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Steppenwolf Garage Premieres Red Light Winter

Chicago—Steppenwolf Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Red Light Winter, written and directed by Adam Rapp, featuring Christopher Denham, Lisa Joyce and Gary Wilmes. The production begins performances on May 19, 2005, in the Steppenwolf Merle Reskin Garage Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted. All tickets are $15. “It’s totally familiar but dreamlike at the same time,” says one misguided American in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. Escaping their lives in Manhattan, former college buddies Matt (Denham) and Davis (Wilmes) take off to the Netherlands and find themselves thrown into a bizarre love triangle with a beautiful, young prostitute named Christina (Joyce). The romance they find in Europe is eventually overshadowed by the truth they discover at home. Written with a harsh, poetic beauty, Red Light Winter is a stunning new work by the Pulitzer prize-nominated author of Blackbird and Nocturne. “The play is really about unrequited love,” explains Rapp. “The way we imbue our interactions with complete strangers with an irrational meaning, based on what we don’t have in our life.” Adam Rapp is a Chicago native and the author of Animals and Plants, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Finer Noble Gases, Gompers and Faster, as well as the novels Missing the Piano, The Buffalo Tree and Little Chicago. He recently joined the writing team of Showtime’s The L Word and is the writer and director of the feature film Winter Passing, starring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel and Ed Harris, which will be released this year. Christopher Denham has previously appeared in the New York productions of Master Harold…and the Boys, Knife in the Heart and American Buffalo, and appears in the upcoming film Headspace. A recent graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul, Lisa Joyce appeared in The Crucible at Milwaukee Repertory Company. Red Light Winter marks her Chicago debut. Gary Wilmes previously appeared at Steppenwolf in Golden Boy and in the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway plays Bad Boy Nietzsche and Boxing 2000 (also with Performing Arts Chicago) and is seen in the current Hal Hartley film The Girl From Monday. The designers of Red Light Winter are Todd Rosenthal (sets), Michelle Tesdall (costumes), Keith Parham (lights), Andre Pleuss and Ben Sussman (sound). The stage manager is Kerry Epstein. Previews for Red Light Winter are May 19-May 27, 2005. The production opens Saturday, May 28, 2005, at 8:00 p.m., and runs through June 26, 2005. Please note our curtain times: all performances run Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., as well as Sundays at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. There will be no Sunday matinee performances on May 22 and 29, 2005. Steppenwolf Theatre Company dedicates this performance space as the Merle Reskin Garage Theatre at Steppenwolf in honor of board member Merle Reskin. The Steppenwolf Merle Reskin Garage Theatre is a point of entry for a next generation of theater artists at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The company’s most intimate performance space, the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre showcases the work of emerging actors, directors, writers and designers and is dedicated to nurturing the best new voices in the American theater. Committed to the principle of ensemble performance through the collaboration of a company of actors, directors and playwrights, Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s mission is to advance the vitality and diversity of American theater by nurturing artists, encouraging repeatable creative relationships and contributing new works to the national canon. The company, formed in 1976 by a collective of actors, is dedicated to perpetuating an ethic of mutual respect and the development of artists through ongoing group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an internationally renowned company of thirty-six artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking and textual adaptation.
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