University of Iowa

Beau O’Reilly

Beau O’Reilly is co-curator of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, a frequent contributor to This American Life, and a professor of playwriting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a founding member of the Curious Theater Branch (now in its 29th year), the Crooked Mouth band, and the humbly legendary Maestro Subgum & the Whole. The author of over 90 original plays, O’Reilly is also a working actor. In 2016, his play One Boppa: Two Acts was produced; he released a third album with the Crooked Mouth, loveloveloveloveSTOPlovelovelove on Uvulittle Records; and a short story was included in the compilation Chicagoese. A new play, Last Week, premiered in January 2017, and his play Tattered and Wincing was produced that year in May. O’Reilly has produced, curated, and directed work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Poetry Foundation, Steppenwolf Studio, and Links Hall, and he has been named one of Chicago Theaters' 'most influential' a half-dozen times over the course of his career.

Instructor Events

Monologue in the Moment

Weekend July 21 to July 22 2018

This is a workshop to be enjoyed standing up. Using techniques borrowed from Viola Spolin’s Theater Games and NPR’s This American Life, we will tell stories out of our dreams, our fears, our family histories, out of happenstance. We will examine the effects surprise, freshness, and challenge have on our writing. We’ll also talk about the how and why of documenting the work we make, answering these questions and more: When we create using improvisation, how do we transcribe or recreate the work?