We’re turning Filament Theatre into a giant living room full of cardboard boxes. Lots and lots of boxes. Enter a world of play and creation as Filament Theatre transforms into a play-space for children and grown-ups to build new worlds. Using cardboard boxes, sheets, clotheslines and more, build your own amazing adventures. With theatrical design elements working together to support creative play, your family is sure to be swept away in the adventure! FORTS welcomes families to build and imagine together. FORTS is both a play (the noun) and a play (the verb). Just like a play (noun), there is theatrical lighting, sound design, and music that shapes your imaginative journey. Unlike a play (noun), you won’t sit in a seat and watch, YOU will play (verb). We think of it as more of an experience where everyone can build, dream, and create together. Picture Filament Theatre as a giant living room filled with couches, cardboard boxes, sheets, clothesline and more. When you enter, the lights come up on giant towers of boxes. First order of business—build a fort! Maybe it’s the tallest fort ever. Maybe it has lots of rooms. Maybe you team up with other participants and make a giant super fort. Maybe it’s cozy and you curl up and have a chat. Maybe you take a tour of someone else’s fort and make a friend. It’s up to you! With new elements added throughout the experience and lights and sound that take you from day to night and back again, the story is different every time.
Audience Role
Participants of all ages use materials available to make their own forts.
Ages: All ages
Content Advisories
Interaction Advisories
Mobility Advisories
3
Events
6
Years on EI
About Filament Theatre
The mission of Filament Theatre is to create a more equitable society by celebrating and amplifying the perspectives and experiences of young people through the performing arts. Filament Theatre creates imaginary worlds in which young people have agency and autonomy to explore and express the ideas they are passionate about – whether that’s new information, a challenging social situation, or a form of artistic expression. We need stories to help us encounter new worlds, meet new people, and practice how we might behave in that new situation. Without that kind of imagination, we will be unable to navigate the challenges that face our future. At Filament, the word PLAY is both a noun and a verb. Our audiences join in our play at every step, from family dramaturgy workshops, to participatory pre- and post-show activities, to the performances themselves. Our past work includes a play where the audience rides bicycles, a play with two actors playing 26 characters, a totally audience-driven interactive installation, a play in a restaurant with a five-course meal accompanying the story, a play in a sandbox, a play that toured the rooms of an old mansion, a choose-your-own-adventure play, a play with a symphony orchestra, a whole bunch of which were commissions by Chicago playwrights. All of our work is accessible to multigenerational and neurodiverse audiences.