Northwestern University News

'Mad Men' star Vincent Kartheiser and Broadway's Larry Pine (CASA VALENTINA) play Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, respectively, in BILLY & RAY, Mike Bencivenga's new play -- directed by the legendary director/writer/producer Garry Marshall -- being given its NY premiere this fall at the Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15 St.), with an official opening tonight, October 20, 2014.

Noted Chicago playwright Douglas Post will join Raven Theatre's [Working Title] new play development series with a fully staged workshop production of his comedy Forty-Two Stories, to be directed by Jessica Fisch and performed on the Raven Theatre East Stage Monday, November 3 through Wednesday, November 5.

Noted Chicago playwright Douglas Post will join Raven Theatre's [Working Title] new play development series with a fully staged workshop production of his comedy Forty-Two Stories, to be directed by Jessica Fisch and performed on the Raven Theatre East Stage Monday, November 3 through Wednesday, November 5. Curtain times for all three performances will be 7:30 pm.

Hennepin Theatre Trust has announced that Naomi Pesky will join the organization in November 2014 as Vice President of External Relations to oversee the overall positioning of the Trust and its leadership role in the new downtown Cultural District. Pesky brings more than 15 years of experience in leading teams, building brands and managing marketing and communications in the non-profit and corporate sectors. She will apply her expertise to developing a brand for the Cultural District, refining Trust messaging and leading the implementation of organizational strategies and resource development.

Founding Artistic Director Jessica Beth Redish and Co-Artistic Director Jess McLeod are pleased to announce The Music Theatre Company's (TMTC) 2014-2015 season, which begins December 4, 2014 and runs through August 2015.

Kansas City Repertory Theatre continues its 50th anniversary celebration with the Kansas City premiere of Ayad Akhtar's The Who & The What, directed by Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Artistic Director Eric Rosen. From the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar's play, The Who & The What takes a passionate and searing look at a family divided by faith, bonded by love and searching for truth in contemporary America. A brilliant young Pakistani writer is focused on finishing a controversial novel that bridges the gulf between her modern life and her traditional heritage. But when her conservative father and sister discover her manuscript, they are all forced to confront the beliefs that define then. This production, at KC Rep's downtown Copaken Stage in the Power & Light District, will run tonight, October 17 through November 16.

From The Patriot to John Adams, from the iconic portrait of Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze to the musical 1776, the birth of our nation has been portrayed countless times in countless ways in the arts. But never quite like this.

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU opened on September 28, 2014, at the Longacre Theatre (220 West 48th Street). The production is directed by six-time Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Scott Ellis (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Twelve Angry Men, 1776). Scroll down to learn more about the full cast and watch interviews with the company below!

A new crop of local talent joins Goodman Theatre's artistic team for the 2014/2015 Season.

Underscore Theatre Company Artistic Director Alex Higgin-Houser and Executive Director Laura Stratford announced the title of their fall 2014 production, The Guide to Being Single, a new musical romantic comedy created by Chicago duo Kaitlin Gilgenbach (book) and Alexi Kovin (music and lyrics). As a part of Underscore's mission to foster the continued development of Chicago's growing musical theatre creator community, the company has chosen to debut Guide as the first production of its first Jeff-eligible season.

92Y presents Sandra Tsing Loh: A Work-In-Progress Staged Reading of The Madwoman in the Volvo, a co-production of 92Y and Sundance Institute Theatre Program, with Leslie Kritzer and Mary Beth Peil, directed by Lisa Peterson tonight, October 10, 8:15 pm.

Broadway, TV and film actress and Northwestern University alumna Ana Gasteyer, a former cast member of the popular Emmy Award-winning late night television sketch comedy show 'Saturday Night Live' (SNL) will return to campus Friday, Oct. 17, to serve as grand marshal of the University's 2014 Homecoming Parade.

The Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) announced casting today for A Night at the Tonys, this year's William and Greta Wiley Flory Concert, an annual cabaret performance, taking place on Monday, Nov. 3, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. at Francis W. Parker School (2233 North Clark Street) as part of the 25th Anniversary Fall Festival: Journeys, Oct. 25-Nov. 9.

Provocative and prophetic, a puzzle waiting to be unraveled before the audience's eyes similar to a Gordian knot, the Boulevard Theatre on stage at Walkers Point Center for the Arts presents a limited run of Gideon's Knot, a Wisconsin premiere. Artistic Director Mark Bucher stages the play under the direction of Patricia Durante in this daring and unsettling view on the state of education in one small classroom set in Lake Forest, Illinois. Does a person cut this production's tragedies out of their thoughts or pull the answers to these probing questions in an attempt to understand perhaps this evolving microcosm of American education presented in the production.

Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, presents The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, directed by Jonathan Berry. The production will run at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie, from November 7 - December 14, 2014. The press opening is Friday, November 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm.

CHICAGO, IL (October 7, 2014)—Chicago nonprofit 3Arts has increased the amount of its annual unrestricted awards for women artists, artists of color, and artists with disabilities to$25,000, effective with the 7th annual 3Arts Awards tonight, Oct. 6, 2014. Ten Chicago-area artists working in the performing, teaching, and visual arts will receive a total of $250,000 in a celebratory gathering at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Previously, 3Arts presented annual awards of $15,000.

HISTORY MATTERS/BACK TO THE FUTURE, a coalition of theatre professionals, has announced the application deadline for the new Judith Barlow Prize has been extended to December 30th, 2014 to better align with the academic calendar. The Judith Barlow Prize will award $2,500 annually to a student playwright of a one-act play inspired by the work of an historic woman playwright whom she/he has studied. In addition, a $1000 prize will be awarded to the runner up and a $500 prize will be awarded to the winning student's professor who participated in the One Play at a Time initiative.

A Jewish, Midwestern, Chekhovian comic drama for the 21st century will be the third offering in The Echo Theater Company's 2015 season at Atwater Village Theatre, the company's new permanent home. Jennifer Chambers directs the world premiere of Better, a gentle examination of family and mortality by Jessica Goldberg, opening Oct. 4.

Walloomsac: A Roman Fleuve: ($20, ISBN: 978-1-937536-90-9, LCCN: 2014952145, 176pp, 6X9', October 2014; purchase on: CreateSpace, and Amazon; Kindle Edition: $2.99): If a novel is a work of prose of some length, this is a novel-but different in that it is more like life, which has no plots and does not reward virtue or punish vice, and in which characters appear and then, if the author doesn't kill them off, remain to the end. Life is messier than Tolstoy and Henry James were willing to admit. Here, in David R. Slavitt's farrago, one thing leads to another but without discernible direction until, at the end, there is a kind of resolution, a vision, however unreliable and approximate, of what the life of the speaker has been. It is a deeply thoughtful book but also laugh-out-loud funny. Like life, if we're lucky. David R. Slavitt: educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia, is the author of more than 115 books-novels, poetry, reportage, and translations. He was the movie reviewer for Newsweek in the sixties and was co-editor of the "Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama" as well as the "Penn Complete Greek Drama." Among his recent publications: "The Sonnets and Short Poems of Francesco Petrarch "(2012, Harvard University Press), Civil Wars (2013, Louisiana State University Press), "The Four Other Plays of Sophocles" (2013 Johns Hopkins University Press), and "The Crooning Wind: Three Greenlandic Poets" (New American Press 2013), and "Shiksa" (C&L Press). His version of "The Mahabharata" will be published in the spring by Northwestern University Press. 'David Slavitt has (herein) written a book about or for which it is impossible simply to write a blurb-a word, it might interest you to know, coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess. (Did you think of a purple cow, just then?) The text itself is indescribably (deliciously?) itself. Like the Waloomsac River, it just keeps rolling along, taking the reader irresponsibly with it-laughing out loud again and again and again; marveling at its rapid wit (white water?), the wide breadths of its erudition, the dangerous shallows of its overt and covert cheekiness; marking the vertiginous depths of its, yes, wisdom. To make a long blurb short, I haven't had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up 'til dawn one night in 1962 breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.' ?R. H. W. Dillard on Walloomsac: A Week on the River $20, Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937536904 $2.99, Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O4FRIXE The Anaphora Literary Press was started as an academic press with the publication of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal (PLJ) in 2009. In the Winter of 2010, Anaphora began accepting book-length submissions. Anaphora has now published over 90 creative and non-fiction books. John Paul Jaramillo's collection of short stories received an honorable mention for the Latino Literacy Now's Mariposa Award Best First Fiction Book Award. Professors have taught from a few Anaphora books. Many Anaphora writers have scheduled readings at major bookstores. Anaphora books have also had several articles published about them in regional newspapers. PLJ has featured interviews with best-selling writers like Larry Niven, and Cinda Williams Chima, as well as interviews with the winners of the Sundance and Brooklyn Film festivals.