Whisper Theatre Collective
Photos by Kate Smith
Arachne
Written and performed by Britt Anderson
Directed by Anthony Hudson
Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, Justice and Handicrafts (among other things) is throwing a party for her old friend, Arachne (an enormous, venomous spider). While waiting for the guest of honor, a mysterious force launches Athena into the past - specifically to Arachne's origin. Athena uses different characters, audience interaction, party supplies, and a little bit of song and dance to tell their story and clear the webs from her own history.
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This production contains audience interaction and themes of sexual assault and suicide.
Recommended age: 18+
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This show is made possible by a Part-Time Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago. Development for the project will continue in 2025 for touring. In preparation, we would appreciate it if you filled out this feedback form after the show!
Creative Team
Britt Anderson (playwright/performer)
Britt Anderson is a DIY theatre maker, performer, movement director, and physical comedy nerd that has been in Chicago since 2012. With Whisper Theatre, Britt co-created Shoop! and @midnight, performed in Oneironauts, and wrote and directed Wild Women. They have worked with The Artistic Home, the Second City Training Center, Columbia College Chicago, Theater Unspeakable, Aloft Circus Arts, and Broken Planet Show. They have toured nationally and internationally to scrappy and distinguished venues alike, such as Lincoln Center Education, the Kennedy Center, Katapult and Teatrehaus Mitte in Berlin, Germany, and twice to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They earned their MFA in Devised Performance Practice at Columbia College Chicago/Arthaus Berlin and completed the Professional Circus Training Program at Actors Gymnasium in Evanston, IL. Outside of Arachne, you can catch them around the midwest performing as one of the Well-Balanced Dads, a partner acrobatics comedy duo with Richie Schiraldi.
Anthony Hudson (director)
​Anthony (he/him) is a queer artist with Southern roots and global branches. He holds an MFA in European Devised Performance from Columbia College Chicago, in collaboration with arthaus.berlin. This year, Anthony completed a residency at Duke University, where he co-devised Grandfathered In and led his original workshop, Embodied Recipes: A Devised Sensorial Awakening. Most recently, he premiered Midnight Sacrament: The Mary and Judas Show, a kinky-queer late-night church rave. Oh, and he makes a damn good biscuit.
Sound Design: Richie Schiraldi
Lighting Design and Board Op: Noah Elman
Stage Directions: Jaime Gutfeldt
Playwright's Note
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Arachne crawled into my head in Summer of 2020 via Mythos by Stephen Fry. When it came to this tale, I was sucked in. First of all, it was about weaving! Maybe I could do a play about crochet, or even a circus piece with silks? It was about a competition! Maybe I could do a wrestling-style match against…myself? It was about two women, then power dynamics, then spiders, then classism, then patriarchy, then friendship, then legacy…it was about too many things.
Then two wonderful storytellers, Michael Brown and Brooke Allen, reminded me that myths are too large to to pin down. They mean something slightly different to everyone, depending on your context. Instead, the question became: If we created the gods to make sense of the world, what might we learn about ourselves from revisiting these stories?
I began looking at Athena and Arachne as humans. What could I recognize? What was I curious about? A complicated relationship riddled with passion and fury and heartbreak. Competition between women, which has a specific brand of heat and humor. Flawed humans that are in charge of justice. It made sense to me to put these elements in a setting I recognized best: the American Southeast, where I’m from.
For me, this story is the characters. They’re still speaking to me and teaching me new things, and I hope they don’t see my re-imagining as sacrilege (lightning flash). I hope they speak to you, too. I’m excited to learn what you see.
Special Thanks​​
​Richie Schiraldi
Jaime Gutfeldt
Amelia Gutfeldt
Michele Stine
Scott Dare
Zoe Kriegler-Wenk
Jessa DeLuca
Claire Kaplan
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​​Mary Tilden
Kat Hoil
Gabrielle Wilson
Kate Smith
Michael Brown
Brooke Allen
Chicago Danztheater Ensemble
Jamie Olah
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