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BoyGirlBoyGirl is Rachel Claff, Susan McLaughlin Karp, David Kodeski, Stephanie Shaw, Diana Slickman, and Edward Thomas-Herrera, six seasoned writer/performers who, from time to time, pool their respective talents to perform original monologues inspired by a single agreed-upon text. Sometimes that inspiration is direct, sometimes tangential. At BoyGirlBoyGirl, there are no bad responses, only bad monologues.
BoyGirlBoyGirl was born on a hot summer evening in 2002, when Susan McLaughlin Karp, David Kodeski, Stephanie Shaw, and Edward Thomas-Herrera were enjoying margaritas at El Tipico, the now-condo-ized Mexican restaurant on the corner of Foster and Wolcott. While lamenting the state of solo performance in Chicago, they hit upon the idea of writing a quartet of 15-minute monologues inspired by a single text. Together, they could create an hour-long showcase for their work.
But first, some of them had babies, some of them toured Western Australia, and some of them bought a house. Finally, in 2004, they got their act together and produced "The New, More Thrilling Secrets" based on stories taken from a true romance magazine from 1958. Justin Hayford of the Chicago Reader said many kind things about it and the rest is production history.
In 2006, BGBG presented "Zest for Gloom" and welcomed the formation of the BoyGirlBoyGirl Ladies Auxiliary (Rachel Claff and Diana Slickman), two able-bodied performers who agreed to sub for an otherwise unavailable Mrs. Karp and Mrs. Shaw. Little did we realize that once we welcomed them into our fold, we never wanted them to leave.
So there you have it, a quick history of BoyGirlBoyGirl. We could go on and give you all the details about our creative process and whatnot, but why not click on any of the links above and see the results for yourself?