The Pillowman Arrives In Chicago

Martin McDonagh's Tony Award Nominated Play Receives A Steppenwolf Treatment

Sep 14, 2006 Mike Mackenzie

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company, based in Chicago, Illinois, is starting their 2006-2007 season with a bang - Martin McDonagh's controversial dark play, The Pillowman.

The Pillowman is described as: "In a totalitarian state, a writer (Jim True-Frost) is interrogated about his nightmarish short stories and their similarities to a number of murders occurring in his town. When the writer's mentally impaired brother (Michael Shannon) is also brought in for questioning by two officers (Tracy Letts and Yasen Peyankov), the police procedural takes unforeseen twists and turns."

The play won the Olivier Award in London for Best Play, and was nominated for the Best Play Tony Award for it's Broadway production starring Jeff Goldblum.

The Steppenwolf production is directed by ensemble member Amy Morton, and will feature a cast of other ensemble members: Tracy Letts, Yasen Peyankov and Jim True-Frost with Abigail Leone Droeger, Oliver Kal, Danny McCarthy, Leah Rose Orleans, Elizabeth Rich, Michael Shannon and Quinn Wermeling.

Martin McDonagh is the Tony Award Nominated playwright of The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West.

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 on-going group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an internationally renowned company of thirty-five artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking, and textual adaptation.

The production plays September 14-November 12, 2006, in the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted. The press performance is on Saturday, September 23, 2006, at 3:00 p.m. For more information, click on the Steppenwolf Theatre Company Website.

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