DKAF 2025 Artists:
FEATURED ARTIST:
Deaf West Theater — featuring a new play by Rick Cleveland
Rick Cleveland is a playwright and an Emmy winning writer/producer whose television credits include "The West Wing," "Six Feet Under," "Mad Men," “Nurse Jackie,” “House Of Cards,” “Archer,” “Legit,” and “Man In The High Castle.” Rick performed his one man show "My Buddy Bill" at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and won the Best Solo Performance Award at the HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen in 2006. He also performed the piece at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a one hour Comedy Central special in 2007. As a playwright Rick has earned playwriting grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays. He was a Founding Member of American Blues Theatre, Chicago's second oldest ensemble based theatre company, as well as a Founding Member of the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Rick was a commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and he received his MFA from the University of Iowa's Playwrights' Workshop.
Founded in 1991 in Los Angeles, Deaf West Theatre, led by Artistic Director DJ Kurs and Managing Director Jeff Perri, is a Tony Award®-winning company blending American Sign Language (ASL) with spoken English to create innovative, culturally rich theater experiences. Notable productions include the groundbreaking staging of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Broadway productions of Spring Awakening and Big River. Building upon a commitment to bridging the Deaf and hearing worlds, their repertoire includes acclaimed musicals, plays and multi-media works. The company has been honored with a variety of national and international awards for its significant contributions to the cultural enrichment of the Deaf arts landscape. Visit deafwest.org to learn more.
Rick Cleveland
FACING — Luck Plush Productions
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Inspired by an early Eugene O’Neill play, FACING takes up forms of contemporary masking in highly mediated relationships, resulting in a strange farce of mixed up identities and a literal and metaphorical missing body. This residency is supported by the Arts Labs research project at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society and Theater & Performance Studies at the University of Chicago.
Conceived and directed by Leslie Buxbaum & Julia Rhoads
Created in collaboration with the ensemble: Marc Macaranas, Melinda Myers, Jacinda Ratcliffe, Michel Rodriguez, Meghann Wilkinson
Projection design by Liviu Pasare and Mark Comiskey
Sound design by Michael Caskey
Workshop lighting design by Garrett Bell
Stage Management by Kevin Rechner
Scenic and technical support by Ben Caracello
Additional media support from Logan Media Center
TAPDANCE CONCERTO — Jumaane Taylor in collaboration with Michelle McQuade-Dewhirst
An accomplished composer, horn player, and music educator. Michelle McQuade Dewhirst is the Artistic Director of the Weidner Philharmonic in Green Bay, WI. As Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, she teaches courses in music theory, music history, composition, horn, and popular music. Her recent work includes original scores for the silent films Metropolis, Man with a Movie Camera, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; a commissioned orchestral work for the Fox Valley Youth Symphony, and music on forthcoming commercial recordings by trumpet player Adam Gaines and two-time Grammy-nominated soprano Laura Strickling.
A Chicago native, Jumaane Taylor has been tap dancing since the age of 7 at the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre. He has had the opportunity to train with Idella Reed Davis, Geraldine Williams, Runako Jahi, Bril Barrett, Martin Dumas III, Jimmy Payne Jr., and George Patterson III.
Jumaane has been apart of the ensemble in Imagine Tap! (2006 by Derick Grant); Tap Into Peace (2009 by Sarah Savelli and Ayodele Casel); and Rasta Thomas' Tap Stars that showcased in Hamburg, Germany. While also tapping as a member of local bands, Corey Wilkes 'Abstrakt Pulse', 'Sidewalk Chalk', Ernest Dawkins 'We Free Three', the 'Isaiah Spencer Collective' and Justin Dillard's 'Set Trippin'.
Jumaane has received the Black Excellence 2024 Outstanding Choreographer Award, 3Arts 2019 Award, Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2017 Lab Artist Award, and has presented his work with the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jazz Institute of Chicago, Columbia College-Dance Center and abroad. He teaches at Mayfair Arts Center, Ruth Page School of Dance, and the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Since 2021 Jumaane has also been the artistic director of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project.
Okorie “OkCELLO” Johnson
“Hereness is the first of all sacred things.” - OkCello
Okorie “OkCello” Johnson is an American cellist-songwriter whose artistry integrates cello performance, live-sound-looping, improvisation, and storytelling - all culminating in original compositions that collide classical with jazz, EDM, reggae, and funk.
His music is inspired by the exploration of African Diasporic melodies and narratives and their intersection with people’s perceptions and assumptions about the classical and European nature of the cello. As well, his work with improvisation attempts to embody the phenomenon of wordless prayer.
FOOLING BUUDHA — David Kovac
David Kovac combines sophisticated humor with cleverly crafted magic routines. The Chicago Tribune named him a Trickster Hero, and he has been featured on the cover of Genii Magazine, the world’s premier periodical for magicians, mind readers and puzzle enthusiasts, since1936. His deft, dapper performance style is drawn from the best traditions of vaudeville and refined variety theatre, and he was critically acclaimed in the role of Applegate, The Devil, in the hit musical DAMN YANKEES! Headlining credits include Nashville’s House of Cards, Chicago Magic Lounge, Magicians Agency Theater in San Antonio, Dickens Parlour in Delaware, Marvyn’s Magic Theater in La Quinta, CA and Kanpai Magic in NYC. He currently serves as a Trustee at The Magic Castle, where he was recently nominated for Stage Performer of the Year.
“A Trickster Hero!”—Chicago Tribune“An unusually multi-talented individual.”---Genii Magazine
“Intentionally absurd and ridiculous...very funny.”—The Isthmus
“David Kovac represents polish, dash and energy...”—Chicago Sun-Times
“An engaging storyteller, and his magic is impressive.”---The Reader
FOOLING BUUDHA:
A young trickster learns to battle the neighborhood bully with magic and misdirection. He soon discovers that every miracle has its price. Fooling Buddha is a memory play set in working class 1970’s Milwaukee. The author portrays multiple oddball characters ranging from the taunting nemesis Eddie to The Amazing Bondini, an unsuspecting philosopher who runs the local magic shop. Throughout this evening of myth, mystery and infinite jest, we encounter an assortment of homegrown eccentrics and ride orbits of cosmic conversation around the family dinner table. As the story unfolds, so does the set. The final meditation scene concludes with an awakening that all words are magic words – not so much because they make something out of nothing, but because they make something out of everything.
Impertinent Girls: The Teenage Writings of Jane Austen — Aretha Sills
Aretha Sills is a writer, director, and teacher of improvisational theater. She studied the theater games of Viola Spolin with her father, director Paul Sills (creator/director of The Second City and Story Theater) and has conducted workshops for Paul Sills’ Wisconsin Theater Game Center, Bard College, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Sarah Lawrence College, Teatro a Molla, and Northwestern University. She’s worked with Tony- and Emmy-Award winning actors and has trained faculty from Northwestern, DePaul, Columbia College, The Second City, and The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. She created and directs an interactive show currently touring Los Angeles public schools. Aretha received her MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from UC Riverside, where she taught in the creative writing program. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Maybelle, The Utne Reader, CALYX Journal, South Bank Poetry Review. She and her father loved talking about Jane Austen’s novels, and she is thrilled to be sharing the first reading of her hybrid Story Theater adaptation of “Impertinent Girls: The Teenage Writings of Jane Austen” in his chosen home of Door County. Aretha lives in Sister Bay with her family.
It’s 1789 and fourteen-year-old Jane Austen, her bookish siblings, and their glamorous cousin (who is fleeing the French Revolution) are rehearsing a “family theatrical” in the barn, but for the first time they’re performing young Jane’s own writing. Impertinent Girls: The Teenage Writings of Jane Austen is a hybrid Story Theater adaptation of the raucous and hilarious stories that the precocious author wrote between the ages of twelve and seventeen, ruthlessly parodying the sentimental fiction of her day. Her ridiculous and ill-behaved characters get drunk, gamble, raise armies, and murder each other – a far cry from the novels that would earn her immortality. As the Austens rehearse the farcical burlesques, Jane finds her literary voice. Impertinent Girls explores how a young Jane Austen gained the courage to protect her ferocious gift from a society designed to take it from her.
SCI-FI RADIO PLAYS — Tim X. Troy and Lawrence Theatre of the Air
A century before Netflix and Disney. People sat around the radio, using their ears as a way to experience different stories. At DKAF this year, Radio Drama is coming back! Members of Lawrence Theatre are bringing you a Live Radio Drama, Sci-Fi Favorites, a nostalgic yet fresh revival of post-World War II science fiction radio plays. With live sound effects and theatrical performances, this isn’t just listening, it's experiencing!
Experience a classic style radio drama performed on stage with vintage voice acting, live sound effects, and a story full of space-age adventure, strange encounters, and atomic-era imagination. Take a break and experience storytelling the way it started.
Since the year 2000, the Lawrence University department of the Theatre Arts has presented occasional series of live performances of Old-Time Radio plays as an enhancement to their regular offering of plays musicals and dance performances. Under the direction of Prof. Timothy X. Troy they’ve explored great radio writers like Norman Corwin and Arch Oboler, fun comedies like The Aldrich Family, and detective series like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. The perennial favorites ove the years have been selections from the great science fiction anthology series – X-MINUS-ONE, and Dimenstion X.
For DKAF 2025, Professor Aaron Sherkow will join Troy as director/producer along with six current Lawrence theatre students to explore Cold War era science fiction stories that address the anxieties of a former age … and speak to directly to our own time in remarkable and surprising ways.
Saturday, September 27th
2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.
Bjorklunden
7590 Boynton Ln.
Baileys Harbor, WI
DKAF KOFFEEHOUSE
Wednesday, September 24th
7:00 p.m.
Bjorklunden
7590 Boynton Ln.
Baileys Harbor, WI
A DKAF favorite 8 years running, Koffeehouse features music, dance and open mic performances by visiting artists.
DKAF SHORT FILM COMPETITION
DKAF expertly curates short festival offer narratives, documentaries and animated films from around the world. With special deference to films that center around dance, the DKAF festival is unique as it selects films that resonate with other creations in other mediums around it.
Bjorklunden
7590 Boynton Ln.
Baileys Harbor, WI
THE ART OF THE COCKTAIL
Bjorklunden
7590 Boynton Ln.
Baileys Harbor, WI
Featuring James Beard Finalist, Spirits Expert and Mixologist Robert Simonson returns to DKAF to dazzle us with his drinks and the rich stories from which they derived. The Art of the Cocktail has been a signature of the Door Kinetic Arts Festival — there is literally no other festival on Earth that does this — and 2024 is no different.