Laura Alcalá Baker
(she/her)
Co-creator / line producer / casting director
Living in the intersection of a mixed child: Mexican American. Came to LAKE SONG to be part of building the missing canon. She's a new-play developer and director by vocation. Favorite musician: Selena Quintanilla. Rest in power. Favorite childhood book: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Favorite book now: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Why she makes art in a time like this: "because survival is insufficient."
Sydney Charles
(she/her)
Co-creator / co-author / “Dee"
South Side baby, East Side crazy. Bleeds Orange and Blue. Puts mild sauce on everything within reason. Rooted in Arkansas and Mississippi traditions. Scorpio Sun. Libra Rising. Aquarius Moon. Former Corporate Minion turned Actor evolving to Multidisciplinary Creator. Came to Make-Believe by way of Bruh Rabbit by Nate. LAKE SONG is the collective manifestation of what art-making can look like and how storytelling can shift the culture and the paradigm. It is important to be able to humanize Black people, POC, Queer people in every manner of existence, and show that we all can and will thrive in the future. Period. Favorite book: Conversations with God. Favorite artist: Stevie Wonder. This project is dedicated to anyone that has ever dreamed a dream and dared to have hope.
Mikhail Fiksel
(he/him)
Co-creator / sound designer / composer / audio producer
Immigrant boy turned raver kid turned professional noise maker. Originally from Little Academic Town (direct translation) in Siberia, Chicago has been home base for a quarter century (came here for the house music, stayed for the theatre scene). Portishead had me at hello, Trent Reznor is my professor, Stevie Wonder is the secret sauce. Books: Murakami, Gaiman, Questlove. After years of making funky radio plays and sneaking live Foley into practically everything, found my way to Make-Believe in season one. And then LAKE SONG, because why not make it harder? What really brought me to LAKE SONG was imagination and accessibility. We gathered to imagine a future, to dream. This medium asks the listener to flex the same imagination muscles, to make the dream theirs. It’s THAT simple (just gathering around a fire) and THAT powerful (just gathering to start a revolution). And maybe all THIS can be a catalyst for shaping a new reality—one with more voices, more justice, more hope. Until then, I’ll just keep making noise. #whatsnext
Nate Marshall
(he/him)
Co-creator / co-author
Madison, WI living, but Chicago born & raised. Came to LAKE SONG because I miss Lake Michigan at all times. Three books, one play. Two audio dramas with Make-Believe. Favorite poet: Chicago's own Gwendolyn Brooks. Favorite album: Aquemini by OutKast. My dad drives trucks for the water department--how could I not get into this kind of future? I don't rhyme for the sake of riddling.
Jeremy McCarter
(he/him)
Co-creator / co-author / executive producer
Chicago by way of BK. Make-Believe by way of the Public. Learned it from Anna Deavere Smith and Oskar Eustis—also Sondheim, also Welles. Two books with Lin-Manuel, now two audio dramas with Natalie. The HBO Watchmen told us we weren’t crazy to start, the Dirk Maggs/Neil Gaiman Sandman said to keep going. Endless gratitude to everybody who held hands and made the leap. Dedicated to J&S&S: the present and the future.
Natalie
Moore
(she/her)
Co-creator / co-author
Chi-town all day. Came to LAKE SONG for radical imagination. Four books. One play about abortion, which just won a Jeff Award. Second audio drama with Jeremy. My mom says LAKE SONG makes her wonder if this will be the future of Chicago. Says she'll keep listening. Obsessed with Drake's Honestly, Nevermind.
Kristina Valada-Viars
(she/they)
Co-creator / co-author / "Hologram"
Descendant of Mountain People. Midwestern by birth, Chicagoan by luck. Devoted Auntie to a Brooklyn kid and Partner to, simply, The Best. LGBTQ+ out loud since Iowa, 1995. Church was a Community Theatre and I was the preacher's kid, so...Theatre Rat For Life. First invited to Make-Believe's Long Christmas Dinner in 2017. Started making films in 2019. First chair as a writer came from Make-Believe the same year. Came to LAKE SONG for the people in the room and space to imagine a place in the history of the future for the radical change dreamers of now. A believer in the power of intergenerational exchange on every possible plane, a garden not knowing scarcity, and the kitchen table always having room. Bedside table elders: Ferrante, Baldwin, bell hooks.
Story Contributors
Eduardo Curley-Carrillo
(he/him)
Story contributor / "Gabriel"
I came to LAKE SONG after working with Make-Believe on Nancy Garcia Loza’s Brava, a manifestation of Mexican folklore from my native state of Jalisco. In Chicago (as in much of America), despite having a panoply of peoples with myriad ancestral stories in our bones, we tend to retell takes on the same colonial repertoire. I came to LAKE SONG to be with people who tell the secret stories in their grandmother’s hands. The ones we haven’t heard. And to imagine a future where the stories we tell today serve as reminders to those Chicagoans of posterity to continue building community, inviting people to dinner, and remembering what it means to be a neighborhood.
Lorena Diaz
(she/her)
Story contributor / "Dr. Garcia"
I was invited to play in the coolest sandbox. Working with Make-Believe was an incredible experience. Not only did I have the pleasure of working with Jeremy McCarter who is the kind of empathetic producer ya'll wish you had, but I also got to work with Laura Alcalá Baker, Mikhail Fiksel, Sydney Charles and SO MANY TALENTED CHICAGO PEOPLE—bien fancy. The folks at Make-Believe are TRUE collaborators who let you bring ideas to the table and build with them. LAKE SONG is a provocative consideration of what may come to be if we don't find a way to move forward together. Favorite band is Radiohead. Words she lives by: "Cover your neck when it's cold outside"- Mom.
Marcus D. Moore
(he/him)
Story contributor / "Wade"
Came to LAKE SONG when the world was put on pause and he needed an outlet to create, dream, and step outside of the box when it came to how we received art. Being a bisexual/queer Black man in real life, Marcus wanted to highlight and bring the truth of someone who travels these roads of intersectionality and what it feels like to discover your authentic self in a world that encourages you to do everything but. I dedicate this work to the people who may be hesitant to share their art with the world, especially when that art is different from what we’re used to. Share it. Jump in. The world needs your voice in whatever medium you are willing to allow us to receive it in.