Spencer Meeks

Columbia College Chicago Theatre alum Spencer Meeks ’15, a graduate of the Columbia College Theatre program‘s BA Program in Musical Theatre, is the composer and designer of Switchboard, a puppet-theatre piece created by Chicago’s acclaimed Neo-Futurists theatre company. The show runs November 22 through December 14 at Steppenwolf Theatre’s 1700 Theatre, located at 1650 N. Halsted, Chicago. Student discounts are available. For tickets, click here.

Switchboard is a Neo-Futurist puppetry show exploring themes of memory and communication through the lens of the 1915 S.S. Eastland disaster in Chicago. The Eastland was a passenger ship commissioned to transport Western Electric laborers and their families to a company picnic on July 24, 1915. Without ever leaving the dock, the Eastland mysteriously capsized downtown in the Chicago River, resulting in the deaths of 844 passengers and crew members. Switchboard is about missed calls and missed connections, losing and forgetting.