Mission

Curious Theatre Branch is dedicated to the creation of new plays and performances and to the production of the annual Rhinoceros Theater Festival. Curious aims to promote innovative works of the imagination in the performing arts from a broad and inclusive spectrum of artists and are also devoted to mentoring programs that engage emerging artists as a way to enrich and expand our artistic community.  We are committed to creating and producing new plays and performances in a collaborative manner, encouraging our members as artists to share decision making and responsibilities, while expanding their skills as writers, actors, designers, directors, and arts administrators.  Curious also is committed to the idea that a pay what you can pricing policy is sustainable and will suffice over the long term as an economic model.

History

Founded in 1988 by Jenny Magnus and Beau O'Reilly—as the Curious Theatre “Branch” of the alt-rock cabaret act Maestro Subgum and the Whole—Curious has consistently worked with a shifting ensemble of artists through which a commitment to works of the imagination and an attention to sustainability by staying a small institution has been maintained.

The Curious Theatre Branch has produced close to 150 full productions of mostly original world-premiere shows in 35 years, amazing audiences year after year in how much can be accomplished for so little. Curious has developed its own recognizable style, focusing on language and using an economy of means and production to make deeper and deeper, rather than larger and larger, work.

Curious has been itinerant since 2021, when their longtime home, The Prop THTR building, was sold because of the pandemic shutdown.  Before the Prop Avondale site, Curious has had spaces in the Rogers Park neighborhood, in Lincoln Park, and in Wicker Park.

In 1995, Beau O'Reilly was named one of the 50 most influential people in Chicago theater by Chicago Magazine. In 1998, Beau O'Reilly and Jenny Magnus were named among the Artists of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, from 1998-2010 New City included them among the 50 most influential people in Chicago theater. Curious has received funding from The MacArthur Foundation, the Driehaus Foundation, The Donnelley Foundation, The Alphawood Foundation, and state and local funding, as well as having been given a recent modest legacy endowment from a long-time patron.

In 2011 Curious was given a year-long residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, culminating in Jenny Magnus’s Still in Play: A Performance of Getting Ready.  In 2014, a collection of co-founder Jenny Magnus’s plays was published by JackLeg Press, Observations of an Orchestrated Catastrophe, and reprinted in 2021.  In 2022, JackLeg Press published Curious Plays, a collection of 7 works by Curious writers.  Curious ensemble members have been given multiple artistic residencies at Ragdale, WriteOn Door County, Evergreen College, University of Michigan, University of Illinois, as well as seeing independent productions of their works in places like Madison Wisconsin, Nashville Tennessee, New Orleans Louisiana, and more.

Curious has always had a “pay-what-you-can” ticket policy and believes that keeping admission pricing low is one way to ensure that people will go out and see live theater.  This particularly impacts The Rhinoceros Theater Festival, a yearly festival of performative works, operating in some form since 1989, with the exception of the pandemic year.  The RhinoFest is one of the oldest open submission theater and performance festivals in the United States and is always part of Curious’s season.  The Rhino Fest in an incubator for new work: it is free to apply to and participate in, has mentorship and expertise both artistic and technical available, and creates an “art camp” feeling of cross-pollination between the artists participating in and coming to shows.  The Rhino fest is staffed and administered by Curious members, pays out a percentage of the gross of each show to its creators, and keep the conversation about works of the imagination alive and fueled.  Curious believes strongly in putting its money where its mouth is. The imagination is one of the truly hopeful aspects of humanity and needs to be cultivated and nurtured, and The Curious Theatre Branch has dedicated its decades of existence to fundamentally optimistic acts in support of works of the imagination.