Bonnie Metzgar New Artistic Director-About Face Theatre

About Face Theatre is pleased to announce today that award-winning producer, director and playwright Bonnie Metzgar has been named Artistic Director of About Face Theatre.

Bonnie Metzgar, a nationally known theatre artist with more than 20 years of experience, leaves her post as a professor and director of the graduate playwriting program at Brown University where she was also artistic director of Brown's New Plays Festival for the past three years with Paula Vogel. From 2004 to 2007, Metzgar served as associate artistic director of Curious Theatre Company in Denver.  Metzgar also served as associate producer of the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival from 1995 to 2003 and was founder of the internationally renowned venue Joe's Pub. Metzgar has received multiple awards including The Denver Post's 2006 Colorado Theatre Person of the Year and the 2006 Paul Green Foundation Award.

"In its extraordinary 13-year history, About Face has gained a national reputation for creating bold new theatrical works that explore the borders of sexuality and gender," says new Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar.  "I am honored to join the vibrant Chicago arts community and look forward to partnering with the Center on Halsted as a leader in the LGBT community."

In 2008, About Face will continue its residency at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre at the Center on Halsted located at the corner of Halsted Street and Waveland Avenue on the city's northside. This partnership provides a space and programming opportunities which will facilitate increased community outreach and new partnerships within the neighborhood and beyond.

About Face has 30 world premieres to its credit and is nationally recognized as a resource for the creation and development of new plays.  About Face's 2006 hit production of Clay, co-produced with Lookingglass Theatre, just completed a successful run at the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles and will open at Lincoln Center in New York this fall.  Most notably, About Face developed and produced the internationally acclaimed hit I Am My Own Wife which was the most produced play in the country in 2006.

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.

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.
 

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