First Floor Theater Announces 2013-14 Season: TOLLBOOTH, POLAROID STORIES & More!

First Floor Theater is pleased to announce its 2013/14 Season, featuring one world premiere, one Chicago premiere, and the return of its annual literary festival. In the fall, FFT takes on Naomi Iizuka's masterful mash-up of Roman myth and documentary theatre with Polaroid Stories, directed by Hutch Pimentel at Red Tape Theatre. In the winter, FFT presents the deathbed meeting of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe and the Roman emperor Caligula in the Chicago premiere of Nat Cassidy's The Reckoning of Kit and Little Boots, a metaphysical buddy comedy directed by Gus Menary at The Den Theatre. In the spring, Will Bishop & Scott Ray Merchant team up to present the world premiere of Tollbooth: A Clown Show, a clown and object theater piece for all ages. And concluding the season, FFT's Annual LitFest, returns with new works from celebrated Chicago playwrights all based around the work of an author to be selected by the attendees of FFT's season kick-off party.

"This year, First Floor Theater embarks on its first full season, and we've selected a slate of shows that reaffirm our core mission of inspiring intellectual curiosity in our artists and audiences," comments Artistic Director Will Bishop. "These three plays are smart, moving, funny, and tragic. They look to our past while asking vital questions about our future, both as individuals and as citizens of a contemporary city. They inspire us to think, to dream, and to celebrate our ability to apply both our intelligence and our creativity to make better art and fashion a better world," adds Bishop.

First Floor Theater's 2013/14 Season:
POLAROID STORIES
By Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Hutch Pimentel
November 21 - December 21
at Red Tape Theatre, 621 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago, IL 60657
Polaroid Stories is an explosive re-imagining of Ovid's Metamorphoses that blends interviews from street-based youth and sex workers with ancient myth. The play takes place in the underbelly of a city where junkies scheme, lovers run and the lost wander, a refuge for those living on The Edge of society. Iizuka illuminates the depths of a metropolis with her chaotic elegy of desire, desperation and transcendence.

The Chicago Premiere of
THE RECKONING OF KIT AND LITTLE BOOTS
By Nat Cassidy
Directed by Gus Menary
February 7 - March 2
at The Den Theater, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60622
The famous Elizabethan playwright, Christopher "Kit" Marlowe has been stabbed. While dying, he is visited by an apparition, the ghost of insane Roman Emperor Caligula ("Little Boots"). Caligula proceeds to walk Marlowe backwards through their respective histories exploring the power of infamy, the struggles of writing and the universal human spirit in this witty and ultimately moving comedy. Gus Menary, of The Inconvenience and Jackalope Theatre, directs with his signature love of word play and dry comedy.

TOLLBOOTH: A CLOWN SHOW
Devised and Directed by Will Bishop with Scott Ray Merchant
May 2014
Location TBA
Tollbooth: A Clown Show will bring together Will Bishop, Artistic Director of First Floor, Scott Ray Merchant, a team of visual artists and an ensemble of clown-puppeteers to create a new all-ages piece inspired by Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Set in an interactive children's birthday party, this new project will explore the wonder inherent in the world around us and celebrate the power of imagination to inspire change.

First Floor Theater, founded in 2012 by University of Chicago graduates, makes theater to feed the audience's intellectual curiosity by re-imagining classical texts, adapting literary treasures, and creating new work for our time that stands on the shoulders of the past. FFT was named the "Best New Theater Company" in the Chicago Reader's Best of 2013 Reader's Pick edition.

For more information on First Floor Theater, visit http://firstfloortheater.com/.

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