HOMECOMING Concludes Chicago Dramatists 2012 Season, Opening Tonight, 5/16

Chicago Dramatists, known for producing innovative and award-winning new work, is proud to announce its 34th season featuring three world premiere productions by its Resident Playwrights. Chicago Dramatists continues to nurture the city's most promising playwrights and to push the envelope with the newest plays, helping to advance Chicago's reputation as a leader in American theatre new play development.

The Chicago Dramatists' season concludes with Homecoming 1972, tonight, May 16 through June 23, by Resident Playwright Robert Koon and directed by Associate Artist Kimberly Senior. Tickets for the 2012-2013 season go on sale July 1, 2012. Chicago Dramatists is located at 1105 W. Chicago Avenue, performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. individual ticket prices are $32, and student tickets are $15 for all Thursday performances. For more information or reservations visit www.chicagodramatists.org or call 312.633.0630.

Homecoming 1972 by Resident Playwright Robert Koon, Directed by Associate Artist Kimberly Senior, May 16 – June 23, 2013, Opening Night: May 24 & 25

In 1972, Frank limped out of the war in Vietnam and back into the world, a world outwardly similar but inwardly very different from the one he left. In his small, Midwestern hometown, Frank is having a difficult time re-adjusting to his old life, including interacting with his family and childhood friends. Frank finds that his once-mundane world of football, cars and Sunday dinners has turned suddenly strange and threatening. Caught between the realities of war and the retrospective absurdities of his old life, he stares down the iconic celebration of returning local heroes – the high school homecoming game.

Robert Koon is a resident playwright and serves as Chicago Dramatists' company dramaturg. His work has been presented across the country, and he is a past winner of the national award for ecodrama (presented by Earth Matters On Stage), as well as a finalist for the Heideman Award. He is a past resident at the William Inge Center for the Arts, and teaches playwriting through the Chicago Dramatists Playwrights Studio.

In 2012, Chicago Dramatists is celebrating its 20th year of placing working playwrights in Chicago Public School classrooms throughout some of the city's most disadvantaged neighborhoods, working with more than 600 students in 21 classrooms who have not been given the opportunity to participate in arts learning. This program is a natural extension of Chicago Dramatists' mission to develop new voices and cultivates writers in grades 7-12 through the art and craft of dramatic writing. Integrating easily with the CPS curriculum and complementing teachers' classroom objectives, the 10 session residencies address the four main strands from the Chicago Guide for Teaching and Learning in the Arts: arts making, arts literacy, interpretation and evaluation, and making connections-which also supports the Illinois and national learning standards. The Blue Moon Ball Gala, our annual fundraiser, is also recognizing this achievement June 14, 2012. This will be the time to recognize the accomplishments of these children, as well as the work that Chicago Dramatists has done in the past 21 years.

In the fall of 1979, four playwrights came together to hear their work read aloud and to hone their craft. Today, Chicago Dramatists' amazing record of achievement has landed it an invaluable place in the artistic community as a vital source of inspiration to 37 resident playwrights, 160 associate playwrights, 60 associate artists, and thousands of audience members. Over the past three decades, Chicago Dramatists has worked with more than one thousand playwrights, produced and developed thousands of plays and stayed true to its mission to nurture compelling, challenging and diverse plays that move on to productions, earn awards and define the American theatre.

Chicago Dramatists has helped launch the career of hundreds of award-winning writers including Tina Fey (30 Rock), Rick Cleveland (Mad Men), Rebecca Gilman (Spinning Into Butter), Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House), Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly) and Keith Huff (A Steady Rain). Each season Chicago Dramatists presents three world premiere productions and the signature Saturday Series, year round weekly staged readings of plays-in-progress. The theatre also conducts new play workshops, a full range of professional playwriting classes, and educational outreach to at-risk students at Chicago Public Schools. Through passionate dedication, individual attention and careful exposure, Chicago Dramatists carries on its thirty-three-year-old mission of developing new plays and playwrights for the next generation of theatre.

Chicago Dramatists is the only theatre in the country that is both a playwrights' development center and a full producing theatre, which continues to push the envelope with the newest plays and most promising playwrights. Through its long-standing Resident Playwright program, Chicago Dramatists seeks to nurture accomplished, Chicago-based dramatists who will make significant contributions to the American theatre repertory. Every year, Chicago Dramatists' playwrights earn literally hundreds of productions, awards and other honors at large and small theatres in Chicago and around the world; enriching the lives of hundreds of thousands of theatre patrons, exporting Chicago voices across the globe, and significantly boosting Chicago Dramatists' reputation as one of the nation's foremost new play development theatres.

Chicago Dramatists is located just minutes from the Loop at 1105 West Chicago Ave., at the 24-hour Chicago Avenue stop of the Blue Line subway and is just off the Ogden and Augusta exits of the Kennedy Expressway. Tickets for the 2012-2013 season go on sale July 1, 2012 and performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. Individual ticket prices are $32, and student tickets are $15 all Thursday performances. There is metered street parking available, a detailed parking map can be found at www.chicagodramatists.org/parking. For more information or reservations visit www.chicagodramatists.org or call 312.633.0630.

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