"I'm very hard on myself as a performer, as a director and as a writer. And I guess, as a performer, there's a form of mental nudity going on, and I don't like to draw attention to myself." -- Jen Ellison, artistic director of WNEP

When WNEP Theater's artistic director Jen Ellison married WNEP's co-founder/executive director Don Hall this past July, she wore roller skates under her wedding gown during the reception. The motivation was not wholly theatrical. "It helped me get around," says Ellison, 29, in the most matter-of-fact voice. Then she smiles impishly and adds, "You look like you're floating. It adds to the mystique of 'Bride.'"

The image encapsulates this multifaceted director, actor and writer - practical, zany and smart. As we chat on the couple's back porch in Lakeview about everything from "American colonization" to how "boredom is worse than death," I begin to believe that Ellison has stuffed into her head all the ironies of the human experience.

"I've got this bottleneck brain," she jokes between quiet drags on her cigarette. "I have too many opinions, and I can't get them out fast enough."

In fact, her interest in directing, acting, writing (and, to a great extent, improv) arises from this mishmash of ideas swirling around her cellular structure - what she calls "explosions in the brain of what I want to pursue." Ever since she saw WNEP's vaudeville-absurdist performance revue, Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue, in 1997, Ellison knew that WNEP would suit her wildly zig-zagging (yet intensely focused) sensibilities.

"Metaluna single handedly changed how I viewed a theatrical production," she states. "It was entertaining without pandering; it was intelligent without being aloof.

"With WNEP, you can’t rest on your laurels. There's an expectation of constantly making something new."

Ellison's latest endeavor is Let There Be Light..!, a play she co-wrote with Dave Stinton exploring the little-known 1946 documentary by John Huston addressing battle fatigue. But the U.S. Army confiscated the final cut, and the film was not shown until 1981. Let There Be Light..! runs Sept. 18-Oct. 26 at WNEP Theater.

This work represents the issues Ellison is most drawn to: men and women in conflict with themselves and "that rumble of something is not right." Her typical starting point is music (which leads her into the storytelling) - in this case 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home' from the movie, The Civil War.

"I had this image of men coming home from war and crumbling into their different neuroses," she says. "Music is a shortcut to the human being. And I don't mean 'shortcut' in a bad way. I believe music taps into something very personal."

Ellison first discovered the Huston documentary when she worked at Facets Multimedia. She was intrigued by the tag line announcing it had been 'banned for 35 years.' The film was an attempt to educate soldiers about battle fatigue 'or shell shock' and to address different forms of psychiatric treatment. But minutes before a screening at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Army confiscated the film.

In addition to issues of censorship and propaganda, Ellison and Stinton explore a number of complex perspectives. The U.S. Army claimed the film would discourage men from joining the military, but Huston felt the Army "wanted to preserve the warrior myth."

Since being named WNEP's artistic director in 1998, Ellison has been driven by the synergy of her fellow company members and the freedom to tackle a gamut of significant issues that challenge artists and audiences. Her many projects at WNEP include Statuette, ...apocalypse..., Wise Blood, The Armageddon Radio Hour and Christmas My Ass.

In 2000, the theatre moved into its own 52-seat space at 3209 N. Halsted. "That was a huge watermark for us," Ellison acknowledges. "The company as a whole really banded together to make this theatre possible. We acquired a sense of invincibility."

Although she prefers directing ("I first have to fight back any impetus I have to direct before I act"), two pivotal acting roles demonstrate her mantra of 'countering cynicism with delight.' Her signature character, a triumphant 4-year-old girl named Emily in The Emily Show, battles the monster in the closet that has been killing her hamsters. Emily remains one of the most honest and non-manipulative characters to skip and jump across a Chicago stage.

Earlier this year, Ellison portrayed a jaded, substance-abusing writer destroyed by her ability to see through the sham of 'polite society' in pretty things. It ended with her character's graphic suicide, which was beyond emotionally shattering to watch.

As an artist always aware of balance, Ellison stresses, "you cannot have dark without light." This idea is manifested in an Indonesian sculpture of an unusually tender-faced skeleton in her apartment: "The purpose of these sculptures in Indonesia is so you don't fear death," she explains while embracing her bony friend.

Ellison can be mega-mature and childlike at the same time. And, even playing what could have been an unbearably cute kid like Emily, the actor insists, "I don't swindle audiences." For that role, she drew on her love of children and their ability to be "incredibly resilient, funny and weird: Kids are these amazing little ids. They're trying to learn how to be human."

In the past, Ellison has worked with children on adapting and performing stories for the stage and was impressed by their conviction. At the age of 10 in her native Black Mountain, North Carolina, she got cast as the title orphan in a community theatre production of Oliver! "I looked like a boy," says the very young-looking red-haired actor. "So I played boys until I was like 14."

Ellison was - and continues to be - inspired by her older sister Amy, who started doing theatre and forensics in high school. "I loved the community involved," she says of theatre, "and the grandiosity of it all." At Charles D. Owen High School, Ellison was greatly influenced by the radical head of the theatre program, Peggy Boring (whose last name was the antithesis of the controversial, adult-themed, risk-taking shows she directed). "[Boring] wanted to push the envelope. And, from her, I learned how to create a show on nothing."

Boring encouraged Ellison to pursue a college degree in acting. Ellison took her advice and got her BFA in acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University. She found the program to be excellent and points out to conservatory-based acting students the importance of "knowing what tools work for you and when to use them," adding, "There's a danger of taking everything your professors say and thinking it's a beeline to God."

DePaul's Jim Ostelhoff offered some wisdom that has guided Ellison's approach to her art: "He told us, "If you guys would lose the ego, you would be much better actors." I don't think acting is about the acting. I believe it is part of a whole - it's being part of something larger. As an actor, you can't condescend or showboat. I don't want to see your tools working. It's like a car - I don't want to see the engine. I want to see the car. I want to see the car move."

The word 'balance' comes up again when Ellison talks of a healthy combination, in acting, of self-knowledge and turning one's focus outward. As a director, she asks her actors a lot of questions at the outset and encourages them to play. They also will do something integral to the play. For The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a dramatized collection of art work/stories for children, she had the actors become kids by coloring on big sheets of butcher paper. For the sports-themed comedy, Losers Bracket, the cast played softball. And recently, for a Let There Be Light..! rehearsal, Ellison had her actors face off against the company in a paint ball competition.

Also this year, Ellison performed in Fuzzy Co's popular and clever film-improv hybrid, The Neutrino Project. Her quick wit - that toggles between deadpan and hysterical - stood out. So it comes as a surprise when she admits, "Improv scares me to death - it's like bungee jumping." Because she finds that her brain goes in a thousand different directions, it can be a challenge for her focus on one thing in improv. She does find that, in general, "I'm very hard on myself as a performer, as a director and as a writer. And I guess, as a performer, there's a form of mental nudity going on, and I don't like to draw attention to myself."

While she doesn't consider herself a polished writer, Ellison enjoys it at the same time she's terrified of it. "Writing is sort of like improvising with yourself. When I write, I usually start with an improv scene I've had in my head, and then I expand on it."

Directing remains her first love. It allows her to be part of the bigger creative picture - "part of something larger than yourself." A voracious reader with interests in diverse art forms, Ellison (who is the former ad manager at PerformInk and is co-editor of the sixth edition 'The Book,' to be released this September) is all for "feeding the brain." This is an apropos strategy for WNEP, which pulls from eclectic source material.

"The company is part of my life work because of the challenges it demands and the people in it," says Ellison. "Success in terms of WNEP would be to make enough money to pay people, but not so much money that we forget having to make creative decisions."

When she first decided on a theatre career, Ellison - who had a knack for comedy - recalls telling her sister Amy how she wanted to move to Chicago, study at The Second City and be on 'Saturday Night Live.' But her sister posed the question, which helped set her on a different artistic path: "Why would you want to do something that everyone else has done instead of something that is yours?"

At WNEP, Ellison has found an ideal locale for setting off those 'explosions in her brain.'

WNEP Theater can be found at 3209 N. Halsted - www.wneptheater.org