EXPLORE THE 2018/2019 SEASON
Natalie Rae
as Catherine Hiatt
Curtis Bannister
as Jamie Wellerstein
The Last Five Years
Running August 24 - September 8 at The Jedlicka Performing Arts Center
Jason Robert Brown's Drama Desk winner, The Last Five Years was written during the two years that Jason Robert Brown toured the country as conductor and musical director of the national tour of another one of his shows, Parade. Distraught with the state of musical theatre style at the time, he wanted to create an emotionally intimate, musically complex piece. Brown's musical style, although it only uses a select number of instruments, draws on a significant number of genres, from classical to rock to klezmer.
The Last Five Years premiered at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois and was named one of TIME Magazine's ten best shows of 2001. The production ran for two months and starred Lauren Kennedy and Norbert Leo Butz. The show reportedly sold more tickets in a single weekend than any other production at that theatre before.
With new producers, the musical later opened at the Minetta Lane Theatre Off-Broadway on March 3, 2002, closing on May 5 of the same year. Sherie Rene Scott stepped in to star opposite Butz, as Kennedy had taken off for a prior commitment. Since its closing, The Last Five Years has been produced across hundreds of American cities, in addition to Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, France and the Philippines. The musical's regional popularity spurned an Off-Broadway revival at the Second Stage Theatre in 2013. It was directed by Jason Robert Brown, himself. A film adaptation was released in 2014, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.
For more on Jason Robert Brown visit www.jasonrobertbrown.com.
"Brimming with persistent melodies, throughout lyrics and a heartfelt, compelling story."
– Associated Press
"[Jason Robert Brown] turns a modest, 80-minute, two-character musical into a richly satisfying emotional journey."
– TIME Magazine
"I can't think of any better way to celebrate the arrival of spring than by spending 90 exhilarating minutes with The Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown's giddily sorrowful eulogy for a brief marriage."
– Bloomberg News
"It's instantly clear... that this poignant, richly dramatic and piercingly honest two-character show is destined to be a hit."
– The Chicago Sun-Times
"Jaw-dropping! A gem of a show from Jason Robert Brown."
– New York Magazine
Red Bike
Running October 25 - 28 at Jedlicka Performing Arts Center
What kind of future will you have living in these here United States?
Remember when you were eleven years old and you had a bike, one that made you dream about a world bigger than the one in which you live? This is that memory. Except it is now. Nominated for a Blackburn Prize, “…Svich's RED BIKE is a luminous piece that tackles our common dreams and dangers with magic, poetry, and a sense of both possibility and loneliness. A beautiful work!" -- Cristina Garcia (novelist, Dreaming in Cuban).
Marco Arias
Mara Galeno
Alejandro Salinas
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Meet The Playwright
Caridad Svich
As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work, but also an idea made manifest through the enactment of writing, its performance, and my living of it. Born in the US of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents, I have felt in a strange kind of exile even while growing up as an “American.”
This sense of dislocation extends to the fact that as a child and adolescent, I lived in several states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, New York, and California, not to mention many cross-country road trips in between. The nomadic strain was thus instilled in me and has become an inevitable part of my writing vision. Explorations of wanderlust, dispossession, biculturalism, bilingualism, construction of identity, and the many different emotional terrains that can be inhabited onstage form the basis of my plays and other writing projects. Visions of migration (both physical and spiritual) dominate the plays, which have become, in turn, documents of internal diasporas.As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work.
~Caridad Svich in “Visions of Migration” Performance Research
For more on Caridad Svich, visit: http://caridadsvich.com/
The Amish Project
Running February 15th - March 2nd at Jedlicka Performing Arts Center
Conceived in the wake of the 2006 school shootings in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Jessica Dickey’s fictional exploration of a real-life tragedy allows us to glimpse into the world of Amish culture and to come to grips with the true limits of compassion and forgiveness. The Amish Project is a devastating and beautiful one-woman performance that compels us to question the paths we take at the crossroads of grief, rage, and clemency.
Featuring Grayson Heyl who is incredibly honored for this opportunity to perform The Amish Project. She was last seen in People in the Wind in Director’s Haven and will next be seen in Provision Theater’s production of Last Train to Nibroc. Other selected roles include Catherine in Suddenly Last Summer at Raven Theatre, Michaela in Elemeno Pea at Citadel Theatre, Miranda in The Tempest and Lady Capulet in Romeo & Juliet at Door County Shakespeare. Understudy credits include work with The Marriott, Chicago Shakespeare, Northlight, and The Hypocrites. Grayson is a graduate of Oklahoma City University. Thank you to Brian and Samantha, the entire AP creative team, and Leda for trusting me with this role.
Michelle Lilly, Scenic Design
Jess Fialko, Lighting & Costume Design
Camille Denholm, Sound Design
Nicholas Schwartz, Technical Director
Joel E. Garcia, Stage Manage
Use promo code CTW19 at checkout for $15 tickets!
"Extraordinary... compelling... the play is also a remarkable piece of writing. — The New York Times
"The Amish Project is thought-provoking, compelling theatre..." — nytheatre.com
"[Dickey's] craft made me weep. The virtuosic writer-performer acts her bonnet off." — Time Out New York
"Dickey, as formidable a playwright as she is a performer, tackles metaphysical subjects with power and empathy...must-see!" - The Star Tribune
Meet The Playwright
Jessica Dickey
Jessica Dickey, a native of Pennsylvania, began her research on Amish culture in order to write her play The Amish Project, which was praised by audiences and critics alike during its Off-Broadway run at the prestigious Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York City. The Amish Project is a fictional exploration of the tragic events of the Nickel Mines shooting, when the local milkman walked into an Amish schoolhouse and shot all the girls and then himself. The Amish responded to this crime by forgiving the gunman and embracing his family as fellow victims. Honoring the redemptive aspects of this incredible story, The Amish Project is published by Samuel French, continues to be produced all over America and the world, and was listed by nytheatre.com as a play that should have been nominated for the Pulitzer. The Amish Project won the CAPPIE Award for Best Play. Ms. Dickey has since gone on to write two more plays, which both have a world premiere coming up in 2013— Row After Row (a comedy about Civil War re-enactors) will premiere in Tuscon, Arizona in April 2013; and Charles Ives Take Me Home (a poignant play about a father and daughter) was nominated for the prestigious Susan Blackburn Prize and will premiere in New York City in May 2013. She was also nominated for the PONY Award in 2011. Ms. Dickey is also an actor; her work can be found on both stage and screen.www.jessicadickey.com
Rhapsodically beautiful. A weird and wonderful new play - an inexpressibly moving theatrical fable about love, loss and the pleasures and pains of memory." - The New York Times
"Exhilarating! A luminous retelling of the Orpheus myth, lush and limpid as a dream where both author and audience swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious." - The New Yorker
Eurydice
Running April 19th - May 3rd at Jedlicka Performing Arts Center
Sarah Ruhl (who was born and raised in the Chicagoland area) reimagines the classic myth of Orpheus & Eurydice through the eyes of its heroine. It is funny, sad, dramatic, and surprising. All the elements of great theatre wrapped up in one play! Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, ingenious plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story.
Rachel Rauscher, Scenic Design
Simean Carpenter, Lighting Design
Jeffrey Levin, Sound Design
Elle Erickson, Costume Design
Kyle Mayes, Intimacy Design
Nicholas Schwartz,Technical Director
Lauren Davis, Stage Manager
Joel Garcia, Assistant Stage Manager
STARRING
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Jordan Marie Ford
Eurydice
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Brandon Boler
The Father
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Dominick Alesia
Orpeus
Gunner Bradley
A Nasty Interesting Man/
Lord of the Underworld
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Matthew Schufreider
Big Stone
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Carolyn Waldee
Little Stone
Jimbo Pestano
Loud Stone
Meet The Playwright
Sarah Ruhl
Her plays include Stage Kiss, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony Award nominee for best new play), The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2005; The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, (Pen American award, The Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes award); Melancholy Play (a musical with Todd Almond); Eurydice; Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP nomination), Late: a cowboy song, Three Sisters, Dear Elizabeth, The Oldest Boy and most recently, and For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday and How To Transcend a Happy Marriage. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater, Off-Broadway at Playwrights’ Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country, with premieres often at Yale Repertory Theater, the Goodman Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, and the Piven Theatre Workshop in Chicago. Her plays have also been produced internationally and have been translated into over twelve languages.
Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. An alum of 13P and of New Dramatists, she won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006 and most recently, the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.. She was the recipient of the PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright, the Whiting Writers award, the Feminist Press’ Forty under Forty award, and a Lilly Award. She proudly served on the executive council of the Dramatist’s Guild for three years, and she is currently on the faculty at Yale School of Drama. Her book of essays on the theater and motherhood, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, was a Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
For more on Sarah Ruhl, visit: http://www.sarahruhlplaywright.com/plays