Immediate Theatre Presents Five Flights 11/10-12/18

Immediate Theatre is set to announce the company's return to the city's theatre scene with the Chicago premiere of Adam Bock's touching and hilarious Five Flights, November 10 - December 18, at Red Tape Theatre, 621 W. Belmont Ave., directed by Immediate Theatre Artistic Director Peter Cieply. Previews are November 10 - 13, and Five Flights' press opening is Monday, November 14 at 7 p.m. The regular performance schedule is Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m. Tickets are $18-$28 and go on sale Monday, Sept. 12 at 10 a.m. through www.brownpapertickets.com, by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800.838.3006 or visiting www.immediatetheatrechicago.com.

In Five Flights, an "aerodynamically tight comedy about love and grief" (San Francisco Chronicle), siblings Ed and Adele inherit an enormous aviary from their recently deceased father, which he built to house the soul of his wife, who he believed had transformed into a wren. The children have to decide what to do with this crumbling tribute to eternal love. Sister-in-law Jane wants to tidy it away. Adele's best friend wants it to use for her "Church of the Fifth Day"-a screwball religion based around birds. Ed is not sure what he wants-for the aviary or in life-even when Tom, a handsome pro hockey player, expresses interest in him. Ricocheting from hilarity to heartbreak, occasionally freewheeling backward in time, and along the way exploring the little-known similarities between hockey and ballet, Five Flights' familial debate includes issues of faith, sexuality, commitment and longing for something just out of reach.

Five Flights played Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Theater in 2004, after a five-month sold-out run at San Francisco's Encore Theater in 2002. The play won the Glickman Award and was nominated for the American Theater Critics Award, the Elizabeth Osborn Award, and two BATCC Awards. It has been published in Breaking Ground, an anthology of new plays.

The cast includes: Victor Allen (Andre), Chris Carr (Tom), Melonie Collmann (Adele), Nick Freed (Ed), Emily Gann (Olivia) and Millie Langford (Jane).

Production staff includes: Peter Cieply (director), John Rooney (assistant director/production manager); casting by Two Birds Casting; Stephen Carmody (sets), Diane Fairchild (lighting), Michael Fernandez (projections), Emily Guthrie (props), Michael Huey (sound), Izumi Inaba (costumes), Dan Stermer (choreography) and Ariel Welch (stage manager).

ABOUT Adam Bock
Adam Bock was born in Montreal and currently lives in New York. Bock's latest play, A Small Fire, premiered in December 2010 at Playwrights Horizons and his musical We Have Always Lived In the Castle was produced last fall by Yale Repertory Theatre. His play The Receptionist received its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in the fall of 2007 in a sold-out extended run, and his Drunken City was produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2008. Other works include The Thugs (OBIE Award), Swimming In The Shallows (3 BATCC Awards), Five Flights, The Typographer's Dream, The Shaker Chair and Three Guys And A Brenda (Heideman Award). His plays have been commissioned, developed and produced in New York by MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, The Vineyard, Rattlestick, Clubbed Thumb; regionally at About Face, Yale, Trinity Rep, the O'Neill, the Humana Festival, and UCross/Sundance; and in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, Salt Lake, Montreal, Toronto, London, and Edinburgh, among others. He is the resident playwright at Encore Theater, a Shotgun Players artistic associate, and a New Dramatist member playwright.

ABOUT IMMEDIATE THEATRE
The original Immediate Theatre Company was an ensemble formed in the early 1980s by the acclaimed acting teacher and casting director Jane Brody. The company was known for its tight ensemble work and truthful acting, and enjoyed numerous successes and awards until the early 1990s, when it disbanded. Now one of its founding members, Peter Cieply, has revived the name to launch a new theatre-Production Company committed to creating fresh, intimate, high-quality fringe productions.

ABOUT PETER CIEPLY
Immediate Theatre's Artistic Director Peter Cieply's directing work includes an acclaimed production of Under Milk Wood (co-directed and -produced with Michael Barto/Barto Productions), which ran for more than a year at the Theatre Building; Waiting For Godot (CT20 Ensemble); Keep the Yuletide Gay (Theatre Q, San Francisco) and assistant directing work on The Skin of Our Teeth (David Petrarca, Goodman) and Brontë (James Bohnen, Remy Bumppo).

As an actor Cieply most recently was seen in The Memory of Water (Backstage Theatre) and was an understudy for The Voysey Inheritance (Remy Bumppo). He has worked with numerous other Chicago companies including American Blues, Bailiwick, Econo-Art, Hypocrites, Pegasus, Stage Left, and the original Immediate Theatre Company, where he was a founding member. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Cieply worked with Center Rep and was seen as Harry in The Sum of Us (Theatre Q).

Immediate Theatre presents Adam Bock's Five Flights, Directed by Peter Cieply; November 10 - December 18, at Red Tape Theatre, 621 W. Belmont Ave. Previews are November 10 -13. Five Flights' press opening is Monday, November 14 at 7 p.m. Both preview and regular performance schedule is: Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 pm and Sundays at 5 p.m. Tickets for previews are $18. Regular performance tickets are: $24 Saturday matinees and Sunday evenings; $28 Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings; $18 for students/seniors. Tickets go on sale Monday, Sept. 12 at 10 a.m. through www.brownpapertickets.com, by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800.838.3006 or visiting www.immediatetheatrechicago.com.

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