American Theater Company Presents THE SILVER PROJECT: PART II

American Theater Company (ATC) is thrilled to announce that the second installment of its 25th Anniversary celebration, The Silver Project, will include world premiere plays by playwrights Kristoffer Diaz, Steve Harper, Laura Jacqmin, Joel Drake Johnson and Justin DM Palmer. The second Silver Project presentation will take place at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron Street, Chicago on Monday, March 1, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.

To celebrate the company's 25th Anniversary, Artistic Director PJ Paparelli asked over 30 playwrights across the country to choose a year between 1985 and 2010 and write a short play that explores the company's mission: "what does it mean to be an American?" Directed and performed by over 50 Chicago artists, the plays will be presented in five parts throughout the year and as a complete cycle during The National Theatre Communications Group Conference June 16-20, 2010 here in Chicago.

"Part 2 of The Silver Project explores domestic issues in America between 1988 to 2001," says Artistic Director PJ Paparelli. "We have such a dynamic team with some of Chicago and New York's most wildly imagiNative Theatre minds. The topics range from recycling and Mad Cow disease to the final pick for the Olympic Dream Team. Part 2 creates a perfect balance between the profound and ridiculous."

The program for this next showcase on March 1st will include:

Year 1991: There are Lessons to be Learned, written by Joel Drake Johnson, directed by Laura Hooper.
Year 1988: The Third Date, written by Justin DM Palmer, directed by Megan Schuchman
Year 1992: Shaquille O'Neal and Christian Laettner Discuss..., written by Kristoffer Diaz, directed by Eddie Torres
Year 1996: Cow, written by Laura Jacqmin, directed by Edward Cisneros
Year 2001: Love War Death Life, written by Steve Harper, directed by Jeffry Stanton

Kristoffer Diaz is a playwright and educator, currently living and working in Minneapolis, where he is a 2009-10 Jerome Fellow. His plays The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Guernica have been produced and developed at Second Stage, Victory Gardens, The Orchard Project, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, The Lark, Summer Play Festival, Donmar Warehouse, Humana Festival of New American Plays, and South Coast Repertory. His play Welcome to Arroyo's will be produced at American Theater Company this spring. He is a playwright-in-residence at Teatro Vista, a recipient of both the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant and the Van Lier Fellowship, and a member of the Ars Nova Play Group.

Steve Harper's plays include Urban Rabbit Chronicles (Weissberger Award nomination), The Escape Artist's Children (Winner: 2009 New Professional Theatre Writer's Festival), This is Now (American Airlines Theatre - 24 Hour Plays), First Encounter (Falcon Theatre / L.A. - NBC diversity showcase), Actual Cost (Juilliard Centennial - published by The Kenyon Review Online). Readings and workshops: NY Stage & Film, Summer Play Festival/Naked Angels, NYTW. Education: Yale, The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard and the playwriting program at Juilliard. Awards: Le Compte du Nouy prize at Juilliard, Yaddo's Skidmore Residency for Artists of Color and a MacDowell Colony NEA Fellowship.
(more)
THE SILVER PROJECT / PAGE TWO

Laura Jacqmin is the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award for emerging female playwrights. Her play Ski Dubai was produced in Steppenwolf Theatre Company's 5th Annual First Look Repertory of New Work. Jacqmin was the artist-in-residence at the Center on Age and Community in Milwaukee during the Fall of 2009, where she completed Milvotchkee, Visconsin.

Joel Drake Johnson is one of the newest members of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater Playwrights Ensemble. He lives in Chicago and New Buffalo, Michigan where he is working on three new plays: The First Grade, which will be produced by the Aurora Theatre Company in the winter of 2010; A Guide for the Perplexed, which will be produced by Victory Gardens in the summer of 2010; The Boys Room, first developed at Victory Gardens and later a part of Northlight Theatre's Interplay and Steppenwolf Theatre's First Look reading series.

Justin D.M. Palmer is a Chicago-based playwright and screenwriter. His short play Taboo performed at American Theater Company's 10x10 Festival in the summer of 2009. His co-adaptation of War With The Newts (from the 1936 novel by Karel Capek) will premiere at the Next Theatre in May 2010. He has co-written several short indie comedies with the local filmmaker Nathan Adloff, with whom he is also developing a feature-length independent comedy to shoot in Chicago in Spring 2010. Justin has a MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute Chicago.

The second Silver Project performance will be at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron Street in Chicago on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:30pm.

Parking is available on the street and at the metered lot on the corner of Lincoln and Berenice. ATC is wheelchair accessible. This is a free event. Please call the Box Office at 773-409-4124 to make a reservation. ATC's box office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. on performance Saturdays and from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on performance Sundays. For further information, call 773-409-4125 or visit www.atcweb.org.

AMERICAN THEATER COMPANY

American Theater Company is an ensemble of artists committed to producing new and classic American stories that ask the question, "What does it mean to be an American?"

American Theater Company is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and CityArts II. Additional valuable support is provided by the Alphawood Foundation, the Bruce B. Boyd Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, the Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation, the Polk Bros. Foundation, and Prince Charitable Trust.