Derek Barton

About Me

I’m a Chicago-based playwright, director, educator, and scholar. I specialize in performance events that engages issues of LGBT rights, the environment, urban living, and social justice. My latest work, coming in May 2012:

The Extinction Project

An aging botanist struggles with his failing memory to help a researcher locate a rare tree. A man discovers a live dodo in his laundry hamper. A symphony conductor and drag queen resurrect the American passenger pigeon with music. A widower finds comfort in the company of four endangered birds. An explorer goes on a virtual hunt for the giant fauna of New Zealand.

Through stories like these, The Extinction Project brings together ethnographic fieldwork with original short pieces to memorialize the loss of things that cannot be recovered.

May 25 – 26

Alvina Krause Studio Theater

Evanston, Illinois

FREE

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"I was walking down the sidewalk at night. Everything was dark except for one storefront. A dry cleaner. Full of light spilling into the street. And there behind the glass...there was a jungle of plants. There were Hoyas and Euphorbias and Jacobinia and Kalanchoe. There was Aloe and Sanseveria. I said the names softly to myself and it was like a lullaby. Pothos, Begonia, Fothergilla, Euphorbia, Night-blooming Cereus, Sanseveria, Epigea repens. There was a woman. Sitting at a sewing machine. In the window. In the middle of all the plants. How had I not seen her? She was sitting there looking up from her sewing, at me. Just looking at me. So I looked back! And then something.... happened. It was like... a mere seeing... without any other purpose. We saw each other! Me on the damp sidewalk, in the dark, she at her sewing machine. Plants around her and the rows of garment bags behind. We looked and looked. And I thought.. I remember thinking... that the mystery of life was contained in that moment." -Ruston from "Billy: A Post-Apocalyptic Comedy"

Derek Barton

About Me

{some of my work}

{Pages}

{Quote}