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Chris Vallillo’s FORGOTTONIA explores the beauties and tragedies of this often-forgotten area of Illinois. This visual and musical masterpiece will be on The Orpheum Stage November 23rd at 7:30pm. With a body of work spanning four decades that features a song repertoire rooted as firmly in Americana as July corn in Illinois soil, singer/songwriter Chris Vallillo intones from the heart of the Midwest in virtually everything he does.
The mythical “nation” of FORGOTTONIA, takes its name and partial inspiration from a political stunt dreamed up in 1972 by McDonough County residents Jack Horn, John Armstrong, and Neil Gamm. As Vallillo explains, “Sixteen Illinois counties banded together to protest of the lack of infrastructure dollars coming to West Central Illinois. They created the independent nation of FORGOTTONIA and planned to secede from the union, declare war on the United States, and then immediately surrender. The goal being that they would then apply for foreign aid. It was nothing more than political theater to highlight the lack of funding for this region of Illinois, but to everyone's utter surprise it ultimately worked. As a result of this humorous stunt, almost a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of free PR came into the region.”
But that’s simply where the story of the show FORGOTTONIA begins. Vallillo took into consideration the region of Illinois that was coined FORGOTTONIA in the 70s and used that as a jumping-off point to forge an audio-visual love letter to the area’s past, present, and future. “Essentially I wanted to reimagine FORGOTTONIA as I saw it through my perspective and share that with the people who live here and never really see it for what it is, simply because they’re in the middle of it,” said Vallillo.
Tickets are available at www.galesburgorpheum.org, or by calling (309)-342-2299. The Orpheum Theatre is located at 57 South Kellogg Street in Downtown Galesburg, with office hours Tuesday through Friday, 10am-2pm.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
57 S Kellogg St, Galesburg, IL, United States, Illinois 61401
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