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Experiments…Science & Art is part of the Museum’s commitment to inspiring the inventive genius in everyone. The Museum uses captivating and unique educational activities, including live performances, live demonstrations, costumed interpreters and more, to help guests further explore the concepts introduced by exhibits. All performances are free with general admission and will be held in the Museum’s greatest spaces – its Great Hall, Rotunda, or North Court. Experiments…Science & Art includes the following performances: |
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 The House is a brave young company with a "no secrets" approach to live performance and an engaging style that strives to unite actors and audiences by inciting the imagination. After attracting overwhelming attention and success with "The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan," the House will open its first complete season of plays this August with a remount of its original play "Death and Harry Houdini." |
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“Defy Gravity!” performed by The House Theatre of Chicago www.thehousetheatre.com The House Theatre of Chicago combines acting, puppetry, film, lighting effects, and sound in a spectacular multimedia performance on flight. Bird, airplane and rocket puppets surround the audience as a countdown begins. The Rotunda is transformed into the hull of a rocket while lessons on gravity and aerodynamics are explained through an elaborate shadow play and a 1950s film reel. The lights dim and the Rotunda experiences lift off just before the night sky appears, complete with comets, shooting stars and rockets sweeping across the dome. |
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 FuzzyCo is a Chicago-based production company headed by two individuals, Fuzzy Gerdes and Shaun Himmerick, and with an artistic pool of actors, videographers, and technicians. FuzzyCo’s "The Science Project" ensemble is composed of experienced improvisers whose performances are nuanced, delightful, and hilarious. |
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“The Science Project” performed by FuzzyCo www.fuzzyco.com Inspired by last winter's hit off-loop theatre show, "The Neutrino Project", FuzzyCo’s “The Science Project” will create several improvised movies each day for five days, using teams of improvisers and videographers. These short films will use Museum visitors and Museum staff along with the improvising performers to illuminate the Museum’s approaches to selected scientific principles. In the Great Hall, Museum guests vote on what FuzzyCo should film. Movies are shot in locations around the Museum and shown within an hour and a half of being created. |
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 Curious Theater Branch, founded in 1988, is one of Chicago’s only all-original theater companies. Curious has produced over 60 full runs of world-premiere shows in its 15-year existence, and is truly one of Chicago’s great undiscovered treasures. This production was written, designed and directed by Shawn Prakash Reddy with music written and performed by Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus. Icarus will be performed by Kat McJimsey and choreographed by Bryn Magnus. |
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“Eugene and the Song of the Wicked Starling” performed by Curious Theatre Branch www.curioustheaterbranch.com "Eugene and the Song of the Wicked Starling" presents interactive multimedia storytelling that illuminates the ways that observation informs the scientific process. It begins with the story of Icarus, accompanied by three original songs. Curious will tell the stories of Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci, and Eugene Schieffelin, the man who introduced the European starling to America. Museum guests will enter a forest of trees inhabited by many bird species, draw on easels inside the forest, hang their drawings up on a clothesline and become part of the exhibit for the day. |
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 The Chicago County Fair is an art collective that uses multidisciplinary art projects to link together communities, transform and improve culture, and to reconfigure the relationship between the artist and the spectator. |
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“ASK ME !” curated by Chicago County Fair www.chicagocountyfair.com "ASK ME!" is a curated conversation where friendly individuals knowledgeable about scientific, historical, and cultural topics will be |
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 Since being founded in 1995, Plasticene has created eight original works that have all performed to overwhelming critical acclaim and sold-out houses. Plasticene enjoys a solid reputation as a leading company in theatrical physicality and represents the best of Chicago’s thriving experimental performance theater. |
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“Flight” performed by Plasticene Theatre Company www.plasticene.com "Flight" is a performance acting out three forces of flight mechanics. Three heroic characters, including Amelia Earhart, enter the Rotunda and perform experiments before the eyes of the crowd to prove the superiority of lifting, soaring, or rotoring, followed by a kaleidoscope of dialogue and dream-like physical action. Transformed into facsimiles of their own flying machines, the three recount their "disappearances" in a balloon, a plane, and a rotor-plane before they disappear. |
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Drew Browning and Annette Barbier have been involved with public installations and performances since the 1970s. They teach electronic art and installation at University of Illinois Chicago and Northwestern University, respectively, and are currently working on a commissioned performance and Web work for Art Synergy that will be exhibited in both the U.S. and in Vietnam.
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“Waiting In Line” created by Drew Browning and Annette Barbier www.unreal-estates.com "Waiting In Line" is an interactive computer installation of visually rich, graphical representations of waveforms. The exhibit encourages those waiting in line in the Great Hall to participate in creating a series of Lissajou figures, a pattern of criss-cross lines often used in science fiction movies of the 1950s. The images will be displayed on a large nine-screen video matrix. As guests enter the Museum, they will receive two sheets of colored paper used to control the horizontal and vertical frequencies and create complex, changing patterns. |
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