Nothing Without a Company (NWaC) is set to premiere Sofa King Queer, its first full production since the emergence of the COVID pandemic, Oct. 26-31 (preview performances) and Nov. 1-Dec. 2 (full run performances) at NWaC’s partnership park in Edgewater’s Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan Rd.
NWaC is a nonprofit theater company incorporated in 2008 whose mission is “telling the stories of historically marginalized voices through immersive and site-specific theater in reclaimed environments.” Their focus is to support LGBTQ+, women, trans, gender non-binary/GNC and BIPOC people so they have a safe and creative space to explore their voices and talents.
Sofa King Queer tells the story of six characters related to Chicago’s pop punk/indie rock scene just before President Barack Obama was elected in 2008. It follows a young queer man as he confronts a choice between community and solitude fueled by pressures from his family and partners a day before a breakaway concert.
NWaC’s literary manager Kevin Sparrow, who officially joined the company in 2016 after their stint as the researcher for NWaC’s immersive fairy tale show, Down the Moonlit Path, chose to focus on queer lives in 2008 for this musical “due to similarities both in proposed laws that have direct consequences on LGBTQIA lives and the growth in anti-LGBTQIA sentiment I was noticing in 2018 and that era, which have continued to be significant into the 2020s.”
They said, “Sometimes, holding up a mirror from an earlier time can be an effective strategy in showing that history is repeating itself and putting more urgency to make change in the present.”
Sparrow, who wrote the book, music (with Ron Attreau) and lyrics for Sofa King Queer, noted statistics citing increases in hate crimes during election years, adding that “the presidential election cycles seem to reflect a fairly cynical acknowledgment of queer lives in the United States. Granting equal rights to LGBTQIA people is used as a political tactic that forces greater visibility and as well as greater potential harm on LGBTQIA people.”
Sparrow approached pop-punk music as “both as a fan of the genre and from a critical lens of the often masculine, and straight, perception of the genre in the 2000s. For the story, my goal was to recover the queer experience within that music subculture as a way to represent the broader experiences of erasure and marginalization LGBTQIA people face. At the same time, I did not want the characters to come across as simply reacting to outside circumstances; queer people also contribute to systems of oppression, and that reality.”
Ron Attreau, Sofa King Queer’s musical director, arranger and co-composer, added, “In making musical decisions for this show, I have strived to be true to the pop punk/emo/grunge rock aesthetic from which it is derived and portrays, while also working within the realm of musical theater.”
“Kevin captured the aesthetic essence of NWaC while encouraging collaboration on all levels,” said NWaC’s artistic director Hannah Ii-Epstein. “There are a lot of firsts for NWaC in this show: first full-length musical, first production since 2019, first full live band on stage, first full understudy cast, first time using mics and much more.”
“I’ve been doing theatre for almost 30 years so I have this drive to challenge myself to try new things,” said NWaC’s producing director Anna Rose Ii-Epstein. “So when Kevin came to us in 2018 and said they were developing a show, they weren’t exactly sure what it looked like yet but that it was going to be a musical I was so stoked.”
Sofa King Queer’s album mixer Angel Torres said she has been friends with both Anna and Hannah for over a decade, and has worked with NWaC intermittently since 2010. She said when Anna and Hannah (who have also been married to each other since 2011 and were also chosen as for this publication’s 30 Under 30 Awards in 2014, the first couple to be bestowed with this honor) first approached her to get involved she said yes immediately.
“The title alone caught my interest,” said Torres. “After seeing the first table reading, I knew there was something special here. I haven’t had the opportunity to see the rehearsals yet, but judging from the recordings that I’m mixing, the show is going to be a cathartic trip back to the mid- to late-aughts with songs reminiscent of Green Day and Weezer, and ballads about being proudly queer. I think that the show is going to be a memorable experience for everyone.”
Sofa King Queer director JD Caudill wanted to direct because they were immediately drawn to the script.
“I loved how it weaves sitcom humor through high-drama circumstances, and it presented unique staging challenges for some of its production numbers,” said Caudill. “I yearned to solve them like a ‘90s 3D puzzle. Most importantly, I felt the magical sensation I experience when I know the right script is in my hands: the immediate ability to see it play out on a stage in my imagination.”
Caudill said their choices as the director included “moments where characters feel unheard by others in their life to escape into nonrealistic expressions of their minds via concert aesthetics. We also leaned hard into approaching this like a period piece. It shakes me to my core to think about my senior year of high school as period piece fodder, but it’s so fun to revisit the sights, sounds, and looks of the 2000s, Nokia ringtones and all.”
Out queer performer Jacob C. Watson, who plays the queer main character Topher, said he got to read three scenes from different moments in the musical at his audition and that process “started to form an impression of who he was and what he was dealing with. Our director JD referred to him as ‘our problematic protagonist,’ and I immediately understood this sense of using humor to mask difficult moments, of being the ‘connector’ within a group of friends, yet constantly afraid of losing touch.”
Watson enjoys playing Topher because the character is messy, imperfect and makes a lot of mistakes, but it someone who also cares about and loves his friends and family—even if they can’t always show it. For Watson, Sofa King Queer embodies the three main aspects of his creative work—musical theater, devised/original work and community-engaged projects that raise social consciousness.
Hannah Ii-Epstein said the musical reminds her of her youth: “My eyes tear up with nostalgia and awe as I get caught up in a story where many of the characters reflect me on a personal level, especially Granger and Nao. It is personal, not just to me but for many folks.”
Anna Rose Ii-Epstein added, “NWaC is excited to be doing the queer AF musical during the election season because no matter what happens, we are here, we are queer and we aren’t going anywhere.”
Caudill called the show “pretty much everything you could want from a night at the theater,” said “It’s nostalgic, sexy and scandalous and the characters are fun and compelling. And OMG, the guyliner. It’s so fucking queer.”
NWaC will also drop an album with the music from the production on October 31. This will be available on many streaming platforms for free.
The full run performances take place Thursdays to Saturdays at 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., with additional performances on Wednesday, Nov. 6 and 13 at 7 p.m. (student night) and Monday, Dec. 2 (industry night) at 7 p.m.
The Oct. 26-31 preview $20 tickets (limited amount) are available here, preview $40 tickets are available here and the Nov. 1 to Dec. 2 full run $60 tickets are available here. NWaC asks that questions about tickets should be sent to boxoffice@nothingwithoutacompany.org.