Neo-Futurist launches 'Laika Dog in Space'

In the mid-1990s, when Jill Beckman was in high school at Downers Grove South, she and her friends often came into Chicago to see the Neo-Futurists' long-running late-night show, “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” At the time, Beckman was very much a drama club kid, having spent much of her childhood acting in the Children's Theatre of Western Springs.

“I loved the show so much,” Beckman says.

Now 14 years later, she is a mainstay of the New York City edition of the Neo-Futurists.

“When I came out to New York in 1997, the first (New York) incarnation was just winding down,” Beckman explains. That first company closed up shop in 1997, but Rob Neill revived the New York Neo-Futurists in 2004. Beckman, who had graduated by then with a degree in theater from New York University, joined the company in 2008.

“It was a company I loved,” Beckman says. “I have been totally immersed in that company ever since.”

She regularly appears in the New York version of “Too Much Light” and works on various other Neo-Futurists projects.

Now, she and two other members of the New York company (Rob Neill and Eevin Hartsough) are back in town performing the three-person show they wrote, “Laika Dog in Space.”

“We did this show in New York in 2009,” Beckman says. “We were invited by the Chicago Neo-Futurists to perform the show here.”

Beckman describes the show as a “rock and roll meditation on Laika” the first dog sent into space. The Soviets put Laika into Sputnik II to see if a mammal could survive in outer space. “When they sent her out, they knew she would not come back alive,” Beckman explains, a fact that haunted her and her collaborators.

In Neo-Futurists' fashion, Laika's story provides the kernel around which Beckman and company fashion a show to explore themes of sacrifice, community and isolation.

“We use Laika to investigate our own lives,” she says. “We also use elements of the book ‘The Little Prince' and elements of the 1960s TV series ‘The Prisoner.'”

“It's a crazy 90 minutes,” Beckman laughs. And very Neo-Futurist.

“Laika Dog in Space”

<b>Location: </b>The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, Chicago; (773) 275-5255 or neofuturists.org

<b>Showtimes:</b> 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday through March 12

<b>Tickets:>/b> $10 to $15 (pay what you can on Thursdays)