8:00 PM
8:00 PM
8:00 PM
8:00 PM
WED
9/3 - 9/24
Play, Solo
8:00 PM
Small Theater
Bennington Slipdale, III, is ridiculously overqualified and pathetically underskilled. And his name makes him sound like he's an heir to a sausage fortune. In actuality he's a penniless weiner of a man. Bennington struggles to survive a job that entails delivering mountains of boxes at a staggering pace. But if he's slow, his tech skills are glacial. Bennington has too much pride to quit, but not to worry - that false pride shouldn't stand in the way of him getting canned. It's the heart of COVID and Bennington is considered an "essential worker." But, he's not very “essential," and nobodies ever called him a “worker." Alas, our poor Bennington, he is not the heir to a fortune as his name implies. He would have been much more successful, and happier, as a Walmart greeter.
Smiling Box Monster
Show Program - Cast & Creative Team
C.D. Matthews
C.D. Matthews, Biography
I grew up in Evanston, IL., and received my BA at the University of Michigan where I had a year-long writing tutorial at the Residential College with Warren Hecht, who sparked my life long passion for writing fiction. I also attended Antioch College in Ohio, before transferring to Michigan, and attended the Universite Paul-Valery in Montpellier, France, during junior year.
After college I returned to France, and took a job as a dog walker in Paris where I wrote my first novel, Hotel de Paris. After France I returned to the US and landed my first reporting job for The Daily Calumet, later merged with The Daily Southtown Economist - now the Daily Southtown. I reported for the Southtown for 8 years, including five years on the Chicago Board of Education beat where my investigative work forced out the superintendent of schools. (Wikipedia, Ted Kimbrough).
From reporting I went to teaching, and taught for 31 years: from preschool (yes, changing diapers) to AP Calculus, GED Math, and everything in between including tutoring students for the dreaded ACT’s and SAT’s. In my early years of teaching, I wrote a second novel, Swimming with the Dolphins, based on my then- wife’s teaching experiences at a monstrously challenging school in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago.
Smiling Box Monster, an inside story of working at Amazon, is my debut published novel. The novel is available in print, ebook, and audiobook versions via Blurb, Google Books, and Apple Books. I have also written the screenplay adaptation of my novel and a one act play which is showing at the Annoyance Theater in Chicago, in September. The play is my acting debut!
Miriel Martinez