The Hypocrites is a Chicago storefront theater company founded in 1997 by Sean Graney, Brandon Kruse and Christopher Cintron. The company is currently run by Sean Graney (artistic director) and Kelli Strickland (executive director). One of Chicago’s premier off-Loop theater companies, The Hypocrites specializes in mounting bold productions that challenge preconceptions and redefining the role of the audience through unusual staging (such as promenade and in-the-round) and direct engagement. The company has a reputation in Chicago for creating exciting, surprising, and deeply engaging theater as it re-interprets well-known works for contemporary audiences, reveling in the absurd while revealing the core of what makes classics classic.
“The Hypocrites, who with each new production, continue to rise not just to the rank of one of our city’s best storefronts but one of Chicago’s best theaters period.” – Newcity Stage (American Idiot, 2015)[1]
The company has grown significantly in the past few years, receiving acclaim for productions at the Steppenwolf Garage, Goodman Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art, DCASE Storefront, Chopin Theater and nationally at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Adaptations
Their recent production of Graney's All Our Tragic, a twelve-hour adaptation combining all 32 surviving Greek Tragedies, garnered the company six 2015 Equity Jeff Awards in its first year of eligibility.
“’A watershed moment for off-Loop theater.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune (All Our Tragic, 2014)[2]
“Cromer calibrates 'Our Town' with clear-eyed intelligence. You see the beauties of small-town America and its limitations, laid out before you as directly and powerfully as the Chicago theater can muster.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune (Our Town, 2008)[3]
Awards
Since the company's founding, The Hypocrites have produced over sixty main stage productions and a dozen festival pieces, securing thirty-one Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson awards, six Equity Joseph Jefferson awards, and two After Dark Awards.
The Hypocrites began performing in the basement of Café Voltaire, a now defunct vegetarian restaurant in Lakeview.[4] Co-founder Sean Graney has been the artistic director since early 2015, when he announced his return from a three-year hiatus.[5] The company's name is inspired by Eugène Ionesco’s Notes and Counter Notes, a compendium of interviews on the nature of theatre throughout which Ionesco regularly contradicts himself — hence its title, and The Hypocrites' name.
Production history
Season 1
The Bald Soprano
Woyzeck
Endgame
Action
Season 2
Edmond
The Danube
The Firebugs
The Future is in Eggs
Marat/Sade
Season 3
Curse of the Starving Class
Jack, or the Submission & The Future is in Eggs
The Cherry Orchard
Season 4
Lakeboat
Ajax
The Curious Sofa
Arcadia
Season 5
Blood Wedding
Rhinoceros
Leviticus 18
Henry 5
Season 6
Machinal
Happy Days
Balm in Gilead
Edward Gorey’s Dispirited Diversion for Christmas
Season 7
Camille/La Traviata
Leonce & Lena
The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide
Season 8
Equus
The Christmas Carol – A Radio Broadcast
The Glass Menagerie
True West
Season 9
Death of a Salesman
4.48 Psychosis
Angels in America, Part I – Millennium Approaches
Angels in America, Part II – Perestroika
Season 10
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Mud
The Bald Soprano
Season 11
Desire Under the Elms
Miss Julie
Our Town
Season 12
The Threepenny Opera
Our Town Remounted
The Hairy Ape
Oedipus
Season 13
Frankenstein
Cabaret
No Exit
Season 14
K.
Pirates of Penzance
Woyzeck
Season 15
Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses
Pirates of Penzance (Remount)
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Romeo Juliet
Season 16
The Fall of the House of Usher
Gilbert & Sullivan Repertory
Coriolanus
Ivywild: The True Tall Tales of Bathhouse John
Season 17
12 Nights
The Mikado at Steppenwolf Garage
The Tennessee Williams Project
Into the Woods at Mercury Theatre Chicago
Season 18
All Our Tragic
Gilbert and Sullivan Rep: Mikado, Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore