Sarah Ruhl's DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE Returns to Chicago, 7/11-27

The award-winning comedy, Dead Man's Cell Phone returns to Chicago under the direction of one of Chicago's newest theatre companies, The Enthusiasts Theatre Company. Sarah Ruhl's smash hit comedy opens with an incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. Jean, a stranger at the next table who has had enough. And Gordon, a dead man-with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative comedy. The show is about the struggle to connect in a technologically obsessed world. Dead Man's Cell Phone is a wildly imaginative comedy by MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah Ruhl, author of the The Clean House and Eurydice. The last local production was done by Steppenwolf Theatre Company in March 2008.

Production:

Performances are July 11 through July 27, 2014 at Athenaeum Theatre located at 2936 North Southport Avenue, Chicago, IL running Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. Opening (Press) Night will be July 11th. Tickets are $20. Senior and Student discounts are available. To purchase tickets visit www.athenauemtheatre.org or call the Box Office
773-935-6875.

Creative Team:

Directed by Toma Tavares Langston

Assistant Director Claire Reinhart

Set & Prop Design Paige Reilly

Costume Design & Choreography Raymond K Cleveland

Lighting Design Emma Deane

Sound Design Andrew Sours

Marketing Team Caroline Brogan, Matthew Gillis

Cast:

Erin Kelly Outson (A Woman, Jean)

Gary F. Barth (A Dead Man, Gordon)

Nancy Greco (Gordon's Mother, Mrs. Gottlieb)

Shelley Nixon (Gordon's Widow, Hermia)

Arne Saupe (Gordon's Brother, Dwight)

Katherine Bellantone (The Other Woman/The Stranger)

"Are you making real, deep connections? It has always been a struggle to make a genuine connection with someone. Even though today, we have the technology to communicate at lightning speeds yet something always seems to get lost, misunderstood or even missed. Many of us are ironically lonely. Ruhl has written a funny commentary on how we communicate now and the duality of technology's ability to either isolate or unite." Artistic Director, Toma Langston

"Her new play, "Dead Man's Cell Phone," now at Playwrights Horizons, is a meditation on death, love, and disconnection in the digital age; like her other works, it inhabits a dramatic netherworld between personal suspense and suspended time. "Cell phones, iPods, wireless computers will change people in ways we don't even understand," Ruhl told me. "We're less connected to the present. No one is where they are. There's absolutely no reason to talk to a stranger anymore-you connect to people you already know. But how well do you know them? Because you never see them-you just talk to them. I find that terrifying." (Taken from the New Yorker, March 17th 2008)

About Sarah Ruhl:

Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. In 2003, she was the recipient of the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting Writers' Award. She was a member of 13P and of New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She was recently the recipient of the PEN center award for a mid-career playwright, the Feminist Press' Forty under Forty award, and the 2010 Lilly award. She is currently on the faculty at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Sarah Ruhl's Plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony Award nominee for best new play), The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2005; The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American award, The Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center); Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes award); Melancholy Play; Eurydice; Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP nomination), Late: a cowboy song, Three Sisters, and most recently, Stage Kiss and Dear Elizabeth. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater, off-Broadway at Playwrights' Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater, and downtown at Clubbed Thumb and Classic Stage Company. (Taken from www.sarahruhlplaywright.com)

About The Enthusiasts Theatre Company:

The Enthusiasts Theatre Company was formed in early 2014 by a group of, theater enthusiasts with an overwhelming passion for the performing arts.

The Enthusiasts Theatre Company is dedicated to producing entertaining plays & musicals, telling meaningful stories that are universal yet diverse, providing an intimate theater experience and opening up theater to a broader audience.

The Enthusiasts will strive to produce 3 shows a season - a Comedy, Drama and Musical. Also, The Enthusiasts will provide educational opportunities that will educate the general public on how to use theater to improve upon their everyday lives.

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