Pine Box Theater Company Announces 2012 Season

Pine Box Theater Company today announced its 2012 Season, featuring THE JAMMER by Rolin Jones, directed by Artistic Director Vincent Teninty and the world premiere of 25 SAINTS by Ensemble Member JoshuaRollins, directed by Ensemble Member Susan E. Bowen. Tickets for THE JAMMERgo on sale Sunday, April 1 at www.pineboxtheater.org or by calling the Athenaeum Box Office at (773) 935-6875. The Athenaeum Box Office is open from 12 pm – last curtain, Wednesdays through Sundays.

"Following a three year hiatus, Pine Box successfully returned to the theatre scene last summer with Joshua Rollins's critically-acclaimed thriller A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes," comments Artistic Director Vincent Teninty. "Now, we're thrilled to bring Chicago audiences a full season of great theatre, including another world premiere by Rollins," adds Teninty.

May 19 – July 1, 2012
THE JAMMER
By Rolin Jones
Directed by Artistic Director Vincent Teninty
Featuring Pine Box Ensemble Members Josh Odor and Greg Rothman with Bill Bannon, Sara Gorsky, Kersten Haile, Amy Jean Johnson, James Earl Jones II, Miguel Nunez, Levenix Riddle and Eliza Shin.
at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., Chicago

THE JAMMER resurrects that greatest of American entertainments, the Roller Derby: half sport, half show, all action. In just over an hour, THE JAMMER packs multiple roller-derby sequences, a riot, a roller-coaster ride, vomit, spit, blood, sex and love. In short, it's the King Lear of roller derby plays.

Rolin Jones received a Fringe First Award for Best New Writing at 2004's Edinburgh Fringe Festival for The Jammer. It was later produced at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival. Jones' play The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and received the 2006 Obie Award for Excellence in Playwriting. He has written several short plays for the Actors Theater of Louisville's Humana Festival, including Sovereignty, Ron Robby Had Too Big A Heart, The Mercury and the Magic, Extremely and Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass. Jones has also worked extensively in television, serving as a producer and writer on the series Weeds, Friday Night Lights and The United States of Tara. He currently serves as a co-executive producer on the television series Smash.

Vincent Teninty currently serves as Pine Box's Artistic Director. He has been acting professionally in Chicago since 1999 at esteemed companies including Steppenwolf Theatre (Mother Courage and Her Children, A Lesson Before Dying), The GoodmanTheatre (Talking Pictures, The Good Negro, Dartmoor Prison), The Hypocrites (Desire Under the Elms), Apple Tree Theatre (To Kill a Mockingbird), The Artistic Home (Savage Love), Steep Theatre (The Resistible of Arturo Ui, Insignificance), Strawdog Theatre (Julius Caesar) and TimeLine Theatre (A Cry of Players).

October/November 2012
25 SAINTS
A world premiere by Ensemble Member Joshua Rollins
Directed by Ensemble Member Susan E. Bowen
Casting and location TBD

Tonight has not gone as expected for Charlie and Tuck. They've got a batch of meth to make before skipping town, which is probably ruined. The town sheriff wants them dead, the woman they love has a secret and then there's that dead body stuffed in a box. Scraping by in the hills of Appalachia just got a lot more complicated.

Joshua Rollins' A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes debuted at Pine Box in 2011. Girl will have subsequent productions later this year including the first international showing in Sydney, Australia. Other writing credits include American Rex, which was a finalist for the 2010 Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Center's Summer Conference and will be produced in 2013 with Chicago Street Theatre, Darlin' and Postscript, which was included in Chicago Dramatists' acclaimed Saturday Series of New Work. He served as the head writer for American Theatre Company's Chicago Chronicle Project and has had numerous one-acts produced at The Artistic Home, American Theatre Company, American Blues Theatre and many Boston area theaters.

Susan E. Bowen has been a member of Pine Box Theater Company since September 2011. She recently worked as Associate Director for Rivendell Theatre Ensemble's remount of The Lonely Soldier at The National Veteran's Museum. Other Chicago credits include: Speakeasy at City Lit, Chicago Chronicle: Volume III at American Theater Company, The Gingerbread House for Route 66 Theatre Company (monthly reading series) and The Runaway Gene: Pass It On for A Red Orchid Theatre (summer reading series). Susan also recently directed a staged reading of The House of Mr. Orange by Aasif Mandvi at Access Theater in New York, where her previous credits include work with Epic Theatre Ensemble, Elevator Repair Service and Circle East, among other companies.

Pine Box Theater Company (Vincent Teninty, Artistic Director; Greg Rothman, Managing Director) has its genesis in a group of actors who all met and graduated from the School at Steppenwolf in 2004. Wanting to build upon this common experience and strengthen the relationships they had forged there, these actors agreed to form a company with a commitment to producing challenging theatre with a focus on intense character and relationship-driven stories. Seminal productions include: Life and Limb by Keith Reddin, This is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan, Hot 'N' Throbbing by Paula Vogel and Pine Box Ensemble Member Joshua Rollins' A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes in the summer of 2011.

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