Theatre

Never have enough time for live theatre? Does local live theatre fail to provide you with great science fiction, fantasy, or horror productions? Now you can get satisfy both questions all in one place: Chicon 8!

The following performances will take place on Friday evening in Grand Ballroom D; please make sure you enter through the Ballroom D doors.

Moebius Theatre

Friday 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Grand Ballroom D (also streamed to AirMeet 5).

Moebius Theatre is a Chicago-area acting/writing troupe with no permanent home, specializing in science fiction-oriented theatre, and often leaning toward the comedic. Seriously.

Moebius has a long association with Chicon, having presented a fully staged version of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” for Chicon 2000, followed by “The Island of Dr. Moreau” for Chicon 7 in 2012.

For Chicon 8, they will be performing two new plays based on “De Profundis” (also known as “The Visitor”), by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, and “Help! I Am Doctor Morris Goldpepper,” by Avram Davidson.

“De Profundis” (also known as “The Visitors”) was first published in Science Fiction Quarterly in 1953. A deranged man, committed to a sanitarium, has had regular contact with the Cloud for years, a strange presence that always seems to be observing him. Soon, however, he has new visitors, a seemingly alien contact that sends him deeper into insanity. And the Cloud is not happy about it.

“Help! I Am Doctor Morris Goldpepper” first appeared in Galaxy in July 1957, with  illustrations by an artist anyone who reads Mad Magazine will recognize, Don Martin. The plot follows an illustrious group of men gathering to deal with a world-shaking problem. Are they the highest level of government officials? No, they are the top dentists in the world, brought together to examine a strange dental plate with microscopic writing on it.

Find out more about Moebius from their website or on Facebook.

Improvised Trek

Friday 9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Grand Ballroom D (also streamed to AirMeet 5).

Need a new Star Trek Episode?  Come experience one being created right before your eyes.  What will it be about?  No one knows until it begins. 

Improvised Star Trek explores strange new worlds of comedy within the universe of Star Trek, following the adventures of the USS Sisyphus. Started as a live show in 2009, Improvised Star Trek later expanded to include 226 podcast episodes (and was winner of the Parsec and Audioverse awards). They ran continuously for a decade until their official retirement in 2019. They do, however, come out of retirement for special events.

Produced by Eric Scull, the performers include Christopher Rathjen, Sean Kelley, Dan Granata, Nick Wagner, Eleanor Hollingsworth, Mary Cait Walthall, Joe Phillips, Eli Mandel, and Rayna Caskey.