Just after Hannah Rehak \u201915 arrived at Mac in 2011, she auditioned on a whim for the campus improv troupe Fresh Concepts. \u201cI went into the audition thinking, \u2018I don\u2019t even know what this is, but I guess I\u2019ll do it,\u2019 and left being like, \u2018I want to be these people\u2019s friend so much. And that Nina girl is so intimidating.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rehak\u2019s time with Fresh Concepts became formative\u2014and soon Nina Slesinger \u201914 became a close friend. Fast forward ten years: Rehak and Slesinger have teamed up on multiple creative projects, including the short film Downbeat<\/em><\/a>, which premiered on the NoBudge streaming service last fall and appeared in the Spirit of Chicago film festival. Downbeat<\/em> also features a musical score by another Mac friend, Bad Bad Hats lead singer Kerry Alexander \u201912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Downbeat<\/em> collaboration started in late 2017, with Slesinger and Rehak both working and doing improv in Chicago. By that point, Slesinger had already dreamed up and drafted Downbeat<\/em>, a story that follows two women in their early twenties who find themselves at a crossroads after a breakup between one main character and her boyfriend. \u201cI love rom-coms but feel the genre hasn\u2019t aged well in my community. I challenged myself to take tenets of the rom-com and flip them to reflect the people I knew,\u201d Slesinger said in a 2020 NoBudge interview. \u201cI wanted to keep qualities like charm and sweetness, but reframe the story to follow, for instance, the quirky best friend, or the dissolution of a relationship instead of the beginning of one, and how that becomes a beginning in and of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She asked Rehak to help refine the script, then assembled the plan. \u201cNina put the production together,\u201d Rehak says. \u201cIt was this incredible feat of pulling on all the talent of Chicago that she had at her fingertips.\u201d With Slesinger working as the film\u2019s director, Rehak was on set for the five-day shoot as an assistant director, then joined the editing process. That took another year and a half while Slesinger and Rehak juggled the project with their full-time jobs. Last fall, the Downbeat<\/em> team finally celebrated its premiere, with a toast via Zoom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n