Displaying items by tag: Jesús Barajas

Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theatre presents the hilarious and surreal fantasia on Midwestern masculinity you’ve all been waiting for: the World Premiere of Eelpout! by Paul W. Kruse, directed by Jeremy Ohringer, April 17-May 30, 2026.

Meet Sven Svensen and Ole Olsen, best buds since kindergarten. When they gather to celebrate Ole’s wedding to Lena with an ice-fishing bachelor party, an unexpected confession begins to crack their plans wide open. As the beer flows and temperatures drop, Sven and Ole hook into deeper truths, along with a talking fish.

Cast your rod and catch Eelpout!, both a bottom-feeding fish native to the upper Midwest AND Chicago’s must-see world premiere comedy this spring. Previews start April 17. Performances run through May 30 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. Tickets are $20-$60. For tickets and information, visit sgtheatre.org. 

“I am grateful to direct at Shattered Globe for the first time with this world premiere that epitomizes why I love theater: it’s wild, wondrous, and makes me laugh until it hurts,” said director Jeremy Ohringer. “The play also interrogates the fragility of masculinity and invites us to ask, ‘what must we shed in order to live authentically?’ I cannot wait to share Paul’s incredible play! I bet audiences fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”

Shattered Globe Theatre’s cast for Eelpout! features SGT Ensemble Member Rebecca Jordan (she/her) as Holly with Jesús Barajas (he/they) as Eelpout, Dinah Berkeley (they/them) as Lars, Carl Hallberg (he/they) as Ole, Taigé Lauren (she/her) as Heidi, Lydia Moss (she/her) as Lena, and Jeff Rodriguez (she/her) as Sven.

The production team is Paul W. Kruse (playwright), Jeremy Ohringer (director), Eleanor Kahn (set), Delena Bradley (costume designer), Sierra Walker (lighting designer), Saskia Bakker (props designer), Christopher Kriz (original music and sound designer), Kristina Fluty (intimacy director), Benjamin Murphy (assistant director), Tina Jach (stage manager) and Alexa Berkowitz (production manager).

Ticket information for Eelpout!

The first preview of Eelpout! on Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. is Pay-What-You-Can. Previews continue Saturday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, April 19 at 3 p.m., and Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. Performances run through May 30: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. No show Friday, April 24. There’s an added 3 p.m. matinee on closing day, Saturday, May 30. Run time is 90 minutes with no intermission.

For tickets and information, visit sgtheatre.org, call the Theater Wit box office, (773) 975-8150, or purchase in person at Theater Wit. Take advantage of early-bird discounts. Otherwise, previews are $25. Performances are $20-$60 ($20 for students, veterans, active military, teachers, and under 30; $40 general admission; $60 for those who want to support accessible theater). For group discounts, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call (773) 770-0333.

Visit SGTheatre.org for more show information, including photos and video clips, news of special events, accessible and waived ticket programs and show content warnings. For the latest updates, follow @shatteredglobe on Facebook and Instagram.

Access Services

Audio Description and a Touch Tour for patrons who are blind or have low vision will be offered on Friday, May 22. The Touch Tour begins at 6:15 p.m. Show at 7:30 p.m. 

Shattered Globe will offer a captioned performance on Sunday, May 24 at
3 p.m. for patrons with hearing loss. Assisted Listening Devices are available for all performances.

Theater Wit is wheelchair accessible. All patrons with disability needs are invited to purchase $20 access tickets with the code “ACCESS20” at Theater Wit’s checkout page. Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure the theater can reserve the right seat for your needs.

The true story behind Lauren Gunderson’s “The Book of Will” is compelling—the efforts of actors John Heminges (Jared Dennis) and Henry Condell (Ben Veatch), Shakespeare’s colleagues—to compile and publish a definitive collection of the Bard's works in the years soon after his death in 1616. This they did over the course of four years until it arrived in 1623, and Gunderson uses a comedic form to render the story and characters involved in the effort. 

Comedy keeps the story energized, staving off the dreariness of what might have been a docudrama. And the Promethean Theatre Ensemble cast directed by Beth Wolf delivers top notch performances. Brendan Hutt in the role of Richard Burbage, the actor who originated many of Shakespeare’s most famous roles, gives real Shakespearean heft to his performance. Hutt also plays William Jaggard, a publisher who produces the definitive First Folio (several after producing a less accurate version) with 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, 18 of them published for the first time. These included "The Tempest," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar," an unimaginable tragedy had these been lost.

Gunderson’s script opens with Heminges and Condell (and the audience) witnessing a performance of “Hamlet” so badly rendered as to lose the playwright’s intent. We see “To Be or Not To Be,” Hamlet’s famous soliloquy  (delivered by Jesús Barajas playing beautifully, stunningly wrong), the delivery even more butchered due to a distorted script, perhaps recorded from another actor’s faltering memory. It’s like watching as someone belts out a song all off key.

Galvanized by this horror, the two determined they would gather up all the most original copies of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and publish them in a book, before they were lost. Some of Shakespeare’s works were published while he was alive, but others were relegated to the haphazard storage of working theaters, marked up scripts found at playhouses even today. 

Jonathan Perkins

All this is factually true, as is so much of the play. That Gunderson often leans toward almost jarring contemporary vernacular and a comedic approach may make us question whether this can all be the real story, but indeed it is, in details large and small. Most of the cast performed multiple roles, for example Jonathan Perkins in the role of a compositor at the printer and three other characters. Perkins was arresting in the quality of his performance.

“Book of Will,” to my mind, is a flawed thing. While Gunderson has the greatest intention in celebrating Shakespeare, there is very little of his work delivered. The play is based on the reasonable presumption that the audience loves Shakespeare—who else would be drawn to the heroic tale of the publication of his works? But it doesn’t present enough of it to remind us why, to stir our emotions for a moment with the real art of the celebrated subject.

Brendan Hutt convincingly offers some solid Shakespearean delivery in the role of Richard Burbage, the actor who originated many of the playwright’s most famous roles, delivers promising and skillful recitations of bits of Shakespeare. But the snippets offered us by Gunderson are too brief, and not gripping. Even worse are a couple scenes where “quotable quotes” from Shakespeare are offered, sometimes in multiple languages to reinforce his universality—but it comes off as an artfully executed but nonetheless bad “tribute” to the playwright. 

One lost opportunity arises after Heminges’ wife Rebecca (Ann Sheridan Smith in an exceptional performance) passes away (I didn’t see that coming) at the beginning of Act II. Rebecca has been his rock during the four year effort to secure rights and overcome financial hurdles to publish the plays. Inconsolable, Heminges seeks solace in the theater, spending sleepless nights there reciting monologs from Shakespeare’s plays, he tells us. Could not the playwright have let Heminges deliver us even one of these, an apt monologue voiced with the passion of his grief?

In short, this is a play about people who love Shakespeare, but he isn’t tapped for what he might bring to the party. I thought James Lewis turned in a remarkable performance as Ben Johnson, Shakespeare’s rival and critic, who wrote a dedicatory poem for the First Folio. Lewis gave me the one moment I felt touched at the level of emotion that Shakespeare evokes in his works. This comes as the begrudging Ben Johnson delivers the opening lines of his dedicatory poem for the First Folio. 

Nevertheless, “The Book of Will” tells an important story of the epic accomplishment of two devotees of Shakespeare, and one well worth hearing and seeing. Even as the web lulls us into believing that all knowledge and information is permanently and universally accessible, in fact we are seeing in present days the disappearance of content  the “Book of Will” reminds us anew of the evanescence and fragility of the written word, and the commitment required to maintain and preserve it. "The Book of Will" runs through October 25, 2025 at The Den Theatre on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago.