UPDATE: The Incubator will be presenting a full production of Tour Guides, with new cast and new Chicago stories, this December 2010 at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts. Stay tuned for more details.

UPDATE: A sneak preview from the Poetry Performance Incubator, Sunday, September 19, 2010, 3:00 p.m. at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, Suite 207. Free. The Poetry Performance Incubator will be reading an excerpt from its revision-in-progress of the stage performance "Tour Guides." Hear a sneak peak before the full production this December and talk about the script and process with its author/performers.

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So what is this Incubator, anyway?

 When you say you’re a writer, people ask you if you’re writing a novel. When you say you’re a poet, people ask you what your day job is. For the six people in the Guild Complex’s Poetry Performance Incubator, they have taken on the jobs of poet, playwright, ensemble member, actor, contributing set designer and…tour guide. Yes, tour guide.

Tour Guides asks the question, “What is Chicago?” The variety of answers includes landmark neighborhood locations like Harold’s Chicken and Moo & Oink. (It’s about so much more than the Sears Tower and the John Hancock for Chicago natives.) The poets will take you on the CTA, on tours of their neighborhoods, through the tastes and smells of Chicago food – this is an eating town – and into the heart of how those of us who live here nestle next to and grate against those around us.

The Poetry Performance Incubator is a pilot project of the Guild Complex that has been percolating for the last five years. Though Chicago has a strong tradition of performance poetry, few poets have the developed sense of stage craft that actors have. Even fewer have worked in an ensemble setting. The Incubator pushes at the intersection of poetry and theater with the aim of creating a truly hybrid form. Poets and actors auditioned for the Incubator with the criteria of learning the theater or developing their writing, whichever was the less familiar for them, which included writing work for others as well as themselves and staging the work through an ensemble process.

It should be noted that Tour Guides is performed by the group of poets who collaboratively wrote the piece. Kimberly Dixon, Steven Evans, Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez, Ricardo Gamboa, Tricia Hersey and Rupal Soni have developed their hybrid craft under the guidance of award-winning director Coya Paz, co-founder of Teatro Luna and a poet herself.

Tour Guides debuted at the Viaduct Theater July 18-20, 2008. Now with continued support from The Woods Fund of Chicago, the Incubator is set to reconvene in fall 2009 with the aim of a full production of Tour Guides in Spring/Summer 2010. Please stay tuned for more details about "test" readings of the work-in-progress as well as the world premiere.

We promise, after Tour Guides you'll know more about Chicago than you did before – even if you’re a local.

Past and Present Tour Guides

JON COFIELD is a proud lifelong citizen of Illinois.  He has a BA in Theater from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, was a member of the sketch comedy group Shtick People, and has performed in plays such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), Reckless, and The Phantom Tollbooth.  Jon trained with Center Theater, Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, and completed the improvisation program at ComedySportz.

KIMBERLY DIXON grew up in New England, but Chicago winters have earned her respect. She spends too much time in her head, so her favorite antidotes are dancing, eating and laughing – reminders that heart and body don’t need a middleman. She’s proud to be included in the new anthology “Just Like A Girl...” because it recognizes such a description is a compliment, and she just completed her first summer as a Cave Canem Fellow.

STEVEN EVANS is an “investment poet” – while investing in others he discovered the poet within. Since his marriage to the pen, he has become fearless attempting various poetic styles from traditional to new age. His style can be best described as chameleon, ever growing and changing, No topic is off limits however Steven has a propensity to write lyrically laced long lines. In short, he gives the images of his poems space to chase and tickle one another on the page. It is said that the people that go the furthest find something that they feel passionate about and stick with it. Steven’s poetry is an example of beautiful things that happen when you do.

RICARDO GAMBOA is an actor, artist, educator and writer. Gamboa graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and shortly after began his career in his native Chicago. In a few years he has received a City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs' CAAP Grant, trained with modern master Anne Bogart and her internationally recognized SITI Company, and worked with some of the city's most notable directors. Ricardo Gamboa has most recently been seen in "Surface Day" with Teatro Luna at Victory Gardens Theatre, "Smart" at the Side Project, in the "365 Plays/365 Days" at Chicago Dramatist and at Steppenwolf with 500 Clown and understudied the world premiere of Jose Rivera's "Massacre" at the Goodman Theatre. Alongside all this Ricardo Gamboa is a Company Member of Barrel of Monkeys Theatre Company, to which he is completely dedicated. Gamboa has worked with over 4,000 school children as an arts-educator through Chicago Public Schools, enrichment programs and outreach centers with Barrel of Monkeys, Children Home & Aide Society, Marwen Foundation, Pegasus Players, Piven Theatre Workshop, Steppenwolf Theatre and at West Town Academy using theatre as a progressive tool for individual and community empowerment.

STEPHANIE GENTRY-FERNANDEZ is a genderqueer mixed Chicana/Latina from the South Side of Chicago. A regular performer, feature, and facilitator in venues as diverse as the 2005 COOL Idealist National Conference to the Guild Complex's "Palabra Pura," this poet incorporates issues of identity into larger questions of oppression. She is currently involved with "Left Turn Magazine" and "The Abolitionist," and was recently spotted as a "he" in Teatro Luna's Jeff-nominated work "Machos." Her 'zine, "Question," is a self-published work that she has been doing since the tender age of 18.

TRICIA HERSEY has been participating in open mics, book groups and writing circles since 1999. She slays terror by demanding truth telling in her poetry. Tricia is a spoken word artist, cultural critic, entrepreneur and all around hustler. She enjoys screaming for social justice, community organizing and using art as a means to heal. Her workshops on hip hop, poetry writing and HIV/AIDS have given her the beautiful opportunity to collaborate with many Chicago communities. Her career with not for profit organizations has spanned over 10 years. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, North Africa and has taught poetry, yoga, performance and storytelling in Chicago Public Schools. Tricia appears in the anthology *AIMprint: New Relationships in the Arts and Learning* and in the documentary *Support the Hustle.* You can build with her by visiting www.myspace.com/ladyterrorindabuilding.

SAGE XAXUA MORGAN-HUBBARD earned her MA in Performance Studies at Northwestern University where she is currently a PhD student. She is a graduate of Brown University where she double majored in "Performance Studies: Socially Conscious Art of the Everyday" and Ethnic Studies. She is a poet, activist and teacher from Washington, D.C. She is the founder of WORD! spoken word artists and activists, a former DC poetry slam coach and one of the original members of Spoken Resistance and the performance group Sol y Soul, arts for social change.

SANDRA POSADAS, “La PiXie,” was born and bred in  Chicago, Illinois. She is a teacher, published artist/illustrator, artisan performance poet and actress; an original cast member of the Vida Bella Ensemble. She successfully co-wrote her first production in 2007, Brown Girls Singing, which was successfully staged at University of Chicago and Jane Addams' Hull House. She is a cast member of the Vida Bella Ensemble, who have perfromed  the award winning play, The Brown Girls’ Chronicles: Puerto Rican Women and Resistance and the more current production Bless Me Madrina. She has also participated as a cast member of the Teatro Luna’s 10 x10 project.  Sandra  has published her poetry in several anthologies including Stray Bullets; An Anthology of Chicago Saloon Poetry(Tia Chucha Press) and The Journal of Ordinary Thought (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) She also performs at various Chicago venues . She’s not afraid to live life authentically and is all about telling it like is. Sandra believes strongly in that art can educate. She believes in using art as knowledge and transformation so that all participants and spectators examine themselves in relation to their place in society. Through different modalities that she uses, whether visual, interactive, or the performing arts, the audience can explore, reflect, analyze and transform the reality in which they are living.

RUPAL SONI is a multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer who uses art and creativity to build community and empower marginalized voices. She is currently the Program Director of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, an organization that provokes dialogue and promotes change by creating opportunities for marginalized adults in Chicago neighborhoods to write, publish, and perform works about their lives, and is the Associate Editor of their award-winning publication, the "Journal of Ordinary Thought." Previously, Soni lived in India for 18 months, where she started a Rural Design School on the India-Pakistan border with an Indicorps Fellowship. She has led creative-writing and performance workshops with After School Matters, the Chinese Mutual Aid Association, the University of Chicago's Civic Knowledge Project, and Young Asians with Power; has served as a grant reviewer for the Illinois Arts Council; has completed the Leadership Center for Asian Americans Community Leadership Program; and was recently awarded an Emerging Leader of Color grant from the Americans for the Arts. Rupal also writes and performs sketch comedy and poetry, focusing on building awareness and inspiring necessary discussions. She has performed shows for CAAELI (the Coalition of African, Asian, European, and Latino Immigrants), the Chinese Mutual Aid Association, the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media's Film Festival, the Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, and YAWP! (Young Asians with Power!).

DIRECTOR, COYA PAZ is the co-Artistic Director of Teatro Luna, Chicago's first and only all-Latina theater company. She has directed or co-directed The Maria Chronicles, Solo Latinas, The Drag King Hootchie Cootchie No Name Show and Musical Latin Extravaganza, S-e-x-Oh!, Quita Mitos, and Machos, as well as numerous staged readings. She is the cofounder and host of Proyecto Latina, an open mic in collaboration with Tianguis Books and Mariposa Atomica Ink. Proyecto Latina meets the third Monday of every month at Radio Arte. Coya was named one of UR Magazine's 30 under 30 in 2004 and one of GO NYC! Magazine's 100 Women We Love in 2007, and she received a Trailblazer Award in 2006. Her work has been featured in numerous newspapers and journals, including American Theater Magazine and the New York Times. Visit Coya on the web at www.coyapaz.com.