Tony & Olivier-Winning Playwright Simon Stephens Coming to Steep Theatre

Steep Theatre Company is bringing Tony Award winner and Steep Associate Playwright Simon Stephens to Chicago for a five-day visit in July during the U.S premiere of his play Wastwater. Mr. Stephens' work, which has been produced extensively overseas, has found an enthusiastic audience in the United States with his Tony-winning adaptation The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and several widely-acclaimed productions in Chicago, including Steep Theatre's Motortown, Harper Regan, and Pornography, and the Griffin Theatre's productions of On the Shore of the Wide World, Port, and Punk Rock. Stephens will be in Chicago July 21 through July 25 and will participate in events and performances at Steep Theatre.

On Monday, July 25, Mr. Stephens will be reading his piece Song from Far Away. This will be the first reading in the U.S. of the piece, which was originally written with songwriter Mark Eitzel of American Music Club for Ivo van Hove at Toneelgroep Amsterdam. The reading will be followed by a discussion of his work and career and a reception with the playwright and Steep ensemble members. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased at steeptheatre.com. On Thursday, July 21 and Saturday, July 23, Mr. Stephens will be in attendance at performances of Wastwater at Steep and will participate in post-show receptions. A limited number of tickets are available to both performances.

Simon Stephens is an English playwright whose plays have been widely produced in the UK, Europe, Australia and the US. Having taught in the Young Writers' Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years, Stephens is now an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith and has been an Associate Playwright of Steep Theatre since 2013. Aside from his Olivier and Tony Awards for Best New Play in 2015, Stephens has many other critical acclaims to his name. He received The Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2006 for On the Shore of the Wide World, won Best New Play by the Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland in 2008-9 for Pornography, won Best New Play at the Tron Theatre Awards in 2003 for One Minute, and received the Pearson Award for Best New Play in 2001 for Port. Stephens visited Steep in 2012, during which time he performed a public reading of his piece Sea Wall, and Steep presented the first ever public reading of his play Blindsided, a new work commissioned and later produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England.

Mr. Stephens' plays include Heisenberg, Song from Far Away, Birdland, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Bluebird, Herons, Port, One Minute, Christmas, Country Music, On the Shore of the Wide World, Motortown, Pornography, Harper Regan, Seawall, Heaven, Punk Rock, Marine Parade, A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, T5, Wastwater, I am the Wind, and The Trial of Ubu.