Goodman Theatre

For Immediate Release

(June 23, 2008-Chicago, IL) Artistic Director Robert Falls proudly announces the complete line-up of Goodman Theatre's 2008/2009 Season-including the addition of three plays, plus casting and directing details for several previously announced offerings.

• Tommy Tune has tapped stage and screen star Jeff Daniels (Terms of Endearment, The Squid and the Whale, Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July) and Broadway star Rachel York (City of Angels, Victor/Victoria, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) for the Goodman's world premiere production of Turn of the Century by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (September 19 - October 26, 2008).
• For Regina Taylor's world premiere of Magnolia, Anna D. Shapiro, recipient of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Director for a Play (August: Osage County), will make her Goodman directing debut (March 14 - April 19, 2009).
• Completing the 2008/2009 season in the Albert Theatre is José Rivera's Boleros for the Disenchanted-"an Eden of profound beauty" (Variety)-directed by Goodman Resident Artistic Associate Henry Godinez in the Albert Theatre (June 20 - July 26, 2009). The author of Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries), Rivera returns to the Goodman after previous productions of his plays Massacre (Sing to Your Children) and Cloud Tectonics.
• In addition, the Goodman will co-produce the work of two celebrated off-Loop Chicago theater companies-The Hypocrites and The Neo-Futurists-in the three-month global exploration of Eugene O'Neill in the 21st Century (January - March 2009). The Hypocrites will perform The Hairy Ape, while The Neo-Futurists will produce the Pulitzer Prize-winning Strange Interlude in its full length. These companies join the line-up Falls has curated including New York's The Wooster Group, Amsterdam's Toneelgroep, and Brazil's Companhia Triptal in a celebration of O'Neill's work as it is being produced around the world today.
• Finally, celebrated Chicago actor Larry Yando, who portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in the 30th anniversary production of A Christmas Carol, reprises his role (November 21 - December 31, 2008) directed by William Brown.

Season subscriptions are now on sale, including an 8-play package starting at $148 (subs exclude A Christmas Carol) Visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org/Subscribe or call 312.443.3800. A complete 08/09 schedule follows; plays, dates and artists are subject to change.

Turn of the Century
By Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
Directed by Tommy Tune
Featuring Jeff Daniels and Rachel York
September 19 - October 26, 2008, in the Albert Theatre

A world premiere

Nine-time Tony Award winner and National Medal of the Arts recipient Tommy Tune directs the world premiere of the musical Turn of the Century, a romantic comedy and trip through time and the American songbook from the writers of the Tony Award-winning Jersey Boys-Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Stage and screen star Jeff Daniels (Terms of Endearment, The Squid and the Whale) makes his Goodman debut starring as Billy Clark, a piano player who knows the songs and loves the ladies. Acclaimed Broadway veteran Rachel York (City of Angels, Victor/Victoria) stars as Dixie Wilson, a singer who can't catch a break-with a gig or a guy. The friction between them is immediate; so is the chemistry. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, the impossible happens-and together, Billy and Dixie steal the songs that make the whole world sing, becoming the superstars they've always dreamed of, at the turn of the century.

Ruined
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Kate Whoriskey
November 8 - December 7, 2008, in the Owen Theatre
A world premiere

MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner Lynn Nottage returns to Chicago with her Goodman commission, Ruined, which the theater workshopped and produced as part of the 2007 New Stages Series. Set in the present day Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ruined centers around Mama Nadi, a savvy businesswoman who, in the midst of a complex civil war, protects and profits from the women whose bodies have become a battleground. Following its Goodman Theatre world premiere, Ruined will transfer to Manhattan Theatre Club.

A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens
Adapted by Tom Creamer
Directed by William Brown, featuring Larry Yando

November 21 - December 31, 2008, in the Albert Theatre

A Christmas Carol at the Goodman has been the centerpiece of Chicago Christmas for more than one million people over the past 30 years. Chicago actor Larry Yando returns as Ebenezer Scrooge.

A GLOBAL EXPLORATION: Eugene O'Neill in the 21st Century Curated by Robert Falls, January - March 2009

Artistic Director Robert Falls' history with Eugene O'Neill has spanned four landmark productions: The Iceman Cometh (1990), A Touch of the Poet (1996), Long Day's Journey Into Night (2002) and Hughie (2004). For GoodmanTheatre's 2009 exploration of Eugene O'Neill, Falls views the 20th century "father of the American drama" through a 21st century international lens: a handful of the world's leading theater companies bring to Chicago their highly contemporary, inventive interpretations of O'Neill's dramas to plumb the depths of this important playwright.

Desire Under the Elms
Directed by Robert Falls
Featuring Brian Dennehy
January 17 - February 22, 2009, in the Albert Theatre

Sparked by the dark hollows and brilliant imaginings of his subconscious, master playwright Eugene O'Neill conceived Desire Under the Elms as he slept one night, resulting in a work with the powerful emotional pitch of a fever dream. Elder Ephraim Cabot returns to his remote New England farm with his third wife-the young, alluring, headstrong Abbie-setting his three disapproving grown sons on an emotional rollercoaster and bitter fight for their inheritance. When Ephraim's youngest son Eben sets his sights on Abbie, the resulting tempest brings tragic consequences. First produced in 1924, Desire Under the Elms hauntingly mingles love and loathing, and has been praised for its "poetry and terrible beauty"(The New York Times).

Toneelgroep (Amsterdam)
Rouw Siert Electra (Mourning Becomes Electra)
Directed by Ivo van Hove, featuring the original Dutch cast
A U.S. premiere, presented in Dutch with English supertitles
A limited engagement in the Owen Theatre

Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the "leading Dutch theater company"(New York Times) and The Netherlands' largest repertory theater, brings its sexy, highly contemporary production of Rouw Siert Electra (Mourning Becomes Electra) to the Goodman for its U.S. premiere. Based on Aeschylus's Orestean trilogy, O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra is an American family tragedy set on the Mannon family estate. Radiating an electrifying intensity, the Toneelgroep's production uses multi-media to create a once-in-a-lifetime "intelligent and seizing experience" (Provincial Dagbladen).

Companhia Triptal (Brazil) - Homens ao Mar (Sea Plays)
Cardiff (Bound East for Cardiff)
Zona de Guerra (In the Zone)
Longa Viagem de Volta pra Casa (The Long Voyage Home)
Directed by André Garolli
A U.S. premiere, presented in Portuguese
A limited engagement in the Owen Theatre

Companhia Triptal brings three (of four) of O'Neill's cycle of "Sea Plays" to Goodman Theatre. Written between 1914 and 1917, the "Sea Plays" are based on real experiences of the then very young author when he served in the merchant marines and traveled to Central and South America and southern Africa. The cycle introduces many of the themes that O'Neill explores in his later full-length dramas: loneliness, death, hope and friendship-as well as his own obsession with the sea.

The Wooster Group (New York)
The Emperor Jones
Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte
Featuring Kate Valk, Ari Fliakos and Scott Shepherd
Chicago premiere, a limited engagement in the Owen Theatre

The Wooster Group, known for its radical staging of classical texts, brings The Emperor Jones to Goodman Theatre. Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and featuring Kate Valk in the title role, this 60-minute interpretation premiered in 1993. Over the subsequent 15 years, it has received critical and popular acclaim throughout the U.S. and Europe. A rarely-produced American masterpiece widely considered to be the work that launched Eugene O'Neill's career, The Emperor Jones uses a mix of realism and expressionism to tell the story of Brutus Jones, an African American former Pullman porter with a checkered past. Having escaped a life sentence in prison for murder, Brutus establishes himself as the "self-appointed emperor" of a West Indian Island. The narrative follows his flight from both the natives he has exploited and his own haunted past.

Strange Interlude
Produced in association with The Neo-Futurists (Chicago)
Directed by Greg Allen
A limited engagement in the Owen Theatre

Known for creating outlandish original productions and adaptations for over twenty years, Chicago's The Neo-Futurists will use its unique blend of non-illusory, interactive performance to explore O'Neill's longest and most preposterous play, Strange Interlude, winner of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize. Utilizing every word of the 350 page, nine act play, The Neo-Futurists will explore the humor and pathos of this outrageous story of Nina Leeds and her three lovers. Greg Allen, Neo-Futurists Founding Director and creator of The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen and the long-running Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes), will direct.

The Hairy Ape
Produced in association with The Hypocrites (Chicago)
Directed by Sean Graney
A limited engagement in the Owen Theatre

Chicago's The Hypocrites bring their unique take on The Hairy Ape, which was first produced in 1922. The Hairy Ape balances surrealism, tragedy and comedy in this tale of the ultimate search for identity and belonging-trapped in a present that is neither as romantic as the past nor as promising as the future. Produced just 2 years after O'Neill's first appearance on Broadway, The Hairy Ape is a departure into expressionism from the playwright's body of work and yet one that has become one of his most vital, reflecting a pivotal period in America's rising industrial society. Sean Graney, founder and Artistic Director of The Hypocrites, directs this play called "so vital and interesting and teeming with life."

Magnolia
By Regina Taylor
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro
March 14 - April 19, 2009, in the Albert Theatre
A world premiere

Written by Goodman Artistic Associate Regina Taylor, Magnolia is set in winter 1963 as the schools, stores and real estate markets of Atlanta, Georgia, are beginning to desegregate-much to the resentment of the white community. Lily, a white landowner, returns from Paris to find the Forest Estate, her family's property, on the brink of ruin. Thomas, a successful businessman and the descendent of former slaves to the estate, has a plan to save the land: turn it into subdivisions and sell it to the white families fleeing the city. Tensions build as members of the estranged family reunite to save their beloved land—magnolia trees and all.

Ghostwritten
By Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Lisa Portes
April 4 - May 3, 2009, in the Owen Theatre
A world premiere

An American woman goes to Southeast Asia and strikes a bargain with a mysterious stranger. Twenty years later, she's become an acclaimed chef specializing in Asian cuisine with an adopted Vietnamese-born daughter and a life that is successful beyond her wildest dreams—until the stranger from her past reappears to collect on an old debt. Into her life the stranger from her past reappears to collect on an old debt. A striking reimagining of the tale of Rumplestiltskin, Ghostwritten explores the relationship between America and Southeast Asia, unearthing the wounds of the Vietnam War, and uncovering what it means to come face to face with the ghosts of your past.

Rock 'N' Roll
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Charles Newell
May 2 - June 7, 2009, in the Albert Theatre

Direct from a record-breaking run on Broadway and in London's West End, Rock 'N' Roll is a theatrical event. It's August 1968, and Russian tanks are rolling into Prague—Jan, the Czech student, lives for rock music; Max, the English professor, lives for Communism; and Esme, the flower child, is high. By 1990, the tanks are rolling out, the Stones are rolling in and idealism has hit the wall. Stoppard's sweeping and passionate play spans two countries, three generations and 22 turbulent years, at the end of which, love remains-and so does rock 'n' roll. Director Charles Newell makes his Goodman debut.

The Crowd You're in With
By Rebecca Gilman
Directed by Wendy C. Goldberg
May 23 - June 21, 2009, in the Owen Theatre

A backyard barbeque is the perfect place to tackle life's big questions: Is the chicken done? Does the band need a new tune? Is this the right time to have a baby? Rebecca Gilman's fresh and moving new play takes an intimate look at modern families, friendships and the ins and outs of love. The Crowd You're in With was chosen for the 2007 Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference and premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in 2007.

Boleros for the Disenchanted
By José Rivera
Directed by Henry Godinez
June 20 - July 26, 2009, in the Albert Theatre

"A man must sin. It's in our blood." So says Flora's fiancé, Manuelo, in Boleros for the Disenchanted, directed by Goodman Resident Artistic Associate Henry Godinez. But she will have none of it. Nor is she interested in her mother's idea that a witch's spell can make him faithful, or her father's proposal to have Manuelo killed. Enter the handsome Eusebio, who sweeps Flora off her feet. Together, the lovers leave Puerto Rico and embark on a journey of sacrifice and enduring love.

Yohen
By Philip Kan Gotanda
Directed by Steve Scott
Produced in association with Silk Road Theatre Project
September 18 - November 2, 2008
Performed at Silk Road Theatre, 77 W. Washington St., Chicago, IL

A divorced Japanese woman and an African American GI meet in post-World War II Japan, fall in love, and marry. After nearly four decades of defending their relationship against prevailing prejudices, they now live in a quiet, accepting Los Angeles suburb. Their seemingly durable marriage, however, is in danger and the things that originally brought them together now threaten to tear them apart. More than a study of clashing cultures, Yohen is a poetically resonant story of two partners who discover that as environments change, so do intimate relationships-and love, however time-tested, is never a constant.

About Goodman Theatre

Named the country's Best Regional Theatre by Time magazine (2003), Goodman Theatre is a leader in the American theater, internationally recognized for its artists, productions and educational programs since its founding in 1925. Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer's forward-thinking leadership has earned the Goodman unparalleled artistic distinction, garnered hundreds of awards-including the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre (1992)-and moved dozens of plays from Chicago to stages in New York and abroad. Central to its commitment to the reinvestigation of classics and development of new plays and artists is the Goodman's Artistic Collective, including Frank Galati, Henry Godinez, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor and Mary Zimmerman. The largest not-for-profit theater in Chicago, the Goodman moved in 2000 into a brand new state-of-the-art complex which houses two principal theaters: the 856-seat Albert Ivar Goodman Theatre and the 400-seat flexible Owen Bruner Goodman Theatre. Board Chairman is Shawn M. Donnelley and Alice Young Sabl is chair of the Women's Board. For more information call Goodman Theatre's Publicity Office: 312.443.5151.

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