Production Detail

2003-2004

the side project promotes new voices in its second annual HARVEST: FESTIVAL OF NEW WORKS featuring staged readings of brand new works by six Chicago playwrights, followed by talkbacks with the writer and director. The festival will include:

• November 10 - LOVEPLAY written and directed by Cory Sandrock

  What if you had a talent, but didn't care about it? What if your friends cared about it more than you did? And more than you? Separating an artist from his art and exploiting one and/or the other, is explored in Cory Sandrock's new play that shows how easy it is to blur the line between inspiration and expectation.

• November 11 - ERRATICA, by Reina Hardy, directed by Michael Graham

  English professor Samantha Stafford has problems; plural. Lovelorn undergrad/bad poet Gregory Fairlands slips flaming sonnets under her door; her publicist blackmails her into changing her book; the source material, a racy 16th century diary, goes missing; and to top it all off, the constant nagging of Christopher "Kit" Marlowe's ghost offers little peace.

• November 17 - HARVEST, by Aaron Lipke, directed by Christopher Berens

  Big business is rearing its ugly head in the farmlands in the form of buyouts, corporate cover-ups, and political dealings. This hard-hitting play about numerous immigrant populations who built their lives reaping and sowing the promise land, from Germans to Irish to Hispanics, over three generations, is an inspired look at nostalgia and tradition butting heads with the reality of the hectic pace of contemporary life.

• November 18 - BRIAN AND SHEVAT, by Gabrielle Reisman, directed by Jarrett Dapier

  Is Shevat who she appears to be? Is anyone? And whose apartment is this? Join Shevat, who speaks in ocelots and pandas, and Brian, whose life may not be his own, as they explore the process of just being somewhere, the possibility of going somewhere, and the obscured memory of having been somewhere. But where?

• November 24 - MAGGIE, adapted by Adam Webster, directed by Lindsey Smith Purdy

  Adam Webster's adaptation of Stephen Crane's story of a girl who succumbs to her environment, the Bowery District of New York, and her brother's struggle to identify his role in corrupting and saving her. Don't miss this sneak preview of the world premiere slated for February.

• November 25 - A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO SAILING, by Jeffrey Dainton, directed by Jessica Redish

  The Goodwins have communication problems, and therefore, secrets. This explosive memory play shows how such groundwork is laid and the simmering that occurs when the gaps continue. The sailing isn't always smooth, the water usually not inviting, and the undertow inescapable.