WNEP Theater - The EMILY Show

Original Run: October 20 - December 22
Featuring
Jen Ellison as "Emily"
Otto Schmidt as "The Monster in the Closet"
Technicians: Rebecca Langguth, Don Hall
Directed by Lisa Velten

Also seen at:
SoloFile: Solo Festival at ComedySportz
The Fifth Annual Chicago Festival: Solo Stage at ImprovOlympic

The Emily Show is a part-Gilda Radner, part-Andy Kaufman, part-Paul Reubens one-woman performance
starring WNEP Artistic Director Jen Ellison as Emily, a slightly psychotic four-year old girl.
Emily invites audience members to come play with her in her room and with her toys (graciously donated by
ToyScape on Broadway) as she sings songs, tells stories, and performs psychoanalysis on them.
Conceived of by Ellison and directed by WNEP Marketing Director Lisa Velten, The Emily Show also features
Goliath, Emily's third pet hamster, and her battles with "The Monster in the Closet."

Here's what the Chicago Reader says about The EMILY Show:

"...Jen Ellison is a rare breed of improviser: she hits her comfort zone remarkably quickly,
and she's so self-assured she can easily set an audience at ease--or provoke them.
She also has a talent for shaping raw material and plumbing the depths of a character, reveling
in the sort of nuances that are often overlooked by improvisers rushing
to achieve momentum or find yet another laugh line.

Borrowing a page from the experiments in regression by arrested adolescents
Paul Reubens and Andy Kaufman, Ellison explores a night in the life of a
precocious four-year-old who plays with her toys, tells stories about her
ill-fated line of pet hamsters, and chatters incessantly about princesses.
Getting the look down perfectly, Ellison wears overalls and pigtails and
goes to ridiculous lengths to emulate the frenetic hushed-to-giddy speech
patterns of a little kid. Even better, she knows when to depart from her
script and rely on audience interaction, offering makeovers and dispensing cheeky psychoanalytic advice..."

Jen Ellison has been the Artistic Director of WNEP Theater since 1998.
A DePaul Theater School graduate, Ms. Ellison has directed productions for WNEP
(Grotesque Lovesongs, Wise Blood, PHOBIA, when we were SUPERSTARS) as well as for
Collaboraction (Dead Dwarf Intermezzo). She has also performed with Saint Ed, Stage Left Theater,
ComedySportz, and has starred in numerous WNEP Theater productions including her turns
as the female half of My Grandma's a Fat Whore in Jersey, Molly Doyle in the long running
Armageddon Radio Hour, and most recently her gender-bending role as
Lori Seefer in Statuette - A Hollywood Musical.

Lisa Velten (Director) is also a Depaul Theatre School graduate and has performed with
Lookingglass Theatre Company, About Face Theatre, Steppenwolf, as well as WNEP Theater.
Her last directorial effort was the dark cabaret Lovers & Others - A Cabaret
performed last spring at WNEP Theater.