The Midwest Premiere of Julia Cho's 'Durango!' @ Silk Road

Silk Road Theatre Project Artistic Director Jamil Khoury and Executive Director Malik Gillani announce the Midwest Premiere of Durango by Julia Cho. The production, directed by Carlos Murillo, will run May 1- June 15, 2008, in Pierce Hall at The Historic Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington St, Chicago.
 
To the outside world, the Lee boys look like the perfect Korean American sons: Isaac plans to be a doctor and his younger brother, Jimmy, is a champion swimmer with a bright future. But when their widowed father, Boo-Seng, decides to take them on a road trip to Durango, Colorado, all three find themselves grappling with old memories and unhealed wounds. As tempers flare and secrets break open, the difference between who they are and who they've pretended to be threatens to tear the family apart.
 
"Few experiences are more quintessentially American than the family road trip, an almost ritualized expression of our independence and mobility, acted out against a broad swath of mostly unsettled territory," says Artistic Director Jamil Khoury. "And it is within the American road trip, traversing desert terrains from Arizona to Durango, Colorado, that Julia Cho frames this smart, funny, sometimes painful tale of a Korean born father and his two American born sons. Durango is a 21st century play about honesty, deception, and choice. Whether engaging it for the first time or the tenth, it evokes gasps of recognition. Not only does it recall memories, but it brings to light so much that we love and hate about traveling with our families…and much, much more."  
 
Durango features Joseph Anthony Foronda (Boo-Seng), Walter Brody (Jerry/Ned), Austin Campion (Red Angel/Bob), Erik Kaiko (Jimmy) and Dawen Wang (Isaac).
 
The designers are Marianna Csaszar (Set Designer), Carol Blanchard (Costume Designer), Rob Steel (Lighting Designer), Rebecca Barrett (Sound Designer) and Lavina Jadhwani (Dramaturg). The stage manager is Benjamin Herman.
 
Julia Cho (playwright) Plays include The Piano Teacher (Vineyard Theatre, South Coast Repertory), Durango (Long Wharf Theater & The Public Theater, East West Players), The Winchester House (The Theatre@Boston Court), BFE (Long Wharf Theater & Playwrights Horizons), The Architecture of Loss (New York Theatre Workshop), 99 Histories (Cherry Lane Alternative, Theater Mu), and Bay and the Spectacles of Doom (La Jolla Playhouse's POP Tour). Honors include the Barrie Stavis Award, the Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award.  

An alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Julia is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists. Carlos Murillo (director) is a playwright, director and Assistant Professor at The Theatre School of DePaul University. His most recent play dark play or stories for boys received its world premiere at the 31st Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville in March 2007. The play, originally developed at the UCSB Summer Theatre Lab, The Theatre School at DePaul University and The Goodman Theatre Latino Festival, will receive productions this fall at Atlanta's Actors Express and Pasadena's Theatre @ Boston Court (which will be a featured event during the Triennial Pasadena Arts and Ideas Festival). The play will be published this fall in New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2007 (Smith & Kraus) and The 31st Humana Festival Anthology (Playscripts).

As a director, he has staged productions and workshops of his own work in New York, Chicago and Minneapolis. He has also staged plays at The Walker Arts Center/Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, The Public Theatre New Work Now! Festival, the Mazer Theatre and Makor in NY. For DePaul he recently directed the world premiere of Isaac Holter's Good Worker for the New Play Showcase series, for which he has staged two previous productions (Andie Arthur's In Common Hours and Alexander Perry's eikon). In spring of 2006 he staged David Edgar's Pentecost at The Merle Reskin Theatre. This past summer he directed a workshop production of Volver Volver Volver at the University Playwrights' Workshop at The Kennedy Center, where he was also a guest artist for their annual Playwriting Intensive. He is currently directing A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Nilo Cruz at Chicago Playworks. From 1993-1995, Carlos was the Associate Literary Manager at The Public Theatre in NY.

Previews are May 1 – May 9, 2008. The opening press performance is Saturday, May 10, 2008, at 4:00 p.m. The production runs through June 15, 2008. Curtain times are Thursdays at 7:30; Fridays at 8:00 p.m.; Saturdays at 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 4:00 p.m.
 
Tickets are available at the Silk Road Theatre Project box office, 77 W. Washington; by phone, (866) 811-4111; and online, www.srtp.org. Please note that the box office phone number has recently changed.
 
Discounted parking is available for $6 at System Parking, just 3 blocks from the theatre, at 230 W. Washington Street.
 
Silk Road Theatre Project showcases playwrights of Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean backgrounds, whose works address themes relevant to the peoples of the Silk Road and their Diaspora communities. Through the creation and presentation of outstanding theatre, we aim to promote discourse and dialogue among multi-cultural audiences in  Chicago. 

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