"Ensemble Made Chicago is a lively read, with exercises that will be of great value to both emerging and long-standing companies and groups. This is a strong, well-written, and valuable book for multiple audiences that are interested in the process of theater-making as a group and theater education.” —Mark Larson, author of Making Conversation: Conversations with Colleagues for Change
“Ensemble-Made Chicago captures a broad range of ensemble performance practices in an accessible and engaging volume highlighting the work of a multicultural and multiracial array of companies, situating practical ‘how-to’ exercises within each company’s particular aesthetic and social context. It’s the perfect introduction to the diversity of devised performance!” —Dani Snyder-Young, author of Theatre Of Good Intentions: Challenges and Hopes for Theatre and Social Change
“Ensemble-Made Chicago is the visionary theatrician’s cookbook. It bristles with hard-won wisdoms and ways of Chicago-based alchemists who fashion stageworks through collaboration. Chloë and Coya’s roster of performance artists reveal how they create compelling theatre that’s sometimes messy, often soul-stirring, and always rings with authenticity. This book carries a charge, and will surely spark an epiphany or two in the rookie and the vet.” —Cheryl Lynn Bruce
". . . an important, even essential addition to the growing body of literature concerning the history, theory, and practice of devising, ensemble theatre, and collective creation in the United States. Devisers, fresh-faced and seasoned alike, as well as educators will find this work illuminating and, better yet, enormously useful . . . These two Chicagoan artist-scholars are the perfect tour guides through Chicago's devising community, from its Magnificent Mile to the residential streets and backyards of its many diverse neighborhoods." —Jake Hooker, Theatre Topics
". . . privileges process over product, while also serving as an accessible guidebook for the history, methods and practices of devised theater—making it a volume to be used in the present and future of the field." —Jaclyn I. Pryor, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre
