Jenny Magnus is a writer, performer, musician, director, and teacher who is a founding co-Artistic Director of the Curious Theatre Branch. Her plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the former Lunar Cabaret, Prop Thtr, the Poetry Foundation, and on tour throughout America and Europe. She creates hybrid forms of performance, music, images, and philosophy in her explorations and meditations on awareness, attention, and the performative moment. Her works onstage ride a shifting line between singing and speaking, live and mediated images, talking about thinking and thinking about talking. She has a useless MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Beau is a founding member and co-Artistic Director of the Curious Theatre Branch and the bands Maestro Subgum and the Whole and The Crooked Mouth, as well as a curator of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival for thirty years. His work has appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Poetry Foundation, and on This American Life. The author of more than eighty original plays, O’Reilly is also a working actor who teaches playwriting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His latest solo album, Thrifty, was released on Uvulittle Records in 2021.

Ensemble member since 2007, Vicki is an actor and sometime director/writer who has been in a whole bunch of Curious shows: most recently, Moon at the Bottom of the Ocean, The Ship and the Sea, This is Not a Churchill, A Packet of Holiness and Joy, Valence, (Not) Another Day, One Boppa, and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. She has also performed with other storefront theater scene stalwarts, including Barrie Cole and Theatre Oobleck, and is a former company member of Cook County Theatre Dept, Lucky Pierre, and DOG, a theater company. She plays bass and sings in The Crooked Mouth and Broom People.

Julia Williams is a writer and performer living in Chicago. With Curious Theatre Branch, she has appeared in Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker, Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, and many new plays by Curious ensemble members, including To End to Seem to End by Jayita Bhattacharya, One Boppa: Two Acts by Beau O’Reilly, Crossing Aviva by Matt Rieger, and (Not) Another Day by Jenny Magnus. She has directed her own works, Difficulties (with Sue Cargill) and The Near Future, in the Rhinoceros Theater Festival.

Jayita Bhattacharya is a multidisciplinary theatre artist originally from Southern California, who has made her home in Chicago as an ensemble member of Curious Theatre Branch. She wrote the plays To End to Seem to End, today like a kind of shivering, and Should We Put It Out? (The Smoke). Directing credits include What Is Even Happening?!!! by Kristin Garrison, Lizzie Borden Is Smashing by Sue Cargill, and The McGuffins Run the 440 by Beau O'Reilly. Jayita has also appeared in numerous Curious and Rhinofest productions through the years, including The Skriker, 4:48 Psychosis, Evanston Which Is Over There, The Buzz that is the Buzz, and most recently, the revival of Hit Me Like a Flower.

Jeffrey Bivens has directed and performed in numerous Curious shows, including Moon at the Bottom of the Ocean, Clumsy Sublime, To End to Seem to End, Waiting for Godot, and The Turtle at Play. He also serves as primary web designer, videographer and photographer for the company.

Actor, musician, songwriter extraordinaire. Appeared in Rhinoceros, The Madelyn Trilogy, (Not) Another Day, Rung, and more. He is a multi-instrumentalist in The Crooked Mouth, too.

Co-founder of Prop Thtr, director of many Curious shows, including Waiting for Godot, Clumsy Sublime, The Eviller Twin, Power Brechtdown, and more..

Lena Brun is a writer, actor, musician, and artist. As the daughter of co-artistic director Jenny Magnus and ensemble member Stefan Brun, Lena is the nepotism baby of Curious Theatre Branch. She was a co-founder of PinkElephant Performing Troupe, has worked with Prop Thtr, and is now a Curious ensemble member. She has participated in company productions such as Lizzie Borden Is Smashing, To End To Seem To End, Winfield's Place On a Friday, (Not) Another Day, The Skriker, and Open Wide.

Multiple participation trophy winner-turned performer. Also, filmmaker, playwright, composer, & veteran pushover for Chicago theater. Performed in (Not) Another Day, wrote and produced several Rhino shows (including Daughter, Subjective is Beauty, & Beckett: a Show About Nothingness), worked on several more. Collaborator with Prop Thtr, Silent Theatre Company, Labyrinth Arts Performance Collective, Hate/Lab, Uploose Odditorium, etc.

Charlotte is a multidisciplinary designer and technician who can’t stop telling her friends she’ll run their show. Accordingly, she’s stage managed with Prop Thtr, Labyrinth Arts Performance Collective, Hate/Lab and at recent Rhinofests. As a scenic painter and designer she has worked in theatres, schools, storefronts and parking lots in all corners of Chicago.

Chris Bower is a teacher, playwright and the author of the short story collection Little Boy Needs Ride (Curbside Splendor) and the novella The Family Dogs, which was part of the My Very End of the Universe novella collection published by Rose Metal Press. He is also the curator and host of The Ray’s Tap Reading Series and his work has been featured at pretty much every Rhinoceros Theater Festival since 2005.

In memory of Matt, our beloved and dearly departed company manager, performer, writer of plays such as Playing God, Crossing Aviva, A Part of the Game, My Dinner With… Joe. And so much more than that.