INTERROBANG THEATRE PROJECT ANNOUNCES 2012-2013 SEASON
Interrobang Theatre Project Will Produce Paula Vogel’s Explosive Hot ’N’ Throbbing and the Chicago Premiere of Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues
Chicago, IL – Interrobang Theatre Project (ITP), under the leadership of Artistic Director Jeffry Stanton and Managing Director Gregory Owen-Boger, announces its 2012-2013 season. The company’s 3rd season will feature Paula Vogel’s Hot ’N’ Throbbing and the Chicago premiere of Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues. Both plays will be directed by Jeffry Stanton.
Artistic Director Jeffry Stanton said, “I’m thrilled for Interrobang to bring together the work of Paula Vogel and Andrew Bovell—two extraordinarily clever playwrights who share idiosyncratic theatricality, a dark sense of humor, and a cellular-level understanding of the complexity and capriciousness of human nature.
Hot ’N’ Throbbing’s title titillates but there’s nothing gratuitous in this roller coaster of an evening. Paula Vogel’s unflinching, unconventional, and, dare I say it, funny play challenges an audience to chew on tough questions about domestic violence, sexual politics, parenting, and society’s continued role in raising both victims and abusers. Deemed too disturbing by many artistic directors, Hot ’N’ Throbbing has been largely sidelined from the stage. ‘If we cannot confront domestic violence on our stages,’ Vogel wrote in 1995, ‘we will not be able to eliminate it from our living rooms.’
Audiences may be familiar with Andrew Bovell’s wacky and wonderful movie Strictly Ballroom but his play Speaking in Tongues is quite another beast. Tongues has enjoyed more than 15 years of award-winning runs, revivals, and tours in England and Australia, so Interrobang Theatre Project is tongue-tied to bring it, at last, to Chicago. Bovell has crafted a stunning work of theatrical mastery that is smart, complex, and mysterious. Four actors portray nine characters caught in a destructive web of coincidence, betrayal, desire, and obsession. It’s just one of those plays that you’ll be piecing together for days after.”
The 2012/13 Interrobang Theatre Project Season Up Close
Hot ‘N’ Throbbing By Paula Vogel Directed by Jeffry Stanton
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel’s Hot ’N’ Throbbing unflinchingly explores the pyrotechnic intersection of sex, domestic violence, pornography, and power. Charlene is a suburban mother who writes feminist erotica to support her hormonally charged teenagers. With a script deadline looming, voices from her subconscious taunting her, and a ferocious craving for a cigarette, Charlene is having a bad day. When Clyde, Charlene’s drunk and manipulative estranged husband arrives, the day takes a turn that will change the family forever. FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.
“What happens is startling—alternatively raunchy, tough, tender, compassionate, tough again…You may be able to shake off its shock, you won’t be able to escape its pulverizing truth.” —Boston Globe
“Hot ‘N’ Throbbing is a theatrical 911 call that no serious theatergoer can afford to ignore.” —Baltimore Sun
Paula Vogel’s play How I Learned to Drive received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, as well as winning her second OBIE. Vogel’s other plays include The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, and The Oldest Profession. Paula Vogel is the Eugene O’Neill Professor (adjunct) of Playwriting and Chair of the Playwriting Department at the Yale School of Drama, as well as an artistic associate at Long Wharf Theatre. Works in progress include a commission for Yale Repertory (based on The God of Vengeance), a work in collaboration with director Rebecca Taichman, and a new play, Jitterbugging and the War Effort.
Hot ’N’ Throbbing will perform on the West Stage at the Raven Theatre Complex, 6157 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60660
Saturday, Sept 22, 2012, 4:00 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday 8:00 p.m.; Sunday 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct 21, 2012 Approximately 90 minutes, no intermission Thursday, Sept 20 & Friday Sept 21, 8:00 p.m. Previews/Students/Industry $10; General Admission $25; Season Subscription $40
Speaking In Tongues By Andrew Bovell Directed by Jeffry Stanton
Two couples set out to betray their partners. A lover returns from the past and a husband doesn’t answer the phone. A woman disappears and a neighbor is the prime suspect. Contracts are broken between intimates and powerful bonds are formed between strangers. In Andrew Bovell’s masterful polyphony, an evocative mystery unravels within a devastating tale of disconnection, coincidence, and destruction.
“Clever, provocative, elliptically resonant.” –The New York Times
“A play of shimmering, iridescent beauty, revealing the marvelous in the everyday.” –Financial Times
“Gripping, emotionally and intellectually satisfying… Get tangled up in its wonderful web.”—Time Out
Andrew Bovell is a celebrated writer for both stage and screen. Bovell’s plays have won numerous awards in Australia, including the Victorian Green Room, State Premier’s Awards, and the peer-judged AWGIE awards. Among his critically acclaimed films is Lantana, —based on Speaking in Tongues—which won over ten major awards in Australia in 2001 and enjoyed international praise. AWGIE award-winning Speaking in Tongues was widely praised by audiences and critics alike when produced in Sydney (1998), Melbourne (1998), the Hampstead Theatre in London (2000), and at the U.S. premiere at the Roundabout Theatre in New York (2001). Some of Bovell’s other works for the stage include Shades of Blue (La Mama, 1996), Scenes from a Separation (MTC, 1995), Like Whiskey on the Breath of a Drunk You Love (1992), and Distant Light from Dark Places (1994).
Speaking in Tongues will perform at Theatre Wit, 1229 West Belmont Avenue, Chicago, IL 60657
Saturday, Feb 23, 2013, 4:00 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday 8:00 p.m.; Sunday 3:00 p.m. Sunday, March 24, 2013 Approximately 2 hours 15 minutes with 15-minute intermission Thursday, Feb 21 & Friday, Feb 22, 7:30 p.m. Previews/Students/Industry $10; General Admission $25; Season Subscription $40
About Interrobang Theatre Project
Interrobang Theatre Project is dedicated to excellence in producing visceral, smart, substantial, and timely classic plays, rarely produced texts, and new American plays. Interrobang strives to build and encourage a new generation of theatregoers, to engage our community through challenging plays in an ongoing dialogue of ideas, to create an exciting lobby life that will allow us all the space and time to talk about the work we typically share alone in the dark, to maintain an environment in which artists can do their very best work, and to uphold live theatre and the act of collective imagining as a powerful and vital means to change our world one play at a time. Interrobang is not recommended for audiences who prefer theatre to be benign or familiar.
What’s an interrobang !?
An “interrobang” ( ) is the combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, joining the Latin for “question” (interro-) with a proofreading term for “exclamation” (bang). Punctuation expresses an attitude, an idea, an attempt to make things clearer. Through the plays we produce, Interrobang Theatre Project poses complex and intoxicating questions. Navigating through the dark together with our audience we attempt to arrive at new understandings and fresh perspectives of who we are and the world in which we live.
Season Subscriptions
As Interrobang Theatre Project continues to build momentum for its boldly original productions, we are introducing our new Season Subscriptions. “We’re excited to be at a place in our evolution that we can now offer our audience this great deal. At 20% off the regular ticket price, it just makes sense to join,” says Greg Owen-Boger, Managing Director.
