Red Tape Theatre Co Announces 2011-2012 Season, Begins With BRAND

Red Tape Theatre Company has announced its 2011/12 Season. Information and tickets are available at www.redtapetheatre.org.

Brand
By Henrik Ibsen
directed by Max Truax
featuring ensemble members Carrie Drapac, Lona Livinston, Paul Miller, and Amanda Reader with Kevin Crispin, Todd Keich, Sarah Pretz, Cody Procter
Designs by ensemble member Emily Guthrie, with Ben Fuchsen, Jonathan Guillen, Mike Mroch, Karen Thompson, and Emily Waecker

Gingerbread House
Chicago premiere from acclaimed playwright Mark Schulz
directed by James D Palmer
Featuring ensemble members Nick Combs, Alex Kyger, Meghan Reardon and Paige Sawin.
Designs by ensemble members Emily Guthrie and Kyle Land with Scott Davis, and Miles Polaski.

Chicago Fringe Artist Networking Night
featuring dozens of Chicago fringe-artists from all disciplines
curated by Myah Shein

Elephants Graveyard
Chicago premiere from acclaimed playwright George Brant
directed by James D Palmer

Wake up, shower, shave, run to the train, coffee, email, meetings, surf the web, bar, home, television, sleep - repeat. Life comes at you fast. It's intoxicating how quickly life piles up around you. As citizens, care-givers, employees and lovers we shoulder an incredible amount of responsibilities. To cope, we spend most of our lives on auto-pilot. But every now and then, something catastrophic happens that pulls us out of our ever accelerating circuit. Sometimes it's death, sometimes it's birth, sometimes it's love, often times it's loss. In these moments, the air smells fresher, our hearts love boldly, our smiles widen. These moments stack up and become the things we remember most about our lives. The rest is just sleepwalking.

For our 2011-2012 season, Red Tape creates three theatre experiences to wake the living. We found inspiration in stories of overthrown dogmas, familial redemption and the yearning for exhilaration. We hope these offerings create pause in your life and rouse you from your waking-slumber.

Brand
September 29 - October 29
Press Opening October 3
Directed by Max Truax
Red Tape Theatre 621 W Belmont www.redtapetheatre.org

Chicago's leading avant-garde director, Max Truax, helms Henrik Ibsen's obscure epic Brand. Old Testament rage battles modern complacence when a furious priest attempts to reform a small town steeped in corruption. When the town gives Brand the pulpit he desires, his ideals prove his undoing. Time Out Chicago hails Truax as "one of the most visually visionary directors in Chicago's storefront scene". Don't miss your chance to see him team up with the Chicago's most ambitious theatre company.

Max Truax
Max Truax's recent directing credits include Woyzeck, The Ghost Sonata, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe: The Hairpin Turn, and Termen Vox Machina at Oracle Theatre, and Hamletmachine, A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians, and No Darkness Round My Stone at Trap Door Theatre. Truax is a Resident Director at Trap Door Theatre and the Outreach Director for Oracle Productions. His production of A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians performed at the Fun Underground Festival in Arad, Romania and at the Bagatela Theatre in Krakow, Poland. Later this season, Truax is scheduled to direct Handke's They Are Dying Out at Trap Door Theatre and Durrenmatt's The Visit at Oracle Theatre.

Gingerbread House
February 2 - March 3
Press Opening February 6
Written by Mark Schulz
Directed by James D Palmer
Chicago Premiere - Red Tape Theatre 621 W Belmont www.redtapetheatre.org

What would you give to live the life of your dreams? What if there was no one to stop you? How far could you go and still be able to sleep at night? Brian is on the fast track to a successful career but one thing is weighing him down: his children. Together with his wife Stacey and a mysterious broker named Marco, the couple hatch a plan to trade their kids for another chance at happiness and a rekindled sex life. But when doubts about the kids' fates start to haunt Stacey, how long can their newly found happiness last? Fresh off his 2011 Joseph Jefferson Award win, Red Tape Artistic Director James D. Palmer teams up with ensemble members Nick Combs, Meghan Reardon, Paige Sawin and Alex Kyger to mount this dark, comic parable from the author of A Brief History of Helen of Troy.

James Palmer directed and adapted Dog in a Manger (2008). Directing credits include 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.

Mark Schulz. Recent plays include: Deathbed (Apparition Productions); Everything Will Be Different or A Brief History of Helen of Troy (Soho Rep/True Love Productions) for which he won the 2005 Oppenheimer Award and the 2006 Kesselring Prize; Polar Bear (Birmingham Rep, UK) Gift (Rising Phoenix Rep / NY Fringe Festival). Everything Will Be Different was produced by the Actors Touring Company with Theatre Royal Plymouth under the title A Brief History of Helen of Troy at the Soho Theatre in London after a UK tour. Other plays include Magic Kingdom; Brightness; The Gingerbread House. He has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, MTC (Sloan Commission), Birmingham Rep, StageFARM, and The Exchange. Readings and workshops: MCC Theater; The Vineyard; Rattlestick; MTC; New York Theater Workshop; The Public; Studio Dante; Woolly Mammoth. He was selected for a 2006 Royal Court Residency. His work is published by Oberon, Dramatists Play Service, and Smith & Kraus and was featured in Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope magazine. He is a member of Rising Phoenix Rep, and is coordinator of MCC Theater's Playwrights' Coalition. He holds an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University.

Chicago Fringe Artist Networking Night
March 31

Calling all culture vultures! CFANN is a one night event hosted by Red Tape Theatre. It brings together artists and arts enthusiasts for an evening of performances, installations, and tasty treats from neighborhood eateries. Red Tape is known for its transformative space, and CFANN is no exception. Guests will find themselves in a cool, lounge style venue surrounded by provocative intersections of visual, interactive and performance art.

Elephants Graveyard
May 10 - June 9
Press Opening May 7
Written by George Brant
Directed by James Palmer
Chicago Premiere - Red Tape Theatre 621 W Belmont www.redtapetheatre.org

When The Sparks World Famous Shows Circus pulls into the quiet town of Erwin Tennessee, the residents of the sleepy little hamlet can hardly contain their excitement. But when a member of the circus commits a gruesome murder, the townsfolk demand justice. Elephants Graveyard is the tragic story of a circus troupe caught in the cross-hairs of a small town in turn-of-the-century America. Historical fact and legend combine in this larger-than-life exploration of the deep-seated American craving for spectacle, violence and revenge.

George Brant's plays include Elephant's Graveyard, Any Other Name, Grizzly Mama, The Mourners' Bench, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Defiant, Dark Room, Little Sir Echo, Good on Paper, Ashes, NOK, The Lonesome Hoboes, One Hand Clapping, Terminal One, The Royal Historian of Oz, Lovely Letters, Three Men in a Boat, Borglum! The Mount Rushmore Musical, Tights on a Wire and Night of the Mime. His work has been produced and developed by such companies as Trinity Repertory Company, the Kennedy Center, Cleveland Play House, the Playwrights Foundation, the Playwrights' Center, Dobama Theatre, WordBRIDGE Playwright's Lab, Florida Studio Theatre, ATHE, Premiere Stages,Trustus Theatre, Balagan Theatre, Elemental Theatre Collective, the Drama League, Debutantes and Vagabonds, Terrific New Theatre, the Disney Channel, Circle Theatre, Factory Theatre, StreetSigns Theatre Company, and zeppo theater company. His plays have been awarded the Keene Prize for Literature, the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, a citation of "Best New Play" from the Austin Critics' Table, the Clauder Competition State Winner, a Playwright's Center Core Apprentice Workshop, and the Premiere Stages New Plays Festival. He has received writing fellowships from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Blue Mountain Center, and commissions from Dobama Theatre and Theatre 4.

Red Tape Theatre Company, now in its eighth 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. Our 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.