Sideshow Theatre Company Sets Full 2015-16 Season

Sideshow Theatre Company is pleased to announce its full 2015/16 Season, beginning this fall with the world premiere of Hansol Jung's surreal and mischievous new comedy NO MORE SAD THINGS, directed by Elly Green. Next winter, the season continues with another world premiere, David Jacobi's chilling new drama MAI DANG LAO directed by artistic associate Marti Lyons. The season concludes next spring with CAUGHT, a new, head-spinning collaboration with playwright Christopher Chen, Chicago's Xiong Art Gallery and director Seth Bockley. All three productions will be presented at Chicago's Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., where Sideshow continues its multi-year residency. For additional information and updates, visit www.sideshowtheatre.org.

Sideshow Theatre is also pleased to welcome three new artistic associates this season: Katy Carolina Collins (Idomeneus, Stupid f-ing Bird), Ann James (Idomeneus, Maria/Stuart, Antigonick) and Cody Proctor (Idomeneus, Stupid f-ing Bird). Sideshow will also present the second year of its new script development program "The Freshness Initiative" featuring public readings of new plays by Philip Dawkins and Bonnie Metzgar, plus a third playwright to be announced. "The Freshness Initiative" readings will take place at Victory Gardens during the closing weekend of each mainstage show.

Tickets for Sideshow Theatre's Company's 2015/16 Season are currently available through Victory Gardens' Membership program. The program allows patrons one reserved seat for every Sideshow production (and almost any other production at Victory Gardens), as well as unlimited free standby seats, for just $15 per month. To become a member or to learn more, visit www.victorygardens.org or call (773) 871-3000. Single tickets for the 2015/16 Season will go on sale at a later date.

Sideshow is also pleased to announce a commercial remount this summer of its 2014 sold-out smash hit STUPID f-ing BIRD, Aaron Posner's comic spin on Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by artistic director Jonathan L. Green and featuring the full original cast. Presented by Carlisle Hart, LLC, STUPID f-ing BIRD will play July 23 - August 30, 2015 at Victory Gardens Za?ek McVay Theater, 2433. N Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. Tickets are available at www.victorygardens.org or by calling the Victory Gardens box office at (773) 871-3000.

The 2015/16 Sideshow Theatre Company Season:

November 15 - December 20, 2015
NO MORE SAD THINGS
By Hansol Jung
Directed by Elly Green

Driven by a half-remembered dream of frogs, Jessiee is headed for Maui, looking to escape her troubles. Meanwhile, a conversation with a falling star leads young Kahekili to the water, searching for a wave that he can ride into a better life. When they find each other on a beach under the mahina, their two lives begin to intertwine, but the truth beyond the breakers might just swallow them both. A surreal, expressive journey, NO MORE SAD THINGS uses music and sly humor to tell a story of two wanderers finding new paths together.

March 6 - April 10, 2016
MAI DANG LAO
By David Jacobi
Directed by artistic associate Marti Lyons

There's a correct order to everything when you work in the fast food industry. That's why Sophie's such a problem for her bosses: her attitude and aloofness threaten the food chain. But when a phone call from the local police warns of a crime committed in the restaurant, Sophie's coworkers are given permission to restore proper balance and set things in their place. A mordant and terrifying world premiere based on true events, MAI DANG LAO examines the ways we all get trapped, and what we're capable of doing when someone lets us.

May 29 - July 3, 2016
CAUGHT
By Christopher Chen
Directed by Seth Bockley
In collaboration with Xiong Art Gallery

A Chinese dissident artist and activist publishes an incredible account of his harrowing confinement at the hands of the government. But can he prove it? Layers of perception peel back, with echoes of Ai Weiwei, Mike Daisey and Jonah Lehrer, until reality itself comes into question. A hallucinatory new experience featuring celebrated visual and performance artists, CAUGHT explores what happens when we blur the dangerous line between story and truth.

About the Playwrights:

David Jacobi's plays have been performed throughout the U.S. and in China, including the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, FringeNYC, Penghao Theatre and 798 Dashanzi Art District. His work has been developed at Portland Center Stage's JAW Festival (Mai Dang Lao), Cutting Ball Theater's RISK IS THIS (Ex Machina), Great Plains Theatre Conference Mainstage (Mai Dang Lao), WordBRIDGE (The Monster Below, prev. SDO) and The Flea (Battlecruiser Aristotle). David is the winner of the Holland New Voices Award and his play Ready Steady Yeti Go received the Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences Award. He received a BFA in Dramatic Writing from Purchase College and is currently enrolled in UC San Diego's MFA Playwriting program under the tutelage of Naomi Iizuka. David is co-founder of Monster Down! Theatre Company, a collaborative theatre group operating out of NYC and Beijing.

Hansol Jung is a playwright and director originally from South Korea. Her work has been developed at the Royal Court Theatre (London), Bushwick Starr, Asia Society New York, Lark Play Development Center, Seven Devils Playwright Conference, OD Musical Theater Company (Seoul) and Yale Cabaret. Her works include Dis/Oriented: Antonioni in China (with Yin Mei and Bora Yoon), Among the Dead, Still Murky, No More Sad Things and Cardboard Piano. She has translated over thirty English musicals into Korean, including Evita, Spamalot and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, while working on several award winning musical theatre productions as director, lyricist and translator in Seoul, South Korea. She is the recipient of the MacDowell Colony Artist Residency, International Playwrights Residency at Royal Court Theatre, Playwrights' Centre Core Apprenticeship, the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, the Pierre-Andre Salim Memorial Scholarship at Yale School of Drama, and was a 2014 finalist for the Ruby Prize (Southern Rep). Hansol Jung holds a Playwriting MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Christopher Chen's full-length works have been produced and developed across the U.S. and abroad, including at the American Conservatory Theater, Asian American Theater Company, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Beijing Fringe, Central Works, Cutting Ball, Edinburgh Fringe, hotINK Festival, Impact Theatre, Just Theatre, The Lark, Magic Theatre, Silk Road Rising, Sundance Theatre Lab and Theatre Mu. His play The Hundred Flowers Project, co-produced by Crowded Fire and Playwrights Foundation, won the Glickman Award, the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, and nominated for the Steinberg Award. Other honors include 2nd Place in the Belarus Free Theater International Playwriting Competition; PONY finalist; Jerome Finalist; and the 2013 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, through which he is currently playwright-in-residence at The Vineyard Theatre. Chris is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, and holds an MFA in playwriting from S.F. State.

About the Directors:

Elly Green most recently directed The Woman Before by Roland Schimmelpfennig for Trap Door Theatre. Upcoming productions include After Miss Julie by Patrick Marber at Strawdog Theatre and, in 2016, The Distance by Deborah Bruce for Haven Theatre. She recently worked on a writer's residency with Stage Left Theatre, and is currently in workshops with Sideshow for The Freshness Initiative. Her Chicago directing credits include: Happy (Redtwist Theatre), Unwilling and Hostile Instruments (Theatre Seven), Rabbit (Stage Left Theatre - Jeff Nominated, Best Director), The Tomkat Project (Playground Theatre & NY Fringe). Elly was the assistant director on Henry V (Chicago Shakespeare Theater) and Proof (Court Theatre). Her UK directing credits include: Our Country's Good, My Balloon Beats Your Astronaut, Beyond Therapy, About Tommy, Copenhagen, Skylight, The Beach and The Zoo Story. She also spent a year at the Royal National Theatre as a staff director on Oedipus, Mrs. Affleck and Her Naked Skin. Elly has an MFA in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Marti Lyons most recently directed Will Eno's Title and Deed for Lookingglass Theatre, a reading of Dana Lynn Formby's American Beauty Shop at Steppenwolf, and a reading of Ike Holter's Prowess at the Goodman Theatre where she received the 2015 Maggio directing fellowship. She also recently directed Laura Marks' Bethany and Mine for The Gift Theatre; Catherine Trieschmann's Hot Georgia Sunday and Theresa Rebeck's Seminar for Haven Theatre; 9 Circles by Bill Cain, Maria/Stuart by Jason Grote, and co-directed The Golden Dragon with Jonathan L. Green for Sideshow Theatre (where she is an artistic associate); and The Peacock by Calamity West and The Last Duck by Lucas Neff for Jackalope Theatre. Upcoming projects include Will Nedved's Body and Blood at The Gift Theatre.

Seth Bockley is a Chicago-based director and playwright. Directing credits include 2666, co-adapted and co-directed with Robert Falls from the novel by Roberto Bolaño, premiering February 2016 at Goodman Theatre; Basetrack Live with En Garde Arts; Lauren Yee's Samsara and Philip Dawkins' Failure: A Love Story with Victory Gardens Theater; Marcus Gardley's The Box with The Foundry Theatre; the English-language premiere of Ewald Palmetshofer's hamlet is dead. no gravity with Red Tape Theater; Jason Grote's Civilization (all you can eat) with Clubbed Thumb; Jon and Jason Grote's 1001 with Collaboraction; numerous events and spectacles with Chicago's Redmoon; and the clown play Guerra, developed with Devon de Mayo and Mexico City-based troupe La Piara. As a playwright his works include February House, a collaboration with lyricist and composer Gabriel Kahane which premiered at The Public Theater in the spring of 2012; Ask Aunt Susan; The Elephant & The Whale (with Redmoon and Chicago Children's Theatre); and adaptations of George Saunders' short stories CommComm and Jon, which won the 2008 Equity Jeff Citation for Best New Adaptation. He teaches at the University of Chicago and is playwright in residence at the Goodman Theatre.

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