live events that recreate collective memory and shared experience for audience members,” Schupbach says. The company does so by adapting contemporary popular texts, including film, television, and popular music, for the stage.
InGen’s recent production, Bangarang! A Neverland Reunion, which ran at The Den Theatre last August, reinvented the popular 1991 film Hook, set to a live performance of the music of Fleetwood Mac.
“I found that the sordid, complicated, and nostalgic narratives of the Fleetwood Mac discography and actual history of the band partnered well with the complicated relationships in the Peter Pan canon,” Schupbach says of the inspired, if unconventional, pairing. “Ultimately, both texts explore growing up, forgiveness, evolution, and self-interrogation.”
Schupbach, who is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of California, Davis, says his favorite aspect of working with InGen is collaboration, a strength that he values from his North Park education.
“NPU Theatre trains students to be go-getters, to wear many hats, and to develop and support a robust and caring ensemble,” says Schupbach, a teacher who uses many of the techniques he learned at North Park in his own classroom. “That is essential to all collaborative work and certainly essential to InGen.”