THE TALL GIRLS to Take the Court at Shattered Globe This Season

Shattered Globe Theatre will continue its 2016-17 season with the Chicago premiere of Meg Miroshnik's drama THE TALL GIRLS, an ensemble piece about five young women in the 1930s rural Midwest who discover a way to escape their crumbling town - by playing basketball.

Directed by Ensemble Member Louis Contey, THE TALL GIRLS will play January 12 - February 25, 2017 at Theater Wit 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago. Tickets go on sale Thursday, December 1, 2016 at www.theaterwit.org, in person at the Theater Wit Box Office or by calling (773) 975-8150. The press opening is Sunday, January 15 at 3 pm.

THE TALL GIRLS will feature SGT Ensemble Members Christina Gorman, Angie Shriner and Joseph Wiens, former SGT Protégés Tina Munoz Pandya and Abbey Smith, with Tracey Green.

As Jean gets off the train in Poor Prairie, a dusty speck on the map during the Depression, she meets a handsome man holding a cloth bag that conceals a brand new basketball. Jean has been exiled to what she fears is her "grave town" to be caretaker for her wild younger cousin. Haunt Johnny has a checkered past of his own, but he knows how to coach. In true pioneering spirit, the town's girls build a basketball team that just might be their means of escape to a better life. Inspired by the 1930's basketball teams in the rural Midwest, The Tall Girls asks, "Who can afford the luxury of play? And will these young women prevail against a town hell bent on crushing their dreams?"

"Meg Miroshnik's The Tall Girls looks back to a time when a pioneer like Babe Didrikson Zaharias was carving her name in sports history and challenging culturally accepted ideals of beauty and femininity," comments Producing Artistic Director Sandy Shinner. "Audiences will cheer for these passionate girls of Poor Prairie who dream that playing basketball will give them a shot at a better life."

The production team for THE TALL GIRLS includes Amanda Rozmiarek (scenic design), Sarah Jo White (costume design), Charles Cooper (lighting design), Christopher Kriz (sound design), Jamie Karas (props design) and Denise Savas (stage manager).

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Meg Miroshnik's (Playwright) plays include The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, The Droll {A Stage-Play about the END of Theatre}, Old Actress and an adaptation of the libretto for Shostakovich's Moscow, Cheryomushki. Her work has been developed or produced by the La Jolla Playhouse, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Center Theatre Group, South Coast Rep, The McCarter Theatre Center, ALLIANCE THEATRE, Yale Rep, the Kennedy Center, Lark New Play Development Center, Chicago Opera Theater, the Moscow Playwright and Director Center, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Circle X, The Wilma Theater, Perishable Theatre, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, One Coast Collaboration, and published in Best American Short Plays, 2008-2009 (Applause, 2010). She is the recipient of a 2012 Whiting Award. The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls was a finalist for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn prize and winner of the 2011-2012 Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama where she studied with Paula Vogel. Meg hails from Minneapolis.

Louis Contey (Director) recently rejoined the ranks of Shattered Globe Theatre as an ensemble member. The Tall Girls marks his 21st collaboration with SGT, where he has directed In The Heat of the Night, A View From The Bridge, The Manchurian Candidate, A Streetcar Named Desire, All My Sons, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Peter Pan, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Warhawks and Lindberghs, Holy Ghosts, Judgment at Nuremberg, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Whaleship Essex, Meet John Doe, The Lower Depths, Escape From Happiness, Real Classy Affair, Rocket to the Moon, Anna Karenina and Brilliant Traces. He has directed over 75 plays, among them The Master & Margarita, Marriage Play, The Diviners, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet. He is an Associate Artist at TimeLine Theatre, where he directed Frost/Nixon, Awake And Sing!, The General from America, Lillian, Copenhagen, It's All True, Pravda, Paradise Lost, A House With No Walls, The Apple Family Plays and The Price. He has also worked at The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Strawdog Theatre, Theatre at the Center, Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, Provision Theatre, Eclipse Theatre and American Theater Company. He is a twelve-time Jeff nominee and has received seven Jeff Citations, as well as an After Dark Award. He teaches part-time at The Theatre School/DePaul University where he received his MFA in Directing.

Shattered Globe Theatre (Sandy Shinner, Producing Artistic Director; Doug McDade, Managing Director) was born in a storefront space on Halsted Street in 1991. Since then, SGT has produced more than 60 plays, including nine American and world premieres, and garnered an impressive 42 Jeff Awards and 106 Jeff Award nominations, as well as the acclaim of critics and audiences alike. Shattered Globe is an ensemble driven theater whose mission is to create an intimate, visceral theater experience that challenges the perspective of audience and artist alike through passionate storytelling. Shattered Globe is inspired by the diversity of our city and committed to making the theater available to all audiences. Through initiatives such as the Protégé Program, Shattered Globe creates a space which allows emerging artists to grow and share in the ensemble experience.

Shattered Globe Theatre is partially supported and funded by generous grants from The Shulman-Rochambeau Charitable Foundation, The James P. and Brenda S. Grusecki Family Foundation, The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Illinois Arts Council, The Field Foundation of Illinois, The Blum-Kovler Family Foundation, and The Robert J. & Loretta W. Cooney Family Foundation.

For more information on Shattered Globe Theatre, visit www.shatteredglobe.org.

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