AstonRep Theatre Company Announces 2020-21 Season

AstonRep Theatre Company has announced its 2020-21 season, featuring two virtual events and two live, in-person productions.

AstonRep's 2020-21 Season kicks off this fall Twisted Tales of Poe, a streaming radio broadcast based on Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, adapted by Philip Grecian and directed by Aaron Mays - the perfect treat for Halloween! The season continues this winter with AstonRep's 12th Annual Writer's Series, a daylong festival of virtual workshops of plays from talented local and regional writers. Next spring, AstonRep plans to resume live, in-person performances with the Chicago premiere of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's action-adventure-fantasy Rough Magic. The season concludes next fall with the rescheduled Chicago premiere of Sarah Treem's courageous drama When We Were Young and Unafraid, directed by Co-Artistic Director Sara Pavlak McGuire.

Rough Magic and When We Were Young and Unafraid will be staged on The Edge Theater's mainstage, 5451 N. Broadway St. in Chicago. Tickets for all productions will go on sale at a later date. For additional information, visit www.astonrep.com.

AstonRep Theatre Company's 2020-21 Season includes:

Twisted Tales of Poe - A Streaming Radio Play

Based on Tales by Edgar Allen Poe

Adapted by Philip Grecian

Directed by Aaron Mays

October 26 - 31, 2020

"The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat," and "The Raven," each created by the master of the mysterious and macabre. The mysterious presence of the raven, the victim's vulture eye and the catacombs of Italy all come to life in AstonRep's streaming radio broadcast - just in time for Halloween.

The 12th Annual Writers Series - Virtual Performances!

Titles to be announced.

January 30 - 31, 2021

Since the company's founding, AstonRep Theatre Company has hosted their annual Writer's Series - a festival featuring Chicago-based and national playwrights who get an opportunity to workshop near-finished plays and works in development. Over the course of a day, new works are read by AstonRep actors and guest artists followed by focused talkback sessions with the writers.

Rough Magic - Chicago Premiere!

By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Co-Directed by Melanie Thompson and Co-Artistic Director Derek Bertelsen

at The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway St., Chicago

April 30 - May 30, 2021

Transplanting characters from The Tempest to present-day New York, Rough Magic is a Shakespearean action-adventure-fantasy in the tradition of Harry Potter and The X-Men that conjures a mythical, magical meta-universe in which the evil sorcerer Prospero is willing to do anything to recover his stolen book of magic - even if it means Manhattan's destruction. Lucky for us, New York's defenders include a quartet of unlikely heroes: Melanie Porter, a plucky, raven-haired dramaturg with the ability to free characters from plays; Caliban, Prospero's hunky (though not-too-bright) son; Tisiphone, a revenge-seeking Fury from Ancient Greece; and a seventeen-year-old lifeguard from Coney Island named Chet Baxter. May the forces of evil beware!

Fall 2021

When We Were Young and Unafraid - Chicago Premiere!

By Sarah Treem

Directed by Co-Artistic Director Sara Pavlak McGuire

at The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway St., Chicago

In the early 1970s, before Roe v. Wade, before the Violence Against Women Act, Agnes has turned her quiet bed and breakfast into one of the few spots where victims of domestic violence can seek refuge. But to Agnes's dismay, her latest runaway, Mary Anne, is beginning to influence Agnes's college-bound daughter Penny. As the drums of a feminist revolution grow louder outside of Agnes's tiny world, Agnes is forced to confront her own presumptions about the women she's spent her life trying to help.

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