(Courtesy of Off Night Productions)
Most aspiring performers need to have day jobs. The thing is, though, those day jobs tend to be night jobs, like bartending or waiting tables. And those jobs bring in the most rent money on the same nights performances tend to happen – Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It’s a conundrum, but there’s a new production company here in Bloomington that’s trying to solve it. Off-Night Productions is a female-led production company that produces contemporary theatre and music on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings. Their inaugural production, “Proof,” runs July 16-18 in the Waldron Firebay Theater in downtown Bloomington. On the surface, the play is about math, but it’s also about mental health, stigma, sexism, and family dynamics. I invited the director of Proof, Cassie Hakken, and one of Off-Night Productions’ cofounders, Melinda Seader, into the studio to tell me more.