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Boneshaker 2013 at Redmoon Theater.

Redmoon Theater to Close Its Doors Next Month

The innovative and ambitious company that has brought free art to the Windy City for 24 years will shutter in early 2016.

CHICAGO: Redmoon Theater has announced that it will operations and vacate its home by the end of January 2016. The company, known for its large-scale, site-specific outdoor festivals and events, has recently faced financial woes.

The organization issued a statement on its website that read in part, “It has been an honor to serve the city of Chicago for the past 25 years. We have been blessed to work in and with over 40 of Chicago’s 77 official neighborhoods, and to bring our unique brand of spectacle to some of our finest institutions—to many of the city’s most revered public sites, and most importantly, to some of its most overlooked neighborhoods.”

In 2014, Redmoon Theater mounted an outdoor festival along the Chicago River honoring the city’s resurgence after the Great Fire of 1871. The floats along the river, modeled to look like homes, were supposed to ignite in flames as part of the performance. The grand finale failed to burn, turning away financial backers for the scaled-down festival this year that took place on Northerly Island. Although the 2015 Fire Festival was successfully ablaze, the city announced in October that it would not provide financial support for a future installment of the festival, adding to the retreat of the company’s financial backers.

The landlord of the troupe’s space on South Jefferson Street filed suit this fall after the theatre fell behind in more than $60,000 in rent payments. The lawsuit prompted a cancellation of the company’s annual New Year’s Eve Revolution extravaganza.

“To those who supported us, we are endlessly grateful,” the theatre said in its statement. “To those who enjoyed us, we are pleased to have added to your lives. To those we served, to those who were touched or moved or perhaps even inspired, it is to you we have the greatest debt. You provided meaning to our mission and purpose to our work.”

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