CRUMBLE, FOUR & More Set for Jackalope Theatre's 2014-15 Season

Jackalope Theatre Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director AJ Ware, Associate Artistic Director Kaiser Ahmed, Managing Director Nate Silver, Director of Development & Community Engagement Andrew Burden Swanson, announces its 2014/15 season. The company's 7th season features Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake) by Sheila Callaghan, directed by Artistic AJ Ware, Four by Christopher Shinn, directed by Managing Director Nate Silver, and the world premiere of resident playwright Andrew Burden Swanson's Paper Moon directed by Founding Company Member Gus Menary. The season will conclude with The 6th Annual Living Newspapers Festival, Jackalope's festival of short plays inspired by current American newspaper articles.

All three of Jackalope's main productions will take place in the recently renovated theatre space in Broadway Armory Park. In addition to these shows, Jackalope will present a series of world premiere readings, special events, experimental workshops, and shorter-runs of new work in their storefront space, The Frontier. Exact dates and programming for The Frontier season will be announced in the fall.

Jackalope is also pleased to formally announce four new company members, who have already been hard at work with Jackalope throughout the past several months: Elana Boulos, Casting Director; Calamity West, Literary Manager; Will Kiley, The Frontier Manager, and Alex Hand, Videographer.

Jackalope Season 7 Up-Close

CRUMBLE (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake)
By Sheila Callaghan
Directed by AJ Ware
November 13- December 20, 2014 | Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N. Broadway
Press Night: Monday, November 17 at 7:30pm

It's Christmas again- the first one since the accident that killed Janice's father. For a preteen misfit, solace lies in headless dolls and visits from a flying Justin Timberlake, while Mother makes elaborate dinners for no one and confesses her fears to Harrison Ford. Under a decaying roof with a voice all its own, mother and daughter trip through holiday rituals, but the Apartment nudges them mischievously toward mutual destruction. Janice and Justin have a plan of their own, though, that promises to mend the chasm in their lives... one way or another. With her signature dark humor, Sheila Callaghan's ingenious language sculpts a narrative of an aftermath that is both irreverently odd and acutely genuine.

FO?UR
By Christopher Shinn
Directed by Nate Silver
February 19 - March 28, 2015 | Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N. Broadway
Press Night: Monday, February 23 at 7:30pm

On a lonely Fourth of July in Hartford in 1996, June, a sixteen-year-old white boy, sneaks out for his first ever tryst with Joe, a closeted, married black man he's met over the Internet. On the same night, just across town, studious high-schooler, Abigayle, escapes her ailing mother to go out with Dexter, a twenty-year-old low-level drug dealer. In and around the city, as America celebrates its independence, these two couples get to know themselves and each other, as they navigate the journey from strangers to intimates. In the stark landscapes of movie theatres, fast food restaurants, darkened churches, parking lots and public parks, they grasp for connection but reveal the limits of desire, and the possibilities for transcendence.

PAPER MOON
World Premiere
By Andrew Burden Swanson
Directed by Gus Menary
May 11 - June 20, 2015 | Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N. Broadway
Press Night: Monday, May 18 at 7:30pm

The latest brainchild of resident playwright Andrew Burden Swanson imagines a madcap 1969 in which the conspiracy theorists were right. Kennedy guaranteed a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and NASA is running out of time to fulfill the promise that will awe the world and unite a nation. March 15: A young physicist reports for duty at MGM Borehamwood Studios. The mission at hand? Film a simulated moon landing that the whole world will fall for. With a young Donald Rumsfeld in the director's chair; CIA agents in the roles of our heroes, Armstrong and Aldrin; and the whole of Stanley Kubrick's cinematic technology at their fingertips, what could possibly go wrong? Perfectionists in both science and art unite to reinforce American ambition, reinvigorate a sense of wonder, and inspire through knowledge of possibility- however unfathomable it may seem.

THE 6th ANNUAL LIVINGNEWSPAPERS FESTIVAL
6 new short plays based on current American Newspaper Articles
August 19 - 23, 2015 | The Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale

In homage to the 1930's Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project, Jackalope assembles an exciting group of Chicago playwrights, directors, and actors to dramatize stories ripped from recent newspaper headlines.

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