Jeff-Recommended BY THE BOG OF CATS Extends to 4/15

The Artistic Home Artistic Director Kathy Scambiatterra announced today that the company's production of By the Bog of Cats, by Marina Carr, will extend its run by an additional three weeks to meet the overwhelming demand for seats. The Chicago Tribune's Kerry Reid said of it "Mossman and his cast dig into the textures of Carr's script with gusto and sensitivity. Collins gives a bravura performance." The Artistic Home's production, which opened on February 13, is directed by Jeff Award winner and ensemble member John Mossman.

Marina Carr was just this week awarded one of Yale University's Windham-Campbell prizes for literature, an honor including a $165,000 grant. Carr was one of two playwrights to receive the award. The other recipient was Chicago-based playwright Ike Holter.

Set on a ghostly landscape in Ireland, By the Bog of Cats is the story of a woman who's had a lifetime of abandonment and decides to lay claim to everything that's hers on a day when her world's being torn in half. Not only did her mother run off when she was a girl, but today the great love of her life, with whom she has a seven-year-old daughter, is marrying into a family that wants her kicked off the land. She has no one to turn to except local misfits, who are part of a community filled with outrageous, funny, terrible people. It's one day in the life of a woman pushed beyond the limits of human endurance as she is forced to make a final horrible, self sacrificing decision. Mossman says of the play, "Think Greek tragedy on an Irish Bog. Just as tragic but twice as funny and pure poetry, in the great Irish tradition."

The Chicago Tribune's Richard Christiansen in reviewing the play's 2001 American premiere production by Chicago's now-departed Irish Repertory Theatre of Chicago, "... it's a good, strong piece of theater that takes off from an imaginative premise and goes on to deliver an engrossing tale of love, rage and revenge."

Leading the cast are ensemble members Kristin Collins, Frank Nall, and Tim Musachio. They will be joined by visiting artists John LaFlamboy, Elise Wolf, Darrelyn Marx, Jane Delaubenfels, Caroline Latta, Kelsey Phillips, Kieran O'Connor and Mike Rogalski. Ensemble member Annie Hogan will serve as Assistant Director. The production team includes Anders Jacobsen and Judy Radovsky (scenic designers), Zach Wagner (costume designers), Claire Sangster (lighting designer) and Peter Wahlback (sound designer) and Kayla Adams (assistant stage manager).

ABOUT MARINA CARR
Carr attended University College Dublin and has received an honorary degree of Doctorate of Literature from that university. She has held posts as writer-in-residence at the Abbey Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, and Princeton University. She has written 16 plays since her career began, and is considered one of Ireland's most prominent playwrights. Her award-winning plays-largely poetic tragedies of rural Irish domestic life-have been produced around the world. They include The Mai (1994), Portia Coughlan (1996), By the Bog of Cats (1998), On Raftery's Hill (2000); Ariel (2002), a retelling of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis extended into the aftermath shown in Aeschylus' Oresteia; and Woman and Scarecrow (2006).

ABOUT THE ARTISTIC HOME
The Artistic Home is noted for their innovative and intimate presentations of rarely-produced classics as well developing new works. Audiences may know The Artistic Home best from their recent Jeff-Nominated productions of The Seagull, Watch on the Rhine, Macbeth and The Late Henry Moss or the 2013 Jeff Award winner The Goddess. Other Artistic Home productions include the Jeff-Award-winning production of Juno and the Paycock, which also received three After Dark Awards, the Jeff-Nominated Sweet Bird of Youth, The Tallest Man, Landscape of the Body, Natural Affection, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, After the Fall and Peer Gynt (which also received an After Dark award for Direction).

For more than 18 years, The Artistic Home has consistently produced compelling theatre in Chicago. First formed in 1998 with the belief that the actor is at the heart of great theater, the company strives to give birth to unforgettable moments; to touch audiences who are increasingly distanced from human contact; to readdress the classics and explore new works with passion.

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