Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alums are in the cast and creative team of the Paramount Theatre‘s production of the groundbreaking musical Fun Home, running August 3 through September 18 at Paramount’s Copley Theatre, located at 8 E. Galena in North Island Center in downtown Aurora, Illinois. For tickets, click here.
Emilie Modaff
In Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori’s Tony Award-winning stage adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, Columbia College alum Emilie Modaff ’14, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting, plays Alison, whose memories of coming of age and coming out are key to Bechdel’s autobiographical story about her discovery of her own sexuality, her relationship with her closeted gay father, and her attempts to unlock the mysteries surrounding his life and death.
Ariel Etana Triunfo
Jim Corti
Columbia College alum Ariel Etana Triunfo ’19, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Musical Theatre, is the production’s choreographer. The show is co-directed by Paramount Theatre artistic director Jim Corti, a former Musical Theatre Dance instructor in the Columbia College Theatre Department’s Musical Theatre Program. Former Columbia College Theatre Department student and staff accompanist Kory Danielson is the music director.
Emilie Modaff in “Fun Home.” (Photo: Liz Lauren)
Fun Home traces author Alison Bechdel’s coming-of-age, from her youth, to her years at Oberlin College, and finally to the present, where Alison, now grown, is struggling to write her own graphic autobiography. As Alison reflects on her past, she struggles to make sense of it, particularly her relationship with her father, Bruce, a closeted gay man and the owner of the family business — the Bechdel Funeral Home (“fun” home, as it’s known to young Alison and her brothers). As she watches her father’s self-loathing consume him, Alison recognizes her own experience of discovering, and ultimately embracing, her identity as a lesbian.
