On October 28, Pop-Up Magazine will be staged at the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture. But what exactly is it? Cofounder and editor in chief Douglas McGray explains.
“The name is inspired by the idea of a pop-up book, like books you may remember from when you were a kid. Sort of flat, you open [it] up, and then all of a sudden it springs to life in this three-dimensional way. . . . We were inspired by the idea of a classic general interest magazine, stories about anything and everything, but performed by writers, filmmakers, audio producers, artists, musicians, and other kinds of performers, with different kinds of media mixed together and live music.”
The event will also offer accessibility features such as ASL interpretation, open captions, and audio descriptions, sponsored by Google. McGray and his friends initially staged the concept in San Francisco a few times for fun, then realized that there was a broader opportunity to take the storytelling show across the country. In 2016 they restaged it as a national touring show. McGray sets the stage for what the audience can expect on a typical night.
“So you’re in this big beautiful venue, the lights go down, and somebody takes the stage. And they start to tell a story. And maybe it’s a personal story. Maybe it’s something about other people, places, things. As they start to tell that story there’s a band onstage, and the band begins to play underneath them like a movie soundtrack. And then images begin to appear on the screen—we’ve commissioned original film and photography and animation, then the story begins to come to life visually. Sometimes it’s a fast and funny story, sometimes it’s beautiful and epic, and there are typically about seven of those stories in a show.”
Overall, it creates the effect of a multimedia variety show, offering the audience a sampler of artistic genres that would rarely inhabit the same space. Most of the time, the stories shared are disparate, without an obvious connection. However for the Chicago edition of the show, the theme is love. McGray shares:
“The theme is love stories. And that means all different kinds of love stories—you know, everything from first loves, blind dates, and heartbreak and disconnection, but also music and animals, and place and purpose, and all the different ways that you can feel that kind of connection. We’ll see stories that are really funny, and stories that are profound and moving.”
While some of the guests are unknown, others have a bit of notoriety, and some are downright famous, and the Chicago edition has some interesting characters. McGray shares the lineup.
“There’s Ryan O’Connell (Queer as Folk), who is the writer and star and creator of a show on Netflix called Special. And Sarah Kay (Project VOICE) is a brilliant poet and performer, Victoria Canal (Elegy EP) an amazing musician. Writer Jenée Desmond Harris (Slate’s Dear Prudence), advice columnist and contributing writer for the New York Times. Rachel Cusick, who’s with Radiolab. Filmmaker Nadav Kurtz (Paraiso) and comedian Pamela Rae Schuller (What Makes Me Tic). And then Ben-Alex Dupris (Sweetheart Dancers). A really great filmmaker who has a really beautiful, sweet story.”
While the stories are supposed to be a surprise each night, McGray shares a tantalizing preview.
“Someone discovers a story from her own family. Someone as a teenager discovers a pretty incredible family secret that she never knew about. Everything’s totally out of character for her parents. So she gets to the bottom of this incredible saga from when they were younger, before she was born, that they’d never told her about. There’s another story about this pretty epic secret love affair between an intelligence officer stationed overseas and a famous international actress that had been kept a secret for their entire lives.”
Pop-Up MagazineFri 10/28, 7:30 PM, Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture, 2936 N. Southport, $39, popupmagazine.com
This isn’t Pop-Up Magazine’s first time in Chicago, and during their last visit, before the pandemic, they staged a really unique collaborative story. McGray recalls:
“So you know, we like to figure out all the different kinds of ways that we can tell a story. One example is Jenna Wortham, who is a writer and podcast host for the New York Times, who did a story about someone who lost the ability to form memories. She did it in collaboration with the amazing Chicago shadow puppet theater company Manual Cinema. So, she told the story, and Manual Cinema brought it to life in shadows.”
If your instincts are like mine, you love watching someone spin a great yarn and will want to go online and binge-watch past shows—but these are one-of-a-kind experiences meant to be shared communally. McGray explains:
“You have to be there. We won’t be filming the show and putting the stories online. You have to be there.”
