Chuck Spencer & Cyd Blakewell Set for Marco Ramirez's BROADSWORD at Gift Theatre; Full Cast Announced

The Gift Theatre artistic director Michael Patrick Thornton has announced casting for the Chicago premiere of Broadsword: A Heavy Metal Play written by Marco Ramirez (Orange is the New Black; Sons of Anarchy) and directed by Keira Fromm. Guest artists Chuck Spencer (Jeff Award-winner for Redtwist's Man From Nebraska) and Pavement Group's Cyd Blakewell (currently co-starring in Mine) join The Gift Ensemble members John Kelly Connolly (The Lonesome West), James D. Farruggio (Suicide, Inc.), Gabriel Franken (Mine) and John Gawlik (The Lonesome West).

"There are plays you read once and know you must do; we call them 'the ones we can't walk away from.' Broadsword is such a play," says Thornton. "The Gift's Associate Artistic Director Paul D'Addario puts it best: 'The guys in the band are better together than they are apart.' The best ensembles are like that: various personalities, dissonant points of view, the wounds of time-but when they come together they draw the best out of each other to make beautiful music. Broadsword is a devilishly wild journey of faith and love that ends our 2013 season on just the right note."

Playwright Marco Ramirez, who penned the short "Two Hundred Feet and Counting" for this year's TEN at The Gift, is a two-time winner of the Kennedy Center's Latin Playwriting Award and two-time Heideman Award-winning playwright for short plays. Using Broadsword as his portfolio piece, Ramirez was hired as a staff writer by executive producer Kurt Sutter for two seasons of FX's hit biker drama Sons of Anarchy. Also, on the television front, Ramirez writes for Da Vinci's Demons created by David Goyer (Man of Steel, The Dark Knight), and the critically acclaimed Netflix original series Orange is the New Black. Ramirez attended Tisch School of the Arts and Juilliard, where he studied under Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman ('night, Mother).

"Broadsword is a play about a heavy metal band that broke up years ago and is forced to come together because one of their own has died or mysteriously disappeared," explains Ramirez. "It's part funeral-play, part mystery-play. On a good day, I like to think it's a little Agatha Christie and a little Stephen Adly Guirgis, as filtered through an episode of The X-Files. If that sounds odd, it should - the whole thing takes place in New Jersey."

Broadsword previews run September 26 - September 29 at the Gift Theatre, 4802 N. Milwaukee Avenue. Opening night is Thursday, October 3. The show runs Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. through November 24. Single tickets, $20-$30, are available at http://thegifttheatre.org/ or by calling the box office at 773-283-7071.

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