BRUTAL IMAGINATION and WRECKAGE Play in Repertory at Caffeine Theatre

Still humming the tunes from their Jeff-nominated Boojum!, Caffeine Theatre is proud to announce their next project for Spring 2011... and it's a long way from Wonderland. Stage 773 serves as the arena for two devastating plays performed in rotating repertory: Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady, directed by Caffeine Managing Director Jason Beck, and Wreckage by Caridad Svich, directed by Joanie Schultz.

Brutal Imagination, based on the poems of Cornelius Eady, is an imagined struggle between Susan Smith (the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons in 1994 by locking them in her car and rolling it into a local lake) and Mr. Zero (the fictional Black man she claimed hijacked her car and murdered the boys). Dissecting a young mother's cruel motivations as well as exploring the American racial tensions that made her story seem believable until she confessed, Brutal Imagination dares to unmask the face of stereotype and prejudice while chronicling the story through media coverage and Eady's poetry.

Spinning madly off of the Greek myth of Medea, Wreckage begins when two boys wash up on shore, not knowing who or where they are, only that they have no choice but to keep moving in a strange world that may or may not be the afterlife. As they wander through this new landscape they soon learn the value of their youth and beauty, as well as the inevitability of pain and loss. Gender roles and parental roles alike lose their accepted meanings, and we begin to understand how fragile identity really is.

This is Caffeine Theatre's second pair of rotating rep productions, having produced Tallgrass Gothic and The Changeling at the Raven Theatre almost exactly two years ago. Like the previous rep, the current pair of plays shares a design and technical team, but this time the two casts are made up of two different sets of actors:

Brutal Imagination
by Cornelius Eady
Directed by Jason Beck
Assistant Director - Jeff Duhigg
Dramaturg - Kristin Idaszak
Cast: Samantha Gleisten and D'wayne Taylor

Wreckage
by Caridad Svich
Directed by Joanie Schultz
Assistant Director - Cody Estle
Dramaturg - Dan Smith
Cast: Dana Black, Tim Martin, Ian Daniel McLaren, Sean Thomas, Jeremy van Meter

For both plays:
Costume Designer - Alarie Hammock
Lighting Designer - Casey Diers
Projection Designer - Davonte Johnson
Scenic Designer - Stephen Carmody
Sound Designer - Thomas Dixon
Stage Manager - Rose Streit
Technical Director - Eric Sisco
Dialect Coach - Christine Adaire

Performances will take place at Stage 773 (formerly The Theatre Building) West Stage, 1225 W. Belmont, with previews March 10-12, opening March 13, 2011 and closing April 17, 2011 Thursdays-Sundays on a rotating schedule. The full performance schedule is below and can also be found on Caffeine's and Stage 773's websites: www.caffeinetheatre.com; www.stage773.com

Tickets
For tickets, please visit www.stage773.com or call 773·327·5252
$20 Regular Admission
$18 Seniors
$16 Students
Group rates available for groups of 10 or more, and can be arranged by calling 773-327-5252.

Performance Schedule
Thursday, 3/10 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination (Preview)
Friday, 3/11 - 7:30pm Wreckage (Preview)
Saturday, 3/12 - 4pm Wreckage (Preview), 7:30pm Brutal Imagination (Preview)
Sunday, 3/13 - 3pm Brutal Imagination (Opening), 6:30pm Wreckage (Opening)

Thursday, 3/17 - 7:30pm Wreckage
Friday, 3/18 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Saturday, 3/19 - 4pm Brutal Imagination, 7:30pm Wreckage
Sunday, 3/20 - 3pm Wreckage, 6:30pm Brutal Imagination

Thursday, 3/24 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination (Theatre Thursday)
Friday, 3/25 - 7:30pm Wreckage
Saturday, 3/26 - 4pm Wreckage, 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Sunday, 3/27 - 3pm Wreckage, 6:30pm Brutal Imagination

Thursday, 3/31 - 7:30pm Wreckage
Friday, 4/1 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Saturday, 4/2 - 4pm Brutal Imagination, 7:30pm Wreckage
Sunday, 4/3 - 3pm Wreckage, 6:30pm Brutal Imagination

Thursday, 4/7 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Friday, 4/8 - 7:30pm Wreckage
Saturday, 4/9 - 4pm Wreckage, 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Sunday, 4/10 - 3pm Wreckage, 6:30pm Brutal Imagination

Thursday, 4/14 - 7:30pm Wreckage
Friday, 4/15 - 7:30pm Brutal Imagination
Saturday, 4/16 - 4pm Brutal Imagination, 7:30pm Wreckage
Sunday, 4/17 - 3pm Wreckage, 6:30pm Brutal Imagination

Events
Caffeine Theatre and the League of Chicago Theatres are delighted to be hosting a Theater Thursday event for the Thursday, March 24 performance of Brutal Imagination. Enjoy specially-priced tickets, as well as a reception with refreshments while you mingle with cast and crew.

Director Bios
Jason Beck previously appeared in Caffeine's productions of Translations, The Cocktail Party and last summer's remount of Under Milk Wood at Theater on the Lake. Jason has also produced Caffeine's productions of Boojum! Nonsense, Truth and Lewis Carroll, Many Loves and Under Milk Wood. Jason recently directed Coronado at The Theatre School at DePaul University where he is also the Director of Admissions. For DePaul he has also directed The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Distance From Here, Shake Your Groove Thing and The Lights. Jason spent three years as an Artistic Associate at Young Actors Ensemble where he directed The Fantasticks, Merely Playing and Into the Woods. As a photographer he has photographed scores of productions for theatres in the Chicago area. Jason is a graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul University.

This is Joanie Schultz's second time working on Caridad Svich's plays, having directed Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues at Northwestern University. She recently directed A Brief History of Helen of Troy and In Arabia We'd All Be Kings (Jeff Award for Best Ensemble) for Steep Theatre Company; The Ring Cycle for the Building Stage; Shining City for Redtwist Theatre Company; Wreckage and Many Loves for Caffeine Theatre; and Faster for the side project. Ms. Schultz also has recently directed Savitri and The Telephone for Chicago Opera Theater and National Opera Week; and Acis and Galatea, the Chicago Cultural Center summer opera, which was the first fully-staged opera at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. She also recently directed new play workshops at The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Next Theatre Company. Ms. Schultz holds an MFA from Northwestern University; was a Drama League Fellow; The Goodman Theatre's Michael Maggio Directing Fellow; a participant in the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab; and currently teaches directing at Columbia College Chicago. www.joanieschultz.com

About the playwrights
Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry, including his recent Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems. His second book,Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1985; in 2001 Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don't Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday's Oppenheimer Award in 2002. Eady has been a teacher for more than twenty years, formerly at the University of Notre Dame, and currently at the University of Missouri where he holds the Miller Chair in Poetry.

Caridad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor whose works have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Denver Center Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Women's Project, Repertorio Espanol, INTAR, 59East59, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Teatro Mori (Santiago, Chile), ARTheater (Cologne), and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama three times, including in the year 2010 for her play Instructions for Breathing. Among her key works: 12 Ophelias, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, The House of the Spirits (based on Isabel Allende's novel), and the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations. In Chicago her work has been seen at TrapDoor Theatre, TUTA Theatre, Goodman Theatre Latino Theatre Festival, Latino Chicago, and Northwestern University. This is her second time working with Caffeine Theatre. She is an alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge/UK's Contemporary Theatre Review and contributing editor of TheatreForum. She's been a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellow at Harvard University, NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre, TCG/PEW Playwright in Residence at INTAR. She is a member of PEN American Center, The Dramatists Guild and is an entry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino History. She trained for four years with Maria Irene Fornes, and also holds an MFA in Theatre-Playwriting from UCSD. Website: www.caridadsvich.com

About the company (www.caffeinetheatre.com)

Caffeine Theatre mines the poetic tradition to explore social questions. In bringing language-intense, idea-driven works to the stage, Caffeine renews poetry's place in public life and brings to light buried theatrical treasures. The company's productions include the recent hit Boojum! Nonsense, Truth and Lewis Carroll, produced last fall in collaboration with Chicago Opera Vanguard and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs at the DCA's Storefront Theater, and the Jeff Committee recommended productions of Translations and Wild Nights with Emily, and Under Milk Wood which also premiered at DCA's Storefront Theater and was reprised at Theater on the Lake last summer. Caffeine Theatre also organizes a successful series of readings and Coffeehouse Discussion Forums at local bookstores, coffee shops, and cultural institutions.

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