RED TAPE THEATRE PRESENTS THE CHICAGO PREMIERE OF LEAR By Young Jean Lee
It’s King Lear. But there’s no King Lear. Experimental playwright and Doris Duke Artist Award winner Young Jean Lee has penned a whimsical and psychologically disturbing look at a world in which the pater familias is noticeably absent. The children are left to run the show but they must first overcome their anxiety and regret. As the story goes off the rails, Big Bird arrives to help us make sense of the madness. This is James D Palmer’s return to Lee’s work after Church/Pullman, WA, one of Time Out Chicago’s Top Plays of 2011.
PLAY: LEAR
PLAYWRIGHT: Young Jean Lee
DIRECTED BY: James D Palmer
SHOW DATES: Previews: 5/9-5/11
Opening: 5/12
Closing: 6/22
TIMES: Thursday to Saturday at 8:00pm
Sunday at 7:00pm
Industry Night Monday, May 20 at 8pm
TICKETS: $25 regular
$15 Student/Industry
$15 Preview
Online at www.redtapetheatre.org or at the box office
LOCATION: Red Tape Theatre 621 W. Belmont
MORE INFORMATION: www.redtapetheatre.org
CAST:
Featuring Ensemble Members Amanda Drinkall, Meghan Reardon, and Johnard Washington with Josh Davis, Anita Kavuu, Miriam Reuter (understudy) and Jake Szczepaniak (understudy).
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Production Team includes Ensemble Members Emily Guthrie (Set Designer), Izumi Inaba (Costume Designer), and Kyle Land (Lighting Designer) with Jarrod Bainter (Production Manager), Casey Bentley (Stage Manager), Cait Chiou (Properties Designer), Laura Durham (Assistant to the Director), William Glick (Assistant Director), Greg Poljacik (Fight Choreographer), and Emmett Rensin (Dramaturg).
LISTING TEXT:
It’s King Lear. But there’s no King Lear. Experimental playwright and Doris Duke Artist Award winner Young Jean Lee has penned a whimsical and psychologically disturbing look at a world in which the pater familias is noticeably absent. The children are left to run the show but they must first overcome their anxiety and regret. As the story goes off the rails, Big Bird arrives to help us make sense of the madness. This is James D Palmer’s return to Lee’s work after Church/Pullman, WA, one of Time Out Chicago’s Top Plays of 2011.
SHOW DATES AND TIMES:
Previews: 5/9-5/11
Opening: 5/12
Closing: 6/22
Thursday through Saturday at 8pm
Sunday at 7pm
Industry Night Performance on Monday, May 20 at 8pm
Tickets available at www.redtapetheatre.org or at the box office
PUBLICITY PICS: Available upon request. myah.shein@redtapetheatre.org
JAMES D PALMER directed and adapted Dog in a Manger(2008). Directing credits include Ruby Wilder (2012), Elephant’s Graveyard (2012 Jeff Recommended), The Gingerbread House (2012), Church/Pullman, WA (2011), The Love of the Nightingale (2010 Jeff Award for Best Direction, Nominations for Best Production, Best Choreography, Best Sound, Best Fight Choreography), Enemy of the People (2009), Pugilist Specialist (2008), Endgame (2007), Baden Lehrstuck (2007), FEP: Jesusland(2006), and FEP: Coriolanus (2006). Producing credits at Red Tape include Brand (2011), Tragedy: a tragedy (2011), Obscura: a voyeuristic love story(2010), Mouse in a Jar (2009 Jeff Award for Best Sound Design). Selected readings and workshops with Goodman Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, American Theatre Company, and TUTA Theatre. James is in his sixth season as Red Tape Theatre Company’s Artistic Director
YOUNG JEAN LEE is an OBIE award-winning playwright and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, The Shipment and Lear) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She is currently under commission from Plan B/Paramount Pictures, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P and has an MFA from Mac Wellman’s playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Rockefeller MAP Foundation. She is also the recipient of two OBIE awards, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.
ABOUT RED TAPE THEATRE:
Red Tape Theatre Company, now in its ninth season, is committed to the creation of new and experimental work. Red Tape’s plays invite our audiences to reimagine their world. Red Tape’s work serves a vital purpose in our community: to arrest attention and create empathy. Our ensemble collaborates with playwrights, musicians, dancers, and visual artists on our three annual productions. This work is supported by our Fresh Eyes Playwrights Workshop and the Chicago Fringe Artist Networking Night, both of which are produced annually. Red Tape is housed in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. The unique performance space allows us to continually reinvent the audience/artist relationship.