About Face Theatre Announces 09-10 Season, Launches Out And About Initiative

Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar and Managing Director Rick Dildine are proud to announce About Face Theatre's 2009/2010 Season, which features the launch of the new "OUT & ABOUT" initiative. "OUT & ABOUT" will engage patrons and members with local businesses by negotiating discounts and other incentivized interactions in locations all over the city of Chicago. Embracing today's economic reality, About Face seeks to disprove the old model that says the arts are a frivolous extra, the LGBTQ community is "other," and that neither are relevant to the real business world. Capitalizing on the grassroots model of its successful "Face The Future" campaign from last year, About Face is using this initiative to reach back into the very communities and institutions that support its critical mission.

"The culture is shifting, the world is changing -- we all need to get out of our comfort zones and experience art on streets all over the city, " Metzgar says. "Through OUT & ABOUT, About Face will partner with community groups and businesses to spread art and ideas into diverse neighborhoods across Chicago."

About Face's 14th season begins in the fall with the CHICAGO XYZ Festival, a new showcase for innovative artists presenting work at all stages of development. Among its productions, the XYZ Festival will feature the world premiere production of "FLOWERS" by Adam Bock. This winter, About Face plans to return to Center on Halsted for "WHAT ONCE WE FELT" by playwright Ann Marie Healy. AFT launches a new partnership with Jane Saks and the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for Gender and Women in the Media at Columbia College with a co-production of an adaptation of "SWEET TEA: Black Gay Men of the South" by E. Patrick Johnson in May. The season will conclude with "QUEERTOPIA", a new performance work from About Face Youth Theatre in summer 2010.
"After our successful FACE THE FUTURE fundraising campaign this year, About Face is proud to be presenting so many brilliant and important new theatre works to our community here in Chicago," says Dildine. "With the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the current debate on marriage equality and the spike in violence toward LGBTQ youth, AFT's mission has never been more central to the artistic life of the city."

CHICAGO XYZ FESTIVAL of New Works

Designed to foster the creation of new work by the most imaginative and daring artists engaged with issues of sexuality and gender, the Chicago XYZ Festival features a world premiere play by Adam Bock called "FLOWERS", a reworking of "THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE" by Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philiadelphia, an interactive wedding project called "LET THEM EAT CAKE" by Holly Hughes and Megan Carney, a Lesbian Playwrights reading series and other works in development. As the explosive launch of "OUT & ABOUT", XYZ events will happen in locations all over the city of Chicago. The XYZ Festival will run from Sept 21 - Nov 15.
The headliner of the XYZ Festival is a world premiere production of "FLOWERS", written by New York-based Adam Bock (Obie award-winning playwright of "The Thugs") and directed by Trip Cullman. "FLOWERS" tells of a theatre company in a small town whose work on stage dangerously bleeds into the real world. Hal and James have surrounded themselves with people that they love. What do we do when the family we create from our friends starts behaving like our actual family? Adam Bock's "Flowers" is a play about acting, acting out, love, and the whole wide world. "FLOWERS" runs October 15 - November 8.

Director Dan Rothenberg will lead members of Philadelphia's Obie-Award winning irreverent clown company Pig Iron in collaboration with an ensemble of Chicago's greatest physical comedians to present a rock'n'roll reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan's "PIRATES OF PENZANCE". This will be the first time Pig Iron's work has been presented in Chicago. Public showcases of this work in progress will be presented on October 3 and 4.

Legendary performer and activist Holly Hughes (of "NEA 4" notoriety), along with AFT Artistic Associate Megan Carney will present "LET THEM EAT CAKE", an interactive project designed to further the public discourse about gay marriage. Hughes and Carney will lead a diverse and intergenerational ensemble of Chicago-based performers through a process informed by research on the history and rituals of marriage. The process will culminate in public gatherings where promises may get broken and food may fly. Performances October 30, 31 and Nov 1.

The Lesbian Play Reading Series features a group of distinguished playwrights, including About Face Theatre Artistic Associate Pat Kane; Sarah Gubbins, and Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar.

"WHAT ONCE WE FELT" by Ann Marie Healy

In the late winter, About Face plans to take Chicago audiences to a parallel universe with a production of "What Once We Felt", a comedic, futuristic thriller by playwright Ann Marie Healy. The play is a dystopian look at a futuristic society in which men have become extinct and natural selection has been sidelined by DNA "downloading." The play is a provocative, terrifying and hilarious romp through the annals of genocide, suicide, infanticide and bad manners. The Sara Lee Foundation is the Exclusive Corporate Sponsor of "What Once We Felt".

"SWEET TEA" by E. Patrick Johnson, an adaptation of his sensational study of gay, black men in the South

Traveling to every southern state, author E. Patrick Johnson conducted interviews with more than seventy black gay men between the ages of 19 and 93 and published the book this year to wide praise. Johnson, who teaches at Northwestern and is a leading theorist on issues of race and performance, challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive," suggesting that these men draw upon the performance of "southernness" -- politeness, coded speech, and religiosity, for example -- to legitimate themselves as members of both southern and black cultures. About Face will produce a stage adaptation of "SWEET TEA" in partnership with Jane Saks at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for Gender and Women in the Media at Columbia College in May.

"QUEERTOPIA" Youth Theatre Project, by the About Face Youth Theatre ensemble and directed by Youth Theatre and Education Programs Director Paula Gilovich

After a two year gestation process, About Face is pleased to announce "QUEERTOPIA", a new theatrical investigation by About Face Youth Theatre. This oral history project will be comprised of collected stories of discrimination, violence and exclusion of LGBTQ young people and their allies in Chicago schools and community settings. The project will aim to provide the city, legislators and CPS with a comprehensive picture of what is really happening to LGBTQA students at school, and to young people on our streets and in our community spaces. Members of the community can share their stories for the creation of "QUEERTOPIA" by emailing Education Director Paula Gilovich at paula@aboutfacetheatre.com.

"Today's LGBTQA youth witness so much violence and they experience so much hate-speak," says Gilovich. "These incidents are often captured as statistics, and so it is our goal to unpack those statistics and tell the comprehensive story of how violence and bullying erupt in our schools. We will donate our story data to the community and to Chicago Public Schools with the hope of advancing anti-violence work, anti-oppression curricula and anti-bullying programming in our city."

"QUEERTOPIA" is made possible with the support and contributions of its community partners: the Goodman Theatre, Howard Brown, Genderjust, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance and the Center on Halsted, and will be performed in July 2010.

About Face Theatre is one of Chicago's most acclaimed theatre companies, and is a national leader in the development of new work exploring gender and sexual identity. Since its founding by Kyle Hall and Eric Rosen in 1995, the company has premiered more than 30 new plays by writers and directors who have been recognized with several Tony Awards, The Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The MacArthur Fellowship and dozens of Joseph Jefferson Awards.
Landmark world premieres include Doug Wright's Pulitzer and Tony-winning "I Am My Own Wife"; Moisés Kaufman's production of Tennessee Williams' "One Arm" (a co-production with Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Tectonic Theatre Project); Mary Zimmerman's "M. Proust", and, with Lookingglass Theatre, the famed "Eleven Rooms of Proust"; Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty's "Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein" (a co-production with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Original Cast Album recorded by Jay Records); the multi-award winning musical "Winesburg, Ohio" by Eric Rosen, Andre Pluess, Ben Sussman and Jessica Thebus; and the cult hit "Pulp" by Patricia Kane.

In addition to its award-winning mainstage performances, About Face is known nationally for its ground- breaking Youth Theatre, which creates critically acclaimed new work by and about LGBTQ youth and their allies. The Youth Theatre has performed on major stages across the country, and, through its outreach tour, changes the lives of thousands of young people each year. Building on the success of the youth theatre model, About Face recently launched its corporate outreach program to provide diversity training and onsite workshops to the corporate community. About Face Theatre creates exceptional, innovative and adventurous plays to advance the national dialogue on gender and sexual identity, and to challenge and entertain audiences in Chicago, across the country and around the world.

Ann Marie Healy: In June 2008, Anne Marie Healy's play "The Gentleman Caller" was produced by Clubbed Thumb in June 2008. "Have You Seen Steve Steven?" was produced by 13P in NY in 2007 after receiving a workshop at the prestigious Sundance Institute and at Soho Rep and MCC's Playwright's Coalition. "Dearest Eugenia Haggis" received a workshop production with Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks 2005. In summer 2008, Ann Marie was a guest artist at the O'Neill Center and had a reading of "What Once We Felt" at Playwrights Horizons. Ann Marie is a graduate of the Brown MFA playwriting program.

Adam Bock: Adam Bock's "The Thugs" premiered at NYC's Soho Rep in 2006, winning an OBIE for playwriting for Mr. Bock and an OBIE for directing for Anne Kauffman, and was named to both of TimeOut NY's Top Ten lists. His play "The Receptionist" had its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in October 2007, directed by Joe Mantello. His play "The Drunken City" was produced at Playwrights Horizons in early 2008. Mr. Bock is an artistic associate at Shotgun Players and Encore Theater, and is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.

E. Patrick Johnson (Sweet Tea adaptation): E. Patrick Johnson's first book, "Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity" (Duke University Press 2003) deals with cultural, social, and political battles over origin, ownership, circulation, and performance, and won several awards. He toured his one-man show, "Strange Fruit", around the country between 1999 and 2004. He is currently touring "Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales," a solo performance based on the narratives in his book "Sweet Tea". He is working on an anthology of black queer performance texts and researching queer sexuality and performance in the black church.

Pig Iron Theatre Company (Pirates of Penzance in XYZ festival): In the past 12 years the company has created 22 original works and has toured to festivals and theaters across the globe. In 2005, Pig Iron won an OBIE Award for "Hell Meets Henry Halfway", an adaptation of Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz's novel "Possessed". In 2006, Pig Iron was named Theatre Company of the Year in the Philadelphia Weekly. Pig Iron calls itself a "dance-clown-theatre ensemble," with individual pieces having been called "soundscape and spectacle," "cabaret-ballet," and "avant-garde shadow puppet dessert-theatre." Currently, Pig Iron is composed of 3 artistic directors and 5 company members, in addition to an administrative staff and board of directors. The company made Philadelphia its permanent home in 1997; though individual pieces are often developed in residency at other theatres or at universities, there are premieres of all their work in Philadelphia.

The Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media (co-producer of Sweet Tea adaptation) was founded by Executive director Jane M. Saks at Columbia College Chicago in March 2005. The first of its kind in the nation, the Institute offers a dynamic and innovative multidisciplinary approach that merges applied arts and cultural production with critical theory and academic research. The Institute's mission is to deepen understanding and appreciation of how issues related to women, gender, creativity and community shape social policy, culture, history and critical theory.

About Face Theatre 2009/10 Season

CHICAGO XYZ FESTIVAL

Featuring local and national artists

September 21-November 15, 2009
FLOWERS

Featured production of XYZ Festival

Written by Adam Bock

Previews begin October 15, 2009

Opening night October 23, 2009

Closing night November 8, 2009

WHAT ONCE WE FELT

Written by Ann-Marie Healy

Winter/Spring 2010

The Sara Lee Foundation is the Exclusive Corporate Sponsor of "What Once We Felt"

SWEET TEA

Adapted by E. Patrick Johnson

Previews begin May 6, 2010

Opening night May 14, 2010

Closing night, May 23, 2010
QUEERTOPIA - Youth Theatre Project

Written by the About Face Youth Theatre Ensemble

Conceived by Paula Gilovich

July, 2010

For ticket information, please visit www.AboutFaceTheatre.com.