Haven Theatre Sets 2017-18 Season, Plus Midwest Premiere of THE TOTAL BENT for 2018-19

Haven Theatre has announced two of the three productions featured in its upcoming 2017-18 Season, including one world premiere - plus an exciting Midwest premiere already set for the company's 2018-19 Season.

Haven's 2017-18 Season kicks off this fall with the third DIRECTOR'S HAVEN, three short plays showcasing the talents of early career directors. Helming this year's productions are Kristen Johnson, Ian Martin and Lexi Saunders. All performances are pay-what-you-can. The season concludes in summer 2018 with the world premiere of THE DISPLACED, written by Isaac Gomez and directed by Jo Cattell - an electrifying thriller exploring the heartbreak of gentrification and the scars we leave on each other. The 2017-18 Season also includes a yet-to-be-announced production set for February/March 2018.

Throughout the 2017-18 Season, the company will also be featuring monthly, one-night-only presentations of work by exciting and emerging artists as part of its mission or providing a Haven for artistic development and trying out ideas! Artists confirmed to date include: Tobi Mattingly (August 2017), Wardell Clark (September 2017), Katy Walsh (October 2017), Will Quam (January 2018), Kacie Smith (February 2018), Alexandra Kunath (March 2018), Sammy Zeisel (April 2018) and Regina Victor (May 2018).

Haven is also excited to announce an exciting Midwest premiere already set for its 2018-19 season: THE TOTAL BENT, a dynamic new rock show about fathers, sons, social upheaval and the choice between salvation and selling out. The new musical features text by Stew and music and lyrics by Stew and Heidi Rodewald - the creative team behind the Tony Award-nominated Best Musical Passing Strange. Lili-Anne Brown directs.

Comments Artistic Director Josh Sobel, "Our past four seasons have been a time of immense growth and change. Looking ahead to our 5th season - and additionally our 6th seasons - we are thrilled to further expand upon the ways we can live up to our name and our mission of investing in the Future. Isaac Gomez is one of the most inspiring rising playwrights I have ever encountered - the poetry and soul he brings to his work is staggering. Our unique Director's Haven program continues to thrive - with our upcoming cohort of three inspiring early-career artists bringing a particularly personal point of view to their contributions this season. Additionally, I could not be more excited about the Midwest premiere of The Total Bent, an explosive new show by the creators of Tony Award-winner Passing Strange that had its world premiere at New York's famed Public Theater in 2016. Passing Strange was a formative artistic experience for me personally. To have the opportunity to welcome Stew and Heidi's new work into Haven - as well as to reunite their voice with the incredible Lili-Anne Brown, director of Chicago's hit run of Passing Strange - is nothing less than a dream come true."

Haven's Theatre 2017-18 Season will be staged at its resident home, The Den Theatre's Janet Bookspan Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Tickets will go on sale at a later date. For additional information, visit haventheatrechicago.com.

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Haven Theatre's 2017-18 Season:

October 16 - November 1, 2017

DIRECTORS HAVEN

Featuring work by Kristen Johnson, Ian Martin and Lexi Saunders

All performances are pay-what-you-can

The Director's Haven returns for its 3rd consecutive year, with a brand new collective of three exciting early career directors! Kristen Johnson, Ian Martin and Lexi Saunders will headline Haven's ever-growing initiative to showcase rising directors as they share their artistic point of view with the Chicago community. Each director will helm a fully produced 30-45 minute play of their choosing that will run back-to-back at each performance. See what the next generation can do when provided with that all-too-rare commodity: a room to share their vision. Productions will be announced shortly.

February 11 - March 11, 2018

Production to be announced!

May 31 - July 1, 2018

THE DISPLACED - World Premiere!

By Isaac Gomez

Directed by Jo Cattell

Press opening: Sunday, June 3, 2018

Marísa and Lev have just moved into their new Pilsen apartment in hopes of rekindling a spark that's long been extinguished. While looking for the circuit breaker in the attic, a mysterious coconut appears, leftover from the previous tenants with a dark history inside it. The Displaced explores the wake of pain and yearning left behind when gentrification forces people out of their homes and the kind of vengeance that can come from it.

Already Set for Haven Theatre's 2018-19 Season:

THE TOTAL BENT - Midwest Premiere!

Text by Stew

Music & Lyrics by Stew & Heidi Rodewald

Directed by Lili-Anne Brown

Dates to be announced.

When a British record producer arrives in Montgomery, Alabama to hook Marty Roy, a young black musical prodigy, he launches us back into Marty's tumultuous upbringing. The son of a gospel star and self-proclaimed healer, Marty spent his childhood writing the songs that have made his charismatic father famous. But in a nation on the verge of social upheaval, with the rising heat from the street guiding his pen, Marty finds himself at odds with his spiritually forceful father as he strives to create a masterpiece that will change America - no matter the cost. A funny, fiery, one-of-a-kind show, The Total Bent is about the passions that divide a father and son as they make their music and make their choice between salvation and selling out.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Isaac Gomez (Playwright - The Displaced) is a playwright and dramaturg currently working as the Director of New Play Development at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago where he curates the Public Programs series, directs the new play development department and heads the IGNITION Festival of New Plays. As a playwright, he has worked with the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Victory Gardens Theater, Pivot Arts, American Theater Company, Chicago Dramatists, Teatro Vista, Definition Theater Company, Greenhouse Theater Center, Sideshow Theater Company, Broken Nose Theater and Something Marvelous. He is the Co-Creative Director at the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists in Chicago where he runs and is a participant of El Semillero: ALTA Chicago's Latinx Playwrights Circle, a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists, an Ensemble Member with Teatro Vista, Artistic Associate with Pivot Arts, Artistic Curator for Theater on the Lake 2017/2018, a steering committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) and an artistic community member at The Hypocrites in Chicago. He is also a Professional Lecturer of Theater Studies at The Theatre School at DePaul University.

Jo Cattell (Director - The Displaced) is currently creating An Epic Tale of Scale for Chicago Childrens' Theatre, with Henry Wishcamper for performance in 2018. She is part of the LightPoets (along with dandypunk and Darin Basile), whose immersive theatre show, HEARTCORPS: Riders of the Storyboard premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and is currently in development for a full production. Recent credits: Associate Director on Shakespeare in Love (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Tumbao (Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre), Don Chipotle: Origin, a pilot webisode. Jo has worked with numerous theatre and television companies, including the BBC, Sky Television, Cirque du Soleil, Chicago the Musical (West End, Korean/Japanese Tour), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (West End), Stomp Out Loud (Las Vegas), Pentabus Theatre, Joe's Pub at The Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, Route 66, Origin Theatre, Leviathan Lab and Culture Project. Jo was awarded the 3Arts Award for her work as a theatre maker in 2016.

Stew's (Text, Music & Lyrics - The Total Bent) work includes Passing Strange, for which he received the 2008 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, and four other Tony nominations, including Best Musical. He is also a two-time Obie Award winner for Passing Strange. Spike Lee shot a feature film of the Broadway production of Passing Strange and it rocked selected theaters throughout the U.S. before debuting on PBS' Great Performances in 2009. Stew leads a band called Stew & The Negro Problem, whose eight albums have attracted much critical acclaim and numerous "Album of the Year" awards. Stew and Heidi Rodewald, his two-time Obie Award-winning collaborator, created Making It, a song-cycle for rock band and video, which was commissioned by and performed at St. Ann's Warehouse in February 2010. In October 2010, Brooklyn Omnibus, another live song-cycle with video, was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and performed there. The Total Bent, a new musical developed at The Public Theater Lab in the winter of 2012, finished a run at the Public in the summer of 2016, after being extended twice. January 2012 saw the release of the music from Making It by The Negro Problem on their new label Tight Natural Productions. Stew's work has been featured on multiple occasions at Lincoln Center, the United Nations, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Getty Museum, Hammer Museum, UCLA Live, Seattle Repertory Theater, NPR and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

Heidi Rodewald (Music & Lyrics - The Total Bent) is the Tony Award nominated, Obie Award winning co-composer of the musical Passing Strange, which transferred from The Public Theater to Broadway in 2008. Rodewald composed music for Karen Kandel's Portraits: Night and Day (2004); Brides of the Moon by The Five Lesbian Brothers (2010); and co-composed music for Shakespeare's Othello and Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet (2010-12). Rodewald joined the band The Negro Problem in 1997, where she began a longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter, Stew. She has collaborated with him in a range of capacities - as a co-composer, producer/arranger and performer. She is the co-composer with Stew of the musical Family Album, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival during the 2014 season, Notes of a Native Song at Harlem Stage in 2015, Wagner, Max! Wagner!! at the Kennedy Center in 2015, and The Total Bent at The Public Theater in May 2016. Heidi is the composer of The Good Swimmer with librettist Donna DiNovelli, presented by Prototype Festival January 2016 at the space HERE in NYC, and scored her first film I Dream Too Much, which had it's world premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival.

Lili-Anne Brown (Director - The Total Bent) is a native Chicagoan who works as a director, actor and educator, and has performed in, directed and produced many award-winning shows, both local and regional. She received the Joseph Jefferson Award for her direction of Ahrens & Flaherty's Dessa Rose, and a BTA Award for her direction of Passing Strange, both at Bailiwick Chicago, where she served as Artistic Director. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, a member of Actor's Equity and SAG-AFTRA, and an Associate of SDC.

We exist to be a Haven for The Future. We achieve this through championing the next generation of playwrights, directors and actors by producing and promoting plays and performances that are staking their claim as the immediate future of this art form, and by investing in those at the very beginning of their professional journeys. Through this inspiration, we seek to ignite in each audience member a hope for the Future - the Future of theatre and performance, the Future of each other, the Future of our community.

Pictured: Haven Theatre's 2018-19 season will feature the Midwest premiere of THE TOTAL BENT by Heidi Rodewald and Stew. Photo by Jeff Fasano.

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