GIRLS VS BOYS Hits The Hal And Martha Hyer Wallis Theater 7/10 And Runs Through 8/2

The new musical Girls Vs Boys, a developmental production of the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University (AMTP) and The House Theatre of Chicago, begins performances Friday, July 10, in the Hal and Martha Hyer Wallis Theater on Northwestern University's Evanston campus.

Girls Vs Boys plunges the audience into the hyper-emotional world of adolescence. A brother and a
sister start at a new school, but when the school’s perfect couple breaks up on their first day to volatile consequences, the siblings find themselves trapped in a battle of the sexes, fighting to protect themselves from a game they can’t win. A modern-day Lord of the Flies, Girls Vs Boys examines the human hunger for connection and challenges the storybook ideal of love.

AMTP Associate Director David Bell brought the collaboration with The House Theatre of Chicago to
Northwestern. After seeing The Sparrow in 2007, Bell recognized that this award-winning team of artists was an important voice in the Chicago theatre community and invited The company to co-develop a project. “For AMTP, it’s been wonderful to support the development of a new musical that explores the boundaries of the form, and to engage our students with the rich, vibrant Chicago theatre community just outside our doors," says Bell. The House's artistic director Nathan Allen worked with Bell to bring Girls Vs Boys to fruition at Northwestern. The project will make its professional debut at The House Theatre of Chicago in the Spring of 2010 as part of The House’s 2009-2010 season.

AMTP's partnership with The House marks the program's first collaboration with a Chicago-based theatre company and creative team. Allen, who is directing the show, led an in-class workshop with Northwestern University undergraduate students to develop Girls Vs Boys. The show was cast with 16 undergraduate and recently graduated Northwestern students who have spent the past six weeks devising and rehearsing the show under the direction of Allen, choreographer Tommy Rapley, music director Ethan Deppe, co-writers Jake Minton and Chris Mathews, and composer Kevin O'Donnell.

“This opportunity to develop this project in collaboration with AMTP has been really cool and special,” says Allen. “At The House, our twenties were about superheroes and adventure, and as we take the next step in the artistic life of The company, we’re starting to examine questions of love and how love can be its own adventure.”

Girls Vs Boys will run for a limited engagement at Northwestern University through August 2, 2009
in the Wallis Theater on the Evanston campus (1949 S. Campus Dr). Tickets are on sale now at the Theatre and Interpretation Center Box Office (30 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston) and range in price from $10 to $25. Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 6pm and 9:30pm, and Sundays at 2pm. To experience the rock-concert atmosphere of the show up-close, a limited number of Director’s Choice Standing Room tickets are available for just $10. Following Thursday performances, audience members can meet cast and creative team members at The Rhythm Room of Evanston for complementary appetizers and 25% off drinks.

Enter at your own risk: Girls Vs Boys contains strong language, violent themes, partial nudity, and
really, really loud music.

The American Music Theatre Project (AMTP) nourishes the vitality of American music theatre through the development and production of new musicals by leading professional artists; through increased opportunities for education and training with Northwestern University’s theatre, dance, and opera programs; and through the creation of new intersections between the professional and academic arts communities.

Founded in 2005, the program was conceived as both a haven for professional creative teams looking for space, time and resources to develop new musicals and as a vibrant arena for education and academic engagement.

Northwestern University is one of the country’s leading private research and teaching universities. With its infrastructure of facilities, faculty and students, and its progressive methods for teaching and learning, Northwestern welcomes artists and projects that benefit from a nurturing creative process and a means of introducing new work to the broader creative community.

The House Theatre of Chicago was founded in 2001 by a group of friends from around the country with the sole purpose of moving to Chicago and starting a world-class theatrical institution in the tradition of the great Chicago ensembles that had come before. It is the mission of The House to unite Chicago in the spirit of Community through amazing feats of Storytelling. The pursuit of this mission is what has led The House to break the rules of building a traditional ensemble. Alongside The House’s current Company actors and directors are writers, choreographers, production staff, designers, composers and visual artists, all collaborating to create innovative original works.

Following a critically acclaimed run of their first show, Death and Harry Houdini, The House burst onto the Chicago scene with the smash hit success of The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan, an original
adaptation that ran for five months in 2002. The ensuing years brought more than a dozen world premiere productions including The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz, Hatfield & McCoy and the genre bending, three year, epic rock musical, The Valentine Trilogy. In early 2007, the critical and popular success of The Sparrow took The House to both the Steppenwolf Merle Reskin Garage Theatre, and the Apollo Theater, and with it a whole new audience. In Year 8, The House is reborn in Wicker Park at the Chopin Theatre. Join the revolution.

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