About Curious Theatre Branch

Curious Theatre Branch has produced more than 100 full productions of world-premiere shows in 30 years, amazing audiences year after year by demonstrating how much can be accomplished for so little. Curious has developed its own recognizable style, using an economy of means and production to make deeper and deeper, rather than larger and larger, work.

In 1995, Beau O'Reilly was named one of the 50 most influential people in Chicago theater by Chicago Magazine, and in 1998, Beau O'Reilly and Jenny Magnus were named among the Artists of the Year by the Chicago Tribune. Curious is committed to producing new plays by company members, and also periodically returns to the work of esteemed writers from the broader literary world who have inspired the group, recently producing plays by Eugène Ionesco and Caryl Churchill. Curious's productions of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker were named among the top five theater productions of 2006 and 2009, respectively, by Newcity. In 2007, Curious Theatre Branch won an Orgie Award for Original Theater for the year-long Samuel Beckett festival, No Danger of the Spiritual Thing: 100 Years of Beckett (best ensemble), and in 2011 Curious was granted a season-long residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, culminating in Jenny Magnus’s Still in Play: A Performance of Getting Ready.

The Curious Theatre Branch ensemble currently includes Jayita Bhattacharya, Jeffrey Bivens, Chris Bower, Paul Brennan, Lena Brün, Stefan Brün, Charlotte Lastra, Jenny Magnus, T-Roy Martin, Beau O'Reilly, Vicki Walden, and Julia Williams.