Steppenwolf Announces Companies for 3rd Annual GARAGE REP

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is pleased to announce the three Chicago companies selected for its third annual GARAGE REP: The Inconvenience, LiveWire Chicago and Theatre Zarko. These innovative, exciting companies will present three productions in rotating repertory for a ten-week run February 3 - April 8, 2012 in The Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N. Halsted St. Tickets will go on sale at a later date.

"These three companies bring an uncommon mix of talent and creativity to Chicago's storefront scene - they're at the cutting edge of what makes Chicago such an exciting theater town," comments Steppenwolf Artistic Producer Rebecca Rugg. "This year's GARAGE REP productions are all in direct conversation with Steppenwolf's season theme - Dispatches from the Homefront. We look forward to the ways these projects intersect with our broader consideration of how everyday lives are touched by war, coming home, winning and losing," adds Rugg.

The GARAGE REP 2012 Productions & Companies:

LiveWire Chicago presents
Current Nobody
By Melissa James Gibson, directed by Lisa Portes

It's a journalist's assignment of a lifetime: document the entire Trojan War. Photojournalist Pen embarks upon the project with excitement, leaving behind her husband and daughter. As Pen's absence extends from weeks to years, her family grapples with the personal cost of her ambition. Their struggle is exposed by a relentless trio of indie documentary filmmakers who force their fractured home into the public eye. An intimate look at love left behind, the Chicago premiere of Melissa James Gibson's Current Nobody retells the classic epic tale of Homer's Odyssey to reveal the cost of abandoning home for the glories of war.

LiveWire Chicago is a collective of artists who create theatre that reflects the current cultural landscape of our community through productions of original and contemporary works. www.livewirechicago.com

Theatre Zarko presents
He Who
Written and directed by Michael Montenegro

How do four brave and exhausted women share the burden of one grotesquely enormous baby? They struggle to nurture and restrain the giant darling. But the baby has an existential crisis, which sparks a fight for control. His tyrannical attempts to pit the women against each other ultimately test the limits of love. Darkly poetic and arresting, He Who brings together live performers, puppets, and original music for an intimate audience experience. Master puppeteer Michael Montenegro conceives and directs this world premiere.

Theatre Zarko explores puppet and mask theatre as an innovative, developing art form, with a focus on building strong artistic relationships within the community. Our work expresses a strong visual point of view that plays with scale, metaphor, integral live music and a surrealistic expression of images and themes.

The Inconvenience presents
Hit the Wall
By Ike Holter, directed by Eric Hoff

It's the summer of '69 and the death of music icon Judy Garland has emboldened her gay followers. A routine police raid on an underground Greenwich Village hotspot erupts in to a full-scale riot, the impetus of the modern gay rights movement. That's the well-known, oft-rehearsed myth of Stonewall, anyhow. Smash that myth against the vivid theatrical imagination of playwright Ike Holter, add a howling live rock ‘n roll band, and you get the world premiere play, Hit the Wall. Remixing this historic confrontation reveals ten unlikely revolutionaries, caught in the turmoil and fighting to claim "I was there."

The Inconvenience is a community of interdisciplinary artists who seek to create a new way of experiencing art through a collaboration of music, theatre, dance, fine art and celebration. We create, produce, and curate work that challenges audience and artist perspectives and ignites social dialogue.

GARAGE REP HISTORY

Steppenwolf's inaugural GARAGE REP, presented February 18 - April 25, 2010, included three productions in rotating repertory: Adore by XIII Pocket, punkplay by Pavement Group and The Twins Would Like To Say by Dog & Pony Theatre Company. The second annual GARAGE REP, presented February 11 - April 24, 2011, featured Heddatron by Sideshow Theatre Company, The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen by The Strange Tree Group and Sonnets for an Old Century by UrbanTheater Company.

The Steppenwolf Garage is dedicated to new plays, new artists and new audiences for the American theater. It offers artists the opportunity to present their work with the scale, space and resources it merits. For audiences, it provides opportunities to engage in multigenerational conversation about the new, provocative work emerging from Chicago's diverse and vibrant theatre scene.

Support for the GARAGE REP comes through the "Leading for the Future Initiative," a program of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, IL (Martha Lavey, Artistic Director; David Hawkanson, Executive Director) is where great acting meets big ideas. Our passion is to tell stories about how we live now. Our mission is to engage audiences in an exchange of ideas that makes us think harder, laugh longer, feel more. The company was formed in 1976 by a collective of actors and is dedicated to an ethic of mutual respect and the development of artists through ongoing group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an internationally renowned ensemble of 43 artists who represent a remarkable generation of actors, directors and playwrights. For additional information, visit www.steppenwolf.org, www.facebook.com/SteppenwolfTheatre and www.twitter.com/SteppenwolfThtr.