16th Street Theater Sets 2015 Season: THE ART OF DISAPPEARING, LETTERS FROM DAD & More

16th Street Theater announces their Season Eight 2015: FATHERS DAUGHTERS MOTHERS SONS featuring three world premieres by three award-winning female playwrights: Stephanie Alison Walker, Elaine Romero and Aline Lathrop. In 2015 16th Street explores the most intimate of relationships - that between a parent and a child. Excerpts from 16th Street's upcoming 2015 season will be performed in a FREE event with a cash bar on Saturday, December 6 from 5:00 - 6:30 PM at WIRE at 6815 Roosevelt Road in Berwyn.

"Our parents make us who we are and then we rebel against it," Artistic Director Ann Filmer states. "They allow us to enter the world but cannot always keep us safe. They care for us until we break out on our own and then we care for them. How can this cross-generational relationship survive so many challenges? And how do we go on once that tie is severed? Our plays in Season Eight 2015 FATHERS DAUGHTERS MOTHERS SONS ask do we fall not far from the tree, how do we repair the mistakes we have made, and is our identity decided for us, or can we shape it ourselves?"

After not speaking in two years a father and daughter try to learn to care for the woman who can no longer care for them in Stephanie Alison Walker's The Art of Disappearing. In Elaine Romero'sGraveyard of Empires, a son follows in his military father's footsteps and all feel the impact of a fated decision made before he was born. A mother and father struggle with either keeping their son safe or giving him the freedom to be who she is in Merchild by 2015 playwright-in-residence Aline Lathrop.

THE ART OF DISAPPEARING
by Stephanie Walker Directed by Ann Filmer
January 22 - February 28, 2015
World premiere

When Melissa receives a mysterious invitation to brunch from her mother after a two-year estrangement, she returns to a home where nothing is as it seems. Fathers lie, friends leave and she herself is failing in the artist's world she covets- as her mother practices the art of disappearing before her very eyes. The devastating truth she discovers in her parents' house threatens to tear all of them apart for good. Will Melissa stay and fight for her family? Or will she disappear too?

LETTERS FROM DAD
One-night celebration at FitzGerald's for 100 Club Members
Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Members of our own community will contribute letters written by their fathers to be shared in a one-night reading and celebration of "Letters from Dad"

GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES
by Elaine Romero Directed by Kevin Christopher Fox
March 26 - May 2, 2015
World premiere

Software Engineer Drew Snider has a mind that remembers every moment of his life. Maybe that's why he can't let go of his ex-wife, Shanti, and why he still remembers the software he developed for unmanned flying vehicles for the U.S. military. Their son Nathan grew up feeling inferior to his dad and volunteered to go to war. He once met Ramiro Enriquez, a pilot who never gets to fly, but fires weapons in the Middle East from a desert in Nevada. When Ramiro is held responsible for a predator-drone friendly fire incident, how will the survivors piece together a future while absorbing a wounded past? Funded in part by a grant from Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation

MERCHILD
by Aline Lathrop, 2015 playwright-in-residence Directed by Ann Filmer
September 10 - October 18, 2015

World premiere
Like many little girls, Adam dreams of being a mermaid and marrying a prince. But Adam was born a boy. Or so everyone else seems to think. When reality is not to Adam's liking, he retreats into a fairytale, winning Prince Eric's love, despite a mermaid tail. Meanwhile, his fiercely supportive parents are pulled in all directions, trying to protect him in a world that is not quite ready for him. Both Adam and his parents will discover just how much they are willing to sacrifice for happiness and safety in this story of a young, transgender child.

MARIPOSA NOCTURNA: A PUPPET TRIPTYCH
Created and conceived by Stephanie Diaz
October 22 - November 1, 2015 For 100 Club Members

A child's wish for her dying grandmother to have "a happy sleep" results in a bawdy, Japanese shadow-dream; a pair of bird-headed spinsters suddenly find themselves custodians of a large, glowing egg; a lonely toy carriage embarks upon a jaunty odyssey in search of buried dreams. Employing handcrafted tabletop and shadow puppets, Mariposa Nocturna explores loss, longing and rebirth in this gently humorous, darkly beautiful, emotionally resonant new work.