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In conjunction with the exhibition Mina Loy: Strangeness Is Inevitable, The Arts Club of Chicago invited Every house has a door to develop a new work in response to Loy’s expansive creative practice. Anchored by a reading of Loy’s prose ballet “Crystal Pantomime,” whose language projects fantastic tableaus in the imaginations of the audience as a collective dream, Every house built a world around an oversized lamp-shade sculpture by artist Diane Simpson and wardrobe and objects by Max Guy, and enlisted a company of intergenerational specialists to evoke a theater of the mind.

Presented only twice, first at the The Arts Club of Chicago (May 9, 2024) and reprised one week later at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (May 16, 2024), each performance was site-responsive, honoring the lineage of Chicago’s rich history of experimental performance.

“Crystal Pantomime,” used with permission of Roger Conover and the Beinecke Library at Yale; published in Stories and Essays of Mina Loy, Sara Crangle [Dalkey Archive, 2011]. Commissioned and presented by The Arts Club of Chicago and co-produced with Every house has a door and The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.