By Shelbie Janocha
On the second Tuesday of every month, a crowd forms inside Cafe Mustache, a hip Logan Square coffee shop by day and bar by night, to hear stories celebrating the human experience. Seven Deadly Sins kicks off with a call for drinks and a spin of the Wheel of Sin to choose the first storyteller. The line-up keeps both audience and performers on their toes as everyone patiently waits to hear stories of our favorite, unavoidable vices.
Seven Deadly Sins recently celebrated its three year anniversary, before the celebratory show founder Angela Vela shared laughs, the story of its inception, and where all sins stem from.
Shelbie Janocha: You started off in comedy, how did the idea for Seven Deadly Sins come about?
Angela Vela: My main thing is stand up. I don’t know if you remember a show called the Sunday Night Sex Show. It was at the Burlington…mainly this creative non-fiction series that was really popular. I started performing there and then they needed a new co-host. I had kind of started seven sins as a comedy show in my mind, seven comedians each would do pieces on the sins. So when SNSS ended, it was like a no-brainer that this would be next storytelling show. I mean, you can get comedians to do storytelling.
SJ: How did you choose the theme of 7DS?
AV: I had started a comedy show [Chicago Comedy Exposition] in Pilsen. The building it was in, everyone now knows as Thalia Hall. The building was from the World’s Fair so they kind of had a whole theme of turn of the century. I always liked the idea of a carnival show. So I did CCE and I was going through pictures of the World’s Fair and there were all these carnival wagons and one of them was painted all sexy and was the Seven Deadly Sins. I thought that was a great theme for the show. You have seven themes to choose from. It just seemed real sexy and [had] lots of potential for variety.
SJ: Do you have a favorite sin or one that you partake in often?
AV: I do have a favorite sin and I would say my favorite sin is pride because I think of pride as being the mother of all the sins. The other six sins always come back to pride. Like envy, jealousy or why were you jealous? It always goes back to fulfilling a need, it always comes back to pride––or lust. If you do a lust piece, which was like wanting to get with somebody or getting your heart broken, the latent effect always comes back to pride. It’s the root of all the others, the mother of the other sins.
SJ: How do the readers choose their piece and how do you get readers involved?
AV: There’s two different ways. If they contact me, I’ll have them submit a piece and maybe I’ll book them for a piece they submitted, or I’ll say I love the writing style, do whatever you want. If I’m familiar in general then they can do whatever they want and I’ll trust that. A lot of people like to do random, some people either have a piece or they want the challenge of writing something new. I think Seven Sins is the only [reading series] that allows fiction and non. 
SJ: I love the mix because then you have the challenge, unless they overtly say its nonfiction in the piece, of being like okay is this nonfiction or fiction. Do you introduce pieces as what they are?
AV: No, no. I don’t let the audience know in the beginning what to expect. It could be fiction, could be non, in all different styles. Could be a monologue, it could be comedy, could be an excerpt from a book that they have. Poetry, I try to keep it super inclusive to all forms of writing and interpretations. That’s part of the excitement for me as a producer to see what they come up with. I don’t want to limit how a person interprets the sin at all. This is super important that I always tell the performers. Just think of it as the theme.
Seven Deadly Sins’ next show starts at 8:00pm on Tuesday, March 8, 2016 at Cafe Mustache (2313 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60647).