Rebecca Rugg Named Steppenwolf's Associate Producer

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is pleased to announce Rebecca Rugg will join the Steppenwolf staff in the newly-created position of Associate Producer. Ms. Rugg currently serves on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama and has worked on the artistic staff of New York's Public Theater. As Associate Producer, Ms. Rugg will play a key role in supporting productions in all three Steppenwolf performance spaces. She will work closely with the Director of Artistic Development to implement new initiatives, provide dramaturgical expertise and continue to deepen Steppenwolf's commitment to the development of new plays.

"We feel so lucky to have Rebecca joining us," comments Steppenwolf's Director of Artistic Development Polly Carl. "She brings a depth of experience in the world of producing from her time at the Public and she tapped into that next generation of theater-maker through her work at Yale-a perfect combination of skills critical to forwarding Steppenwolf's ongoing commitment to new plays, new artists and new audiences," adds Carl.

ABOUT REBECCA ANN RUGG

Rebecca Rugg currently teaches at the Department of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama. Formerly, she served on the artistic staff at the Joseph Papp Public Theater / New York Shakespeare Festival under George C. Wolfe, as Dramaturg and Director of New Projects, focusing on musical theater development. She was dramaturg on the original productions of Caroline, or Change, Harlem Song, Radiant Baby, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and together with Joe's Pub Director Bill Bragin, commissioned Passing Strange. She produced the University network of 365 Festival-a festival based on 365 Days/365 Plays, a year-long play cycle written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Produced by Bonnie Metzgar together with Parks, this landmark international event was a shared global premiere by hundreds of theaters, universities and art spaces throughout the U.S. and abroad. Time Magazine named the 365 Festival one of its top ten theater events in 2006. At Yale, she founded an international, multi-disciplinary program in the arts and public health, "Arts and Public Health in Action: Study of HIV/AIDS in Swaziland," an unprecedented collaboration between African Studies, Theater Studies, and the School of Drama and Public Health. Her translation of Biljana Srbljanovic's Family Stories premiered at the Market Theater in Cambridge, MA (2002); and has subsequently been produced by companies including the LIDA Project, Denver; The Rorschach Theater, Washington, D.C.; The Point, Hunt's Point, Bronx; The Abbey Theatre Reading Series, Dublin; The Actor's Repertory Theater, Toronto; Live Girls Theater, Seattle. Her criticism and translations have been published in American Theater, Theater Magazine and Performing Arts Journal. She holds a DFA and an MFA from Yale School of Drama, an MA from University of California, Riverside and a BA from Cornell University. She has been a Jacob Javits Fellow, Djerassi Resident Artist, Fellow at U.C. Riverside's Center for Ideas and Society and a member of the Foundry, Ma-Yi and Hip Hop Theater Festival's delegation to the 2007 World Social Forum. This season in Chicago, in addition to being an Artistic Associate at About Face Theater, she was the dramaturg on 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal with the 500 Clown ensemble and a world premiere of the new play Fake written and directed by Eric Simonson, both at Steppenwolf.

ABOUT Steppenwolf Theatre COMPANY
Committed to the principle of ensemble performance through the collaboration of a company of actors, directors and playwrights, Steppenwolf Theatre Company's mission is to advance the vitality and diversity of American theater by nurturing artists, encouraging repeatable creative relationships and contributing new works to the national canon. The company, formed in 1976 by a collective of actors, is dedicated to perpetuating an ethic of mutual respect and the development of artists through on-going group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an internationally renowned company of 42 artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking and textual adaptation. For additional information, visit www.steppenwolf.org, www.facebook.com/SteppenwolfTheatre
and www.twitter.com/SteppenwolfThtr