About / Bios
Rachel Claff was an ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists from 1996 to 2003, during which time she wrote over 250 plays for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and co-created such full-length works as David Kodeski's True Life Tales: The Sycamore Story (2001), Curious Beautiful (2000), and You Are Not Here (1999). She is the creator of the ongoing summer series It Came from the Neo-Futurarium!, staged readings of the world's best bad films. She has also appeared in other writerly outings around Chicago such as The Partly Dave Show, The Dollar Store Show, The Lip Reading Series, and Live Bait's Fillet of Solo Festival, and most recently appeared in Spukt (2007), her first show with Theater Oobleck. She has taught a number of writing and performance workshops in and around Chicago, at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and at Dad's Garage in Atlanta, GA.

Rachel received her MA in Cultural Performance from the University of Bristol in December 2007, with a focus on site-specific installation and performance. Her research led to the creation of performance group Local Disturbances; extremely sporadic site-specific outings are catalogued at localdisturbances.blogspot.com, especially when the weather is halfway damn decent.

Write Rachel at rachel@boygirlboygirl.org
Susan McLaughlin Karp began her professional life as an actor, which led to improv, which somehow led to marriage, which absolutely led to pregnancy, which led to writing, which led to solo performance, which led to co-founding The Uptown Writer's Space.

Susan spends her time having children with Josh Karp, collecting and redistributing pets, noodling about in the kitchen, and trying sometimes without success not to neglect her responsibilities. She maintains her sanity with meditation, yoga and walking and is a regular sometime contributor to WBEZ's Writers Block Party. She has performed her monologues at Live Bait Theater and Steppenwolf Theatre and at other fun writerly gatherings about town. In 2002, her critically acclaimed solo show Still was part of the New York Fringe Festival and was a finalist for Fourth Genre Magazine's Editors Prize in 2004.

Write Susan at susan@boygirlboygirl.org
David Kodeski is the creator of David Kodeski's True Life Tales, an ongoing series of critically-acclaimed solo performances which include Doris (1996), Niagara! (you should have been Yosemite) (1997), Another Lousy Day (1999), The Sycamore Story (2001), I Can't Explain the Beauty (2002), and And Some Can Remember Something of Some Such Thing (2005). His Niagara! (you should have been Yosemite) inspired a Niagara-based episode of National Public Radio's This American Life. A radio version of Another Lousy Day was produced by Long Haul Productions and was heard on All Things Considered.

Kodeski has been an ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists since 1991, co-host and creator of The Pansy Kings' Cotillion and is founding member of BoyGirlBoyGirl. He has performed his work at the Perth International Fringe Festival, The Perth International Arts Festival and the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. You can learn more about his work (as well as listen to his podcasts) at his website, truelifetales.com

Write David at david@boygirlboygirl.org
Stephanie Shaw is the author of several full-length monologues, including Good Eatin', A Proper Dragon, Duct and Materia Prima. These have been produced at The Neo-Futurarium, Live Bait, LadyFest Midwest, and Duct was produced at The 2002 New York Fringe Festival. She has been a regular participant in Live Bait's Fillet of Solo Sampler, as well as the semi-annual EstrogenFest. She directed Susan Karp's Still (which also went to the 2002 New York Fringe) and Edward Thomas-Hererra's Fun while it lasted: a farewell tour, both for the Live Bait Fillet of Solo Festival. Her directing credits also include a couple of productions around Chicago and a slew of productions at Columbia College Chicago, where she is an artist-in-residence in the Theater Department, and where she has implemented two Solo Performance classes into the curriculum.

Stephanie was a Neo-Futurist for four years, writing and performing regularly for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, and before that, she was a theater critic for the Chicago Reader, as well as an actress about town. She has performed her work regularly with Second Story, The Poetry Center of Chicago, The Dollar Store, Kate the Great's Bookstore, and The Partly Dave Show. Her novella, "Mademoiselle Guignol" (a theatrical romance with blood) will be available through Doorway Publications in the spring of 2009.

Read "Octopus" from The Fine Art of Italian Cooking.

Write Stephanie at stephanie@boygirlboygirl.org
Diana Slickman has been involved with a number of Chicago theatre companies as a performer, producer, director, writer, and administrator, sometimes all at the same time. A longtime member of the Neo-Futurists, she performed in their signature show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind for eight years and contributed to many of their "prime time" productions, including Drinking & Writing, You Are Not Here, and The Sycamore Story. She is currently a member of Theatre Oobleck's artistic ensemble, having appeared in their productions of Spirits to Enforce, The Passion of the Bush, The Book of Grendel, Letter Purloined and Spukt.

Diana's performance work has included all manner of things, from the plays of Shakespeare to standup comedy to a staged chronicle of the evolution of American obscenity law. She is the sometime associate publisher for Hope & Nonthings and full-time associate publisher for Agate Publishing. Diana prefers summer to winter, baseball to football, scotch whisky to beer, and the mountains to the seaside.

Read "Here Come the Holidays" from Chestnuts Roasting on a Chestnut Roaster.

Write Diana at diana@boygirlboygirl.org

Edward Thomas-Herrera (aka, "World's Most Famous Salvadoran-American") is a reluctant native of Houston, Texas, 4th largest city in the US. As a long-time artistic associate of Live Bait Theater, Edward has authored three plays: Of Diamonds and Diplomats, Mondo Edwardo, and Death on a Pink Carpet. He was also a staple of Live Bait's annual Fillet of Solo Festival where he debuted his one-man show, Fun while it lasted: a farewell tour (directed by the lovely and talented Stephanie Shaw). His directing credits include Stephanie Shaw's Materia Prima, David Kodeski's And Some Can Remember Something of Some Such Thing, and Mary Scruggs's Missing Man. Other directing credits include four installments of the Neo-Futurists' It Came from the Neo-Futurarium! annual festival of staged readings of bad movie scripts.

Edward has only recently discovered that his great-great-grandparents were Danish, which might explain why, as a young child, he took an edition of "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" and re-named it "My Fairy Tales" with a bright purple crayon.

Read "My Season in Hell" from The New, More Thrilling Secrets.

Write Edward at edwardo@boygirlboygirl.org