For Immediate Release
Contact: Jenn Adams 
Associate Artistic Director, Halcyon Theatre
773.413.0454
press@halcyontheatre.org
halcyontheatre.org

Halcyon Theatre announces a new Mission Statement and a New Season.

CHICAGO, IL (October 4, 2010) Halcyon Theatre announces its Fifth Season and a new mission statement: We are fiercely committed to making the stage as diverse as the city of Chicago; presenting new voices from inadequately represented communities, as well as recasting classic works to showcase their contemporary relevance.

As we went through the strategic planning process (currently nearing completion), it became abundantly clear that we were nowhere near as good at communicating our mission as we were in our work. Over the course of the last three months we have worked steadily towards refining our mission statement, taking in feedback from the board, ensemble, and many interested people outside our organization. The board recently ratified a new mission statement for Halcyon Theatre.  Says Artistic Director Tony Adams, “The new mission statement isn't changing our mission, but is a better reflection of our work and how we articulate our mission.” 

Season Five will include Trickster by Tony Adams, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable) by Caridad Svich and The Alcyone Festival 2011: Remixed. Season Five will be performed at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.

Trickster, a re-imagining of the stories of Genesis, the legend of Don Juan, and Coyote tales, will be taking its place in our season this winter. The show is written and directed by Artistic Director Tony Adams and will be developed in the rehearsal process by Tony and the cast. Using movement, puppetry, stage magic and music, Trickster tells the story of a displaced people torn between warlords and the spiritual world, until they receive a mysterious visitor (a cross between Don Juan and Coyote Trickster) that sets their world on fire. Set in the American Southwest, Trickster will explore what happens when we are forced to face the consequences of ignoring our changing world and the human cost of the cycle of creation and destruction.  

The Chicago Premiere of Caridad Svich's Iphigenia... (a rave Fable) will perform February 17 through March 27, 2011.  Artistic Director Tony Adams will direct. Inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, this play with music and video spins Iphigenia into dangerous orbit through an un-named Latin American country as she journeys through a meta-hell where she finds her body embraced and destroyed by a rock star named Achilles, and discovers she cannot escape a destiny set forth by myths ancient and modern. The world of the rich and the poor; the living and the dead; the live performance and the video, forge a new world familiar and foreign, mysterious and hyper-realistic.  Says Adams, “Caridad has an innate ability to take existing styles and conventions and fuse them into something new and fascinating. One of the amazing things about her work is how she can almost mainline myths and create something poetic and mythic, yet completely contemporary, by telling them in a way that is both entertaining and powerful.”  

The Alcyone Festival 2011 will perform in the Summer of 2011.The theme for Alcyone 2011 will be Remixed, creating new works by women based off of classical texts by women. We will present new works using/adapting/sampling/re-envisioning . . . remixing classical plays written by women before 1850. The Alcyone Festival 2011 will celebrate both new and (really) old writers and see how the lineage of female playwrights over the past thousand years can inspire and inform contemporary audiences and artists. 

Additionally, in order to combat the “development hell” cycle of reading for new works, we're experimentingwith something new this year. Instead of picking scripts, we are picking writers and taking off the reigns. While we can't afford to commission, we can commit to producing. Says Tony Adams, “What I told the writers was, the only rules are: it has to be based in some way off a play written by a woman before 1850 and it has to be ready to begin rehearsing in April. You write it, we'll produce it. No holds barred." Featured writers include: J. Nicole Brooks, Jennifer Fawcett, E.M. Lewis, Coya Paz, and Caridad Svich. 

Tickets to individual performances are $15-20 ($10 for students and seniors); Tickets will be available through the Greenhouse Theater Center Box Office beginning in late October. Season Passes will be available beginning October 20 at halcyontheatre.org. 

Members of the media are invited to attend any performance. 

Season Five will be performed at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. 

About Halcyon:  

Mission- We are fiercely committed to making the stage as diverse as the city of Chicago; presenting new voices from inadequately represented communities, as well as recasting classic works to showcase their contemporary relevance. 

About- Halcyon Theatre was formed to make incredible theatre from stories around the world, to help show our world in new ways, and rediscover the individual beauty of people from our global community. Our artistic philosophy is driven by our continuing belief that at every point of human history where there has been an explosion of artistic creativity, it has happened when different cultures and traditions have intersected and informed each other.  If every artist working with an organization looks and thinks the same, it is difficult for them to grow. A homogeneous group produces homogeneous art. Striving for artistic excellence with artists of varied cultural backgrounds and training is at the forefront of everything we do.  

Bios 

Tony Adams is co-founder and Artistic Director of Halcyon Theatre. Tony has hundreds of professional credits as a director, designer, actor, writer and producer in Chicago and Paris. 

J. Nicole Brooks is an actor, playwright, director, and blogger. In 2007 her debut play Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten (2007 Joseph Jefferson Award Nomination) was commissioned & produced by the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago to critical acclaim. Other productions include Kamala, Masterclass (2007) for The Siddhartha Project commissioned & produced by Collaboraction Theatre, and Fedra Queen of Haiti (2009 Black Theatre Alliance Award Nomination) commissioned & produced by Lookingglass Theatre Company. As an actor she was recipient of the 2008 LA Ovation Award Best Featured Actress, and was recently awarded the TCG Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship. She is an ensemble member with Lookingglass Theatre and an associate with Collaboraction. She currently resides in Los Angeles where she is plotting to take over Hollyweird one key stoke at time. For more Tom Foolery visit www.doctaslick.blogspot.com. 

Jennifer Fawcett’'s work has been developed and produced at theatres in the US and Canada including the Kennedy Center, the Lark (NYC), the Adirondack Theatre Festival (Glens Falls, NY), Waterfront Theatre (Vancouver), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), and the SummerWorks Theatre Festival (Toronto), among others. Her play The Toymaker’s War was part of The Alcyone Festival 2009. She was the NNPN Emerging Playwright in Residence at Curious Theatre Company in Denver and is the recipient of the National Science Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center ACTF, and a Creation Fund Award from the National Performance Network. She is a founding member of Working Group Theatre - www.workinggrouptheatre.org. 

EM Lewis won the 2009 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association for her play Song of Extinction, which premiered in Los Angeles, produced by Moving Arts at [Inside] the Ford. The play also won the Ashland New Plays Festival, University of Oregon's EcoDrama Festival, the Ted Schmitt Award for the premiere of an outstanding new play from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards. It was published in Dramatics Magazine in January, and in an acting edition from Samuel French in March 2010.  Lewis also wrote the Iraq War hostage drama Heads (winner of the 2008 Primus Prize for an emerging woman theater artist, and Best of 2007 from the Los Angeles Times) which was part of The Alcyone Festival 2009.  Lewis is a member of Moving Arts Theater Company, the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. She is originally from Oregon, lived in Los Angeles, California for quite a while, and is now headed for Princeton, New Jersey, where she has received a 2010-2011 Hodder Fellowship in playwriting. 

Coya Paz is a poet, director, and lip gloss connoisseur who was raised in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil before moving permanently to the United States in 1987. Coya is a proud co-founder of Proyecto Latina and the director in residence for the Poetry Performance Incubator at the Guild Complex. She cofounded Teatro Luna in 2000, and served as co-Artistic Director until 2009. Recent projects include: Nation of Cowards,a multi-sited performance piece about interracial dialogue; Tour Guides; and Machos, which won the 2008 NonEquity Jeff Awards for Best New Work and Outstanding Ensemble, and directing Manual for a Desperate Crossing for The Alcyone Festival 2010.  She is at work on a new play called The Americans, based on interviews with people in 10 states across the USA. Coya teaches in The Theater Department at Columbia College, and holds a PhD in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She is a regular commentator on race, media and pop culture for Vocalo.org (89.5) and has published several articles on Latina performance, Latina/o identities, and public violence. Coya's artistic work has been profiled in The New York Times, American Theater Magazine, Theater Journal, and the Chicago Tribune, among others.  She was named one of UR Magazine’s 30 Under 30 (when she was under 30!), a GO-NYC Magazine 100 Women We Love, and received a Trailblazer Award for her service to LGBTQ communities. Most recently, she has been awarded 3Arts Residency at Ragdale. Above all, she believes in the power of performance and poetry to build community towards social change. For a full manifesto, visit her on the web at www.coyapaz.com.

Caridad Svich is a US Latina -translator-lyricist and editor of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian descent whose works have been staged across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Denver Theatre Center, Mixed Blood Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Artheater-Cologne and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. In Chicago, she's worked with the Trap Door Theatre, Latino Theatre Festival at the Goodman, TUTA, Caffeine Theatre, Latino Chicago, Teatro Vista, Northwestern University. Her play Iphigenia...a rave fable, will be produced by Halycon in Spring 2011. Among her key works: 12 Ophelias, Any Place But Here, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Magnificent Waste and The House of the Spirits (based on the novel by Isabel Allende). She's alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance & press, contributing editor of TheatreForum, and associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. She holds an MFA from UCSD. Visit her website: www.caridadsvich.com

# # # #MEDIA ALERT * MEDIA ALERT * MEDIA ALERT * MEDIA ALERT 

WHAT: Halcyon Theatre announces its Fifth Season and a new mission statement: We are fiercely committed to making the stage as diverse as the city of Chicago; presenting new voices from inadequately represented communities, as well as recasting classic works to showcase their contemporary relevance.

WHERE: Season Five will be performed at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.

WHEN: Trickster will perform: January 6 through February 6, 2011 Iphigenia... (a rave fable) will perform: February 17 through March 27, 2011The Alcyone Festival 2011: Remixed will perform in the summer of 2011

ADMISSION: $10-20 for single tickets.  $75 for a season pass including the Alcyone Festival.

BOX OFFICE: tickets will be available beginning in late October  through the Greenhouse Theatre Center Box office. Season Pass will be available in late October at www.halcyontheatre.org

WEBSITE: halcyontheatre.org

CONTACT: Jenn Adams 
Associate Artistic Director, Halcyon Theatre 
773.413.0454
press@halcyontheatre.org
halcyontheatre.org

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