AMERICAN STORM, UNWILLING AND HOSTILE INSTRUMENTS and More Set for Theatre Seven's 2012-13 Season

Theatre Seven of Chicago, recipient of the 2012 Emerging Theater Award, has announced its full 2012/13 Season: AMERICAN STORM by Carter Lewis, directed by Artistic Director Brian Golden at the Greenhouse Theater Center; BLACKTOP SKY by Christina Anderson, directed by Cassy Sanders, presented as part of Steppenwolf Theatre Company's 4th annual Garage Rep in The Steppenwolf Garage; JOHNNY by Artistic Director Brian Golden at the Greenhouse Theater Center; and UNWILLING AND HOSTILE INSTRUMENTS: 100 Years of Extraordinary Chicago Women, a collection of seven new plays by some of the industry's most talented playwrights and directors. Subscriptions and single tickets for the 2012/13 Season are currently on sale at www.theatreseven.org.

"Our seventh season will once again explore the Chicago experience, from profiling a few of our city's extraordinary women to examining of life inside a city's forgotten neighborhoods, comments Theatre Seven Managing Artistic Director Brian Golden. "We're also taking our audience outside the city limits to investigate today's Chicago story in dialogue with stories from other Midwest places, past and present. While partnering with remarkable organizations like Steppenwolf Theatre Company and High Concept Laboratories, we feel excited to take our audience's experience with Theatre Seven storytelling to the next level," adds Golden.

Theatre Seven of Chicago's 2012/13 Season:

The Professional World Premiere of AMERICAN STORM
By Carter Lewis
Directed by Artistic Director Brian Golden
November 16 – December 16, 2012
Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

In the summer of 1962, a small Ohio town discovers a prize thoroughbred in the stables of the local track. With big business promising to take WelDon Downs corporate, the track workers learn soon enough that not even hope comes for free. Carter Lewis's works have been presented at theaters across the U.S. and include Art Control, A Geometric Digression of the Species, Soft Click Of A Switch, An Asian Jockey In Our Midst, The One-Eyed Man Is King, Golf With Alan Shepard, Picasso Does My Maps, Longevity Abbreviated For Those Who Don't Have Time, Women Who Steal, Men on the Take, Kid Peculiar, Ordinary Nation and Civil DisobediencE. Lewis is currently serving as Playwright-in-Residence at Washington University.

The Chicago Premiere of BLACKTOP SKY
By Christina Anderson
Directed by Cassy Sanders
February 15 – April 21, 2013
Part of Steppenwolf Theatre Company's Garage Rep 2013
The Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N. Halsted St., Chicago

After police rough up a fellow resident of the projects, 18-year-old Ida takes an interest in the homeless man who sleeps on a nearby bench. When an unlikely friendship emerges, will it strengthen her connection to home or drive her away in search of a new life? BLACKTOP SKY examines the intersection of love, violence and seduction inside an institution with a haunting Chicago legacy: the public housing project. Christina Anderson's plays include Good Goods, Hollow Roots, pen/man/ship, Sweet Brown Ginger, Man in Love, Glo, Inked Baby and DRIP. Her work has appeared at A.C.T., Penumbra Theater, About Face Theater, Playwrights' Horizons, Yale Repertory Theatre, Crowded Fire, Ars Nova and other theaters all over the country. Awards and honors include Schwarzman Legacy Scholarship awarded by Paula Vogel, Susan Smith Blackburn nomination, Lorraine Hansberry Award (American College Theater Festival), Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship (New Dramatists), Wasserstein Prize nomination (Dramatists Guild), Lucille Lortel Fellowship (Brown University). American Theatre Magazine selecTed Anderson as one of fifteen up-and-coming artists "whose work will be transforming America's stages for decades to come." She obtained her B.A. from Brown University and her M.F.A. in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

The World Premiere of JOHNNY
By Artistic Director Brian Golden
June 13 – July 21, 2013
Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

A twelve year old paperboy disappears without a trace on a cool September morning in 1982. Fifteen years later, he returns to his mother's front porch to tell the tale of his lost childhood. Or does he? Brian Golden is the Managing Artistic Director and a founding member of Theatre Seven of Chicago. He has written for several Theatre Seven projects, including We Live Here, for which he received a Jeff Award nomination, and Cooperstown, which was nominated for one Jeff Award and two Black Theatre Alliance Awards. His work has also produced or read in Chicago at Chicago Dramatists, New Leaf Theatre, Collaboraction and the side project. Outside of Chicago, Brian's plays have been produced at American Theatre of Actors and the NY International Fringe Festival (NYC), The Road Theatre (LA), Nice People Theatre (Philadelphia) and Washington University in St. Louis, where Brian is an alumnus, and a two-time winner of the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Contest and recipient of the Leota Diesel Ashton Playwriting Prize and John J. Jutkowitz Award.

UNWILLING AND HOSTILE INSTRUMENTS: 100 Years of Extraordinary Chicago Women
Playwrights, directors, dates and venues to be announced.

As Chicago women lobbied legislators for the right to vote in 1913, one opponent declared the entire female sex 'merely the unwilling and hostile instruments by which humanity is created.' 100 years later, we celebrate women's suffrage in Illinois with seven new short plays about extraordinary Chicago women from the last century.

Subscriptions and single tickets for Theatre Seven's 2012/13 Season are currently on sale at www.theatreseven.org. Theatre Seven of Chicago produces new and original work that explores the diverse Chicago experience. Since 2007, the company has produced sixteen standout offerings, greeted 12,000 audience members, paid 200+ artists for their contributions, earned nominations for three Jeff Awards and two Black Theatre Alliance Awards and won the 2012 League of Chicago Theatres' Emerging Theater Award. The company's noted world premieres include The Chicago Landmark Project, We Live Here, Diversey Harbor, Yes, This Really Happened To Me and Cooperstown. The company also hosts a robust menu of auxiliary programming, including a monthly reading series, Shikaakwa, featuring new-to-Chicago plays and one of the best post-show discussions in town.