Stronger Together

THERE IS A MOMENT, REPEATED AMONG MEMBERS of the Neo-Futurists’ ensemble as they work to agree on modifications they’ll make to their long-running show The Infinite Wrench. It’s a moment that might only attract the notice of an outsider like myself, one I’ve come to call a deferential silence. When Neil Bhandari, who facilitates the meeting, solicits final thoughts from those gathered—fellow ensemble members Joanna Jamerson, Nick Hart, Connor Shioshita Pickett, artistic director Kurt Chiang, and technician Mitchell Chapman—he lingers without speaking well past the point where such a pause would end in most business meetings. At this Wrench pitch meeting, the ensemble decides collectively what one-off structural or tonal elements they’ll be introducing to the show. It’s all part of the Neos’ ongoing effort to keep a nervy, randomized edge to the experience for themselves and their audiences.

In a corporate conference room, such a request for final input might merely be pro forma. But here in this well-loved theatre space called the Neo-Futurarium, a 150-seat venue on the second floor of a brick building at the corner of Foster and Ashland Avenues in the Andersonville neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side, scuffed and chipped by the thousands who’ve passed through over the decades, this question hovers as an Bhandari, and presumably anyone occupying his role in other such meetings, seems intent with this interval of silence on allowing each individual a gut-check about each measure being proposed. In most meetings the words “Anything further?” can have a clipped, conclusive feel, conveying a palpable sense of a hoped-for “no” that preserves expediency and permits the ticking-off of an agenda item. But here inside this stalwart of Chicago’s storefront theatre, there is a