Cast Announced for Shirley Jackson's THE SUNDIAL at City Lit

City Lit's 2016-17 season will continue in January with Paul Edwards' original adaptation of Shirley Jackson's eerie and suspenseful 1958 novel The Sundial. This will be City Lit's third stage adaptation of a Shirley Jackson novel, following three-time Jeff Award winner Edwards' takes on Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. This philosophical and frightening ghost story set in a haunted mansion was an inspiration to Stephen King for his novel The Shining. Edwards will also direct.

It's the evening of the funeral of Lionel Halloran, master of Halloran House. Was Lionel's mysterious death from a fall down stairs murder? Lionel's widow, Maryjane, believes it was the work of Lionel's mother, Orianna, who will now inherit the ornate estate with a strange sundial in the middle of its grounds, bearing the inscription: "WHAT IS THIS WORLD?"

The cast will include John Blick (Essex), Teresa Champion (Mary Jane/Edna), Kingsley Day (Richard/Miss Inverness), Philena Gilmer (Gloria/Narrator/Hazel), Christina Renee Jones (Miss Ogilvie), Edward Kuffert (Driver/Clerk/Father), Lauren Mangum (Fancy), Morgan McCabe (Aunt Fanny), Stephanie Monday(Augusta Willow), Nora Lise Ulrey (Julia) and Sheila Willis (Orianna).

The Sundial will be designed by Charles Palia (scenic design), Liz Cooper (lighting design), Patti Roeder (costume design) and David Yondorf (violence choreographer). Josh Raether will be stage manager and Hazel Flowers-McCabe will be production manager.

Shirley Jackson is best known for the 1948 short story "The Lottery", which reveals a secret, sinister underside to a bucolic American village, and for her 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, widely considered one of the best ghost stories ever written. She was a popular writer in her time, and her work has received increased attention from literary critics in recent years. An influence on writers Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Richard Matheson, her obituary in The New York Times praised her ability to "write a tenebrous horror story in the Gothic mold in which abnormal behavior seemed perilously ordinary."

Paul Edwards is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University, where he teaches courses on Shakespeare in performance, stage and screen adaptations of narrative fiction, and postwar American popular culture. He has directed more than forty original stage adaptations of fiction for campus and professional production. With City Lit, he has adapted and directed A Study in Scarlet, The Haunting of Hill House, Peyton Place and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; and adapted Mark Twain's The Gilded Age: A Story of Today. Edwards is a three-time Jeff Award winner, for his adaptations of The End of the Road, Peyton Place and WAS.

IF YOU GO:

The Sundial
Adapted from Shirley Jackson's novel
Directed and Adapted by Paul Edwards
WORLD PREMIERE
January 6 - February 12, 2017
Previews Friday, January 6 and Saturday, January 7 at 7:30 pm; Sunday, January 8 at 3:00 pm
Preview ticket prices $24.00, seniors $20, students and military $10 (all plus applicable fees)
Regular run Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - Sunday, February 12, 2017
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 3 pm.
Regular run ticket prices $29.00, seniors $25, students and military $10 (all plus applicable fees)

PRESS OPENING Tuesday, January 10, 2017 at 7:30 pm

Performances at City Lit Theatre, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. Chicago 60660 (Inside Edgewater Presbyterian Church)
Tickets on sale now at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2587094

For over thirty-six years, City Lit Theater has been "dedicated to the vitality and accessibility of the literary imagination. City Lit produces theatrical adaptations of literary material, scripted plays by language-oriented playwrights, and original material."

City Lit is located in the historic Edgewater Presbyterian Church building at 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue. We are two blocks east of both the Bryn Mawr Red Line stop and the #36 Broadway and the #84 Peterson buses. We are one block west of the #147 Sheridan and #151 Sheridan buses. Divvy bike stations are located at Bryn Mawr & Lakefront Trail, and at Broadway & Ridge at Bryn Mawr. The metered street parking pay boxes on Bryn Mawr have a three-hour maximum duration and are free on Sundays. $10 valet service is available at Francesca's Bryn Mawr at 1039 W Bryn Mawr diagonally across the street from us on the SW corner of Kenmore and Bryn Mawr and is available whether you are dining at the restaurant or not. There are additional details about parking and dining options at www.citylit.org.

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