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Lookingglass Theatre Company To Take "Lookingglass Alice" On A Tour Of East Coast Theatres
Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company will take its acclaimed 2005 smash hit Lookingglass Alice on a regional tour of major east coast theaters in 2007, starting in January at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, The New Victory Theater in New York City in February, and Philadelphia's Arden Theatre Company in May.
The Alice tour culminates next June with a return engagement of the company's thrice-extended smash hit at Lookingglass Theatre Company, inside Chicago's historic Water Tower Works, 821 N. Michigan Avenue at Pearson. Artistic Director David Catlin returns to direct his adaptation from the stories of Lewis Carroll. The tour is presented again in association with The Actors Gymnasium, reunites the entire original 2005 cast - Lawrence E. DiStasi, Anthony Fleming III, Doug Hara, Tony Hernandez and Lauren Hirte - along with designers Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), Chris Binder (lights), Dan Ostling (scenic), and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman (sound design and composition.)
Combining witty word play, madcap mischief and fantastical flights of aerial fancy, Lewis Carroll's spectacularly surreal classics are brought vividly to life in the wildly imaginative Lookingglass Alice. This Alice falls, floats, flies, and defies gravity - and the rules of logic - on her journey through the looking glass. The entire theater becomes her stage, as Alice navigates a chessboard of "curioser and curioser" characters -- a juggling Mad Hatter, acrobatic hedgehogs, a unicycle-riding White Knight and a host of others -- who appear from above, below and everywhere in between.
"We're positively thrilled to collaborate with such respected theaters as the McCarter, The New Victory and the Arden, to have the opportunity to extend the life of one of our most popular shows ever, and to share this new, signature Lookingglass work with audiences outside Chicago," said Lookingglass Theatre Company Executive Director Rachel Kraft.
Chicagoland Companies Sought To Participate In Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays
A “Hub Council” of seven Chicagoland theaters – Congo Square Theatre, Goodman Theatre, The Hypocrites, Next Theatre Company, Steppenwolf Theatre, Uma Productions and Writer’s Theatre – in association with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and Producer Bonnie Metzgar are delighted to invite Chicagoland theater companies to participate in the year-long production of Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays.
In November 2002, Pulitzer-winner Parks committed to writing a play a day for the next 365 days. The world premiere of this play cycle will be performed as a yearlong national festival simultaneously in major cities and communities around the country. From November 13, 2006 to November 12, 2007, over 600 theaters in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, the Carolinas, Mississippi River towns, and university campuses will create the largest theater collaboration in U.S. History. The series of brief, brilliant theatre pieces from one of the country’s most innovative voices will be performed in a variety of spaces, fully staged or as readings, representing the dynamism and diverse spirit of theater artists throughout the United States.
Parks says: "One day Bonnie Metzgar asked me 'What's up with those 365 plays?' 'I've done them,' I said. 'Yeah, but now you've got to do them,' Bonnie said. And together we created a production model which would speak to the spirit of my plays: a simultaneous and shared world premiere involving hundreds of theatres around the country."
Suzan-Lori Parks and Bonnie Metzgar will host a meeting to discuss the Chicago portion of the 365 National Festival on August 5 at 11:00 a.m. at Steppenwolf’s Upstairs Theater, 1650 N. Halsted Street in Chicago. All interested parties are invited to attend.
To celebrate the extraordinary richness and diversity of Chicagoland’s theater scene, the Hub Council invites theater companies, self-producing theater artists and producing and presenting organizations to participate in this unique event. Guidelines and application process will be detailed on the website, www.365chicago.org by August 1. Proposals to participate in the Festival are due August 15, 2006. You do not need to attend the meeting on the 5th to apply. The Hub Council will forward proposals to Parks and Metzgar, who will make final decisions on the 52 participants by September 2006.
From Stage To Screen
If you are looking for a stage-to-screen adaptation with Chicago roots then check out “Edmond” which is based on the classic play by acclaimed Chicago writer David Mamet and presented by First Independent Pictures. Edmond was a one-act play written by Mamet that premierd at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago on June 4, 1982. The movie version will have it's Chicago debut on July 28th at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Avant-garde horror director and longtime David Mamet associate Stuart Gordon brings the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicagoan’s one-act play to the screen with in-your-face intensity and a host of daring performances. Clued by a storefront fortune-teller that he’s primed for change, sad-sack businessman Edmond Burke (William H. Macy) makes an abrupt exit from his mundane life and, in the course of one night’s back-alley odyssey in search of anonymous sex and a shoulder to cry on, tumbles into something akin to the Twilight Zone.
For more information go to www.edmondthefilm.com