Sarah Ruhl Paying a Chicago Visit Oct. 29 at Victory Gardens

Sarah Ruhl PAYING CHICAGO A VISIT, VICTORY GARDENS TO HOST RUHL MAKERS PANEL
DISCUSSION ON OCTOBER 29

Victory Gardens Theater will welcome playwright Sarah Ruhl back to her hometown Chicago with a special public event - Ruhl Makers - a panel of leading women theater artists in Chicago who have helped Ruhl escape "reading hell" to become arguably the top contemporary playwright in America today.

Ruhl Makers is Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 6:30 pm at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago.  Tickets are $5. For tickets or information, call the Victory Gardens box office - 773.871.3000 - or purchase online at http://www.victorygardens.org

Ruhl Makers panelists include:

- Sarah Ruhl, MacArthur Genius winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of Eurydice, The Clean House and Dead Man's Cell Phone

- Sandy Shinner, Associate Artistic Director, Victory Gardens Theater, director of Eurydice

- Jessica Thebus, director, Eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Clean House

- Kathleen Ruhl, Jeff Award winning actress, Sarah Ruhl's mother

- Lee Stark, who plays the title role in Victory Gardens' Eurydice

- Mary Beth Fisher, award winning actress, star of The Clean House and Dead Man's Cell Phone

Victory Gardens is also hosting a private reception with Ruhl on the set of her play Eurydice now on the Victory Gardens Biograph mainstage, immediately preceding the panel discussion.  For information on this exclusive pre-panel fundraiser for Victory Gardens, contact Kate Oczkowski, Director of Events and Individual Giving, 773/549-5788 ext 2140 or koczkowski@victorygardens.org.

Ruhl Makers in presented in association with Victory Gardens' critically acclaimed production of Eurydice, a bold, slyly comic, visually fascinating take on the classic Orpheus myth, running now through November 9 at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater.

The Chicago Sun-Times called Eurydice "wholly captivating, subtly madcap, heart-piercingly lovely...co-directed by Sandy Shinner and Jessica Thebus in a way that feels magically at one with Ruhl's sensibility."  The Chicago Tribune suggested "If you've not seen Eurydice, I wouldn't miss the chance...The new production at Victory Gardens convinced me of this play's honest beauty."

Eurydice had one of its earliest readings at Victory Gardens, before Ruhl became the hottest playwright working in American theater today. Too constrained by its former location for a play that calls for a rain-drenched elevator, today, Victory Gardens Theater finally has a venue capable of showcasing Ruhl's boundless imagination at its new home - the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater.

Single tickets to Eurydice are $20-$48.  Five-play Victory Gardens subscriptions including Eurydice start at only $80. For tickets, subscriptions or information, call the Victory Gardens box office -
773.871.3000 - or purchase tickets online at http://www.victorygardens.org

Eurydice stars Lee Stark (Eurydice), Jamie Abelson (Orpheus), Joe D. Lauck (Father), Cheryl Lynn Bruce (Loud Stone), Caitlin Hart (Little Stone), William J. Norris (Big Stone), and Beau O'Reilly (Nasty Interesting Man). Designers are Dan Ostling, set; Judith Lundberg, costumes; Andre Pluess, sound; and JR Lederle, lights.  Tina M. Jach is production stage manager.

Ruhl's book The Clean House and Other Plays, which includes Eurydice, is now on sale in the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater lobby, and will be available at Victory Gardens' Ruhl Makers panel discussion.

Sarah Ruhl - Biography

"If Virginia Woolf became a playwright, she'd be someone like Sarah Ruhl" said Paula Vogel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, about her former student at Brown University.  Ruhl's plays include The Clean House, which had its world premiere at Yale Rep in 2004 (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist, PEN/Pels Foundation Award), Melancholy Play, Eurydice (world premiere, Madison Rep, 2003; Chicago premiere, 2004, Piven

Theater Workshop, also at Yale Rep, 2006, and New York's), Late: a cowboy song, Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP Image Award nomination); Passion Play (Fourth Forum Freedom Award from The Kennedy Center); and Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award).  Her plays have been performed at Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theater, Woolly Mammoth, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Wilma
Theater, Cornerstone Theater Company, Madison Repertory Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, and Piven Theatre Workshop, among other theaters across the country. Her plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian, and Spanish, and have been produced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia, and Poland.  Sarah is originally from Evanston, and received her MFA
from Brown University. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Award, Whiting Writers' Award, PEN/Pels Foundation Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.  She is a proud member of New Dramatists and 13P.

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