a microbird/terror cottas production
Screening
Saturday, November 22, 2025 at 7pm
Chicago Filmmakers
1326 W Hollywood Avenue, Chicago, IL
(2h5m)
In 2024 The Terror Cottas hired Sis Byers and Josh Sparks—collectively, microbird productions—to film a performance of This Music Should Not Be by Wendy A. Schmidt at Rhinofest.
Instead, Sis had the idea of making a movie about the play production process. Wendy joked that there should be an endless string of interviewees, each with less and less of a connection to the play. Josh said, “You mean like This is Spinal Tap for Chicago fringe theater?”
“Something like that,” Sis said.
The result of course is not This is Spinal Tap or This Music Should Not Be, but playmovie—something of microbird productions’ very own.
Okay, here is a more accurate description of what went down:
Amateur filmmakers hired to record a play at a Chicago fringe fest take it upon themselves to make a documentary about the playwright and her collaborators, only to turn the cameras on themselves in the face of mounting obstacles. As the directors grapple with the swirling projects, the documentary spins into a farcical examination of the futility and reward of making art in a world that feels increasingly unreal.
But truthfully, it was more like this:
When Chicago playwright Wendy hires amateur filmmakers Sis & Josh to record her new play, they decide to make a documentary about Wendy and her process, helped along by interviews with collaborators from Wendy’s past and present projects.
Wendy hasn’t staged a play since just before the pandemic and, like the rest of the world, is still finding her footing in 2024, when her new production is set to begin a two-night run at a Chicago fringe fest. Wendy and her collaborators share how lockdown affected the theater world’s reliance on the physical presence of actors and audience alike, as well as the art they made to cope with that experience. Cut to present day, and Wendy’s new play—THIS MUSIC SHOULD NOT BE—is put under the microscope via footage and press photos taken at the final tech rehearsal.
Sis & Josh haven’t had a project in a while either. Amateur filmmakers who always seem to be grasping for their next idea, they haven’t done anything since making a zero-budget monthly movie series in 2022, and they’re excited to get their feet wet again by filming Wendy’s play and making a documentary about her.
But when the projects start to unravel, the directors turn the cameras on their own films and collaborators (i.e., non-actor friends and family). As the documentary spirals into a deconstruction of the frictions and parallels of the theatrical and cinematic art forms, reality begins to blur amid mounting creative desperation, culminating in a debate over the paranoiac question: “Is a play a play, or is a movie a movie, if no one sees it?”
playmovie Creative Team
a movie by Sis Byers & Joshua M. Sparks
starring
Amy Gorelow
Hillary Knight
Shea Leavis
Mikey Peterson
Wendy Schmidt
David Jack Sparks
Henry Sparks
Violet
Eileen Tull
Jeremy Wells
about a play by Wendy A. Schmidt
directed by Shea Leavis
starring
Donaldson Cardenas
Melody DeRogatis
Ethan Embry
Dana Pepowski
written & directed by Sis Byers & Joshua M. Sparks
conceived with Wendy A. Schmidt
produced by Sis Byers, Wendy A. Schmidt, and Joshua M. Sparks
edited by Joshua M. Sparks
camera: Sis Byers, Mikey Peterson, Joshua M. Sparks
music by David Jack Sparks | musicians: Violet, Henry Sparks, Griffin Jones
music by Kiki Garleek | box of cherries cue: Mikey Peterson
This Music Should Not Be photography by Steven Townshend | Distant Era
Maker of Worlds photography by Jackie Todd