Raven Theatre Presents Douglas Post Comedy in Fully Staged Reading 11/03-05

Noted Chicago playwright Douglas Post will join Raven Theatre's [Working Title] new play development series with a fully staged workshop production of his comedy Forty-Two Stories, to be directed by Jessica Fisch and performed on the Raven Theatre East Stage Monday, November 3 through Wednesday, November 5. Curtain times for all three performances will be 7:30 pm.

Forty-Two Stories is a comedy about life in a high-rise condominium building whose denizens include a professional student from the University of Chicago moonlighting as a janitor, a stressed-out apartment manager at odds with the residents, and a motley assortment of other staff members struggling with survival in the face of urban pandemonium. Plus, there's suspicion that one of the staffers may be breaking into the units and stealing women's underwear.

The comedy was first performed as a radio play with L.A. Theatre Works where it featured Ed Begley Jr., Dan Butler, Arye Gross, and Fred Willard, and was directed by Gordon Hunt. Subsequently, it received a second radio production with Chicago Theatres on the Air where it was performed by Rengin Altay, Edward Asner, Jane Blass, Kyle Colerider Krugh, Sam Macy, Mike Nussbaum, Morocco Omari, David Pasquesi and Steve Pickering, and was directed by Susan Booth.

Douglas Post lives in Chicago where he is a founding member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, teaches at Chicago Dramatists, and has composed songs and incidental music for over 25 productions. His plays and musicals have been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Canada, England, Wales, Germany, Austria, Russia and China. His plays include Bloodshot, Cynical Weathers, Drowning Sorrows, Earth and Sky and Murder in Green Meadows; and his musicals include God and Country, The Real Life Story of Johnny de Facto and The Wind in the Willows, He has also been commissioned to write screenplays for Warner Bros. and NBC, teleplays for WMAQ-TV, and several radio adaptations of his scripts.

He has been selected on three occasions to develop his work at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and selected once at the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference. He has received the L. Arnold Weissberger Playwriting Award, the Midwestern Playwrights Festival Award, the Cunningham Commission Award, the Blue Ink Playwriting Award and three Playwriting Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award and an Emmy Award.

The fully staged reading of Forty-Two Stories at Raven will be directed by Jessica Fisch, who recently earned her MFA in Directing at Northwestern University. This past spring, Jessica directed a site-specific production of Caryl Churchill's Far Away in two abandoned buildings on the border of Chicago and Evanston. Prior to moving to Chicago, Jessica lived in New York City where she was the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Down Payment Productions (DPP), a company committed to the development of new work.

Fisch's cast for Forty-Two Stories will include Holly Allen, Darren Jones, Ed Kuffert, Vincent L. Lonergan, Tom McGrath, Mike Rice, Andrew L. Saenz, Sara Sawicki and Will Sonheim. The design team includes Lauren Nigri (Set Designer), Stephanie Cluggish (Costume Designer), Sammy Zeisel (Sound Designer) and Rebecca Barrett (Lighting Designer). The production team also includes Shannon Desmond (Stage Manager), Brendan Flynn (Assistant Director) and Jenna Meyers (Production Intern).

Raven Theatre is dedicated to performing arts that illuminate the American experience and work that provides reflection on our identity in a global context. Through its ensemble produced plays, collaborations with outside artists and organizations and its educational programming, Raven is committed to serving our community's needs through the arts.

Raven Theatre Company's 2014-15 season of programming is generously supported by Alphawood Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Yates-Feldman Foundation, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Jamerson & Bauwens Electrical Contractors, Inc., The Pauls Foundation, The Saints, Artswork Fund for Organizational Development, The Service Club of Chicago, and Dramatists Guild Fund. Raven's season is also funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Raven's education and outreach programming is generously funded by Polk Bros Foundation, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, REAM Foundation and Kinder Morgan Foundation.