Noelle Krimm
Artistic Director
Noelle is a writer/director/performer of experimental theater with a particular interest in using art as a means of community building and placemaking. She holds degrees in theater and performance from The Florida School of the Arts and Florida State University. After several years of touring and doing regional theater as an actor, Noelle moved to Chicago in 1998 and became an ensemble member with The Neo-Futurists. She wrote for and performed in the Neo-Futurists' signature show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes) in the home space in Chicago, throughout the country on tour, and in Edinburgh, Scotland at the fringe festival where the company won the coveted Fringe First award. She also created three Neo-Futurist full-length original shows: City Girl! (the Neo-Futurists' first musical and winner of Critic's Choice for Best Musical of the Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis), Alice (a multi-disciplinary ambulatory trip down the rabbit hole), and Fear (a thinking man's haunted house based upon the short stories of Poe).
Rachel Claff
Artistic Associate
Rachel was an ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists from 1996 to 2003, writing short plays for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and co-creating full-length works like The Sycamore Story and Curious Beautiful. She is also the creator and curator of It Came from the Neo-Futurarium!, a festival of staged readings of “the best worst films of all time." She has performed her original works in Chicago live-lit events for over 15 years. She is a former coach and a current volunteer for the Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry slam, and has mentored several of its graduates. She holds a BA in Theater from Oberlin College and an MA in Cultural Performance from the University of Bristol. Collaborations with Noelle have included Alice (2004, 2014, and 2018) and Fear (2009).
Bilal Dardai
Artistic Associate
Bilal is an award-winning playwright, essayist, and actor who has worked within a wide array of forms and media. From 2004 to 2016 he was an ensemble member of The Neo-Futurists, where he wrote several hundred tiny plays and the long-form works Contraption and The Sovereign Statement, along with his participation on the creative teams of many other productions. He has also written the full-length plays The Man Who Was Thursday, Redeemers, and Vox Pandora, all originally produced by Chicago's New Leaf Theatre. Bilal is currently an ensemble member at Lifeline Theatre, and works on the writing staffs for audio dramas PleasureTown and Hartlife's upcoming project Unwell. Bilal wrote the Chapter 11 & 12 pieces for the 2004 Alice and the Chapter 2 & 3 pieces for the 2014 Alice.
John Randle
Artistic Associate
Raised in Chicago, John received a BFA from the School of the Art Instiute of Chicago and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts Education from Columbia College of Chicago. He taught high school art for 31 years before retiring early. John has worked as a set designer for Interplay Theater and was the main stage set designer for the Neo-Futurists for seven years. He has been a member of the Jefferson Awards Committee for 23 years. John created Chapter 1 for both the 2004 and 2014 versions of Alice and a piece for the 2018 version of Alice as well.