MARY-ARRCHIE BLOG

Cherrywood is set to open June 24th and run until August 8th, tickets are on-sale now and selling at a record pace, we recommend buying in advance as space is limited (for various reasons). Purchase tickets on Ticketweb.com today.

Rehearsals have been going swimmingly, it’s such a pleasure to have David Cromer back in the space again. The cast and designers have been hard at work creating this theatrical experience. We are super excited to share this work with you!

In the meantime here’s a little bit about the play…

CHERRYWOOD was written as a series of simple lines, a play without characters, allowing the actors to assemble their roles from the lines they chose to speak, originally devised and created by the Rude Mechanicals and Kirk Lynn of Austin, TX in 2004.

“Welcome to the neighborhood. CHERRYWOOD is probably unlike any place you’ve lived before. Or maybe it actually is all the neighborhoods you’ve ever lived in.”

In a world full of anxiety, when the only thing on TV is the NEWS, people stay at home waiting for trouble to be at a low enough level, and then someone decides to throw a party. Flyers are distributed at random offering hope to anyone looking to CHANGE. Posing the question: if you could change one thing about yourself, would you do it? Cherrywood is a hilarious and intriguing bender loaded with great music, social commentary, and cutting edge structure.

This will be a party for those who want to CHANGE…

June 24 - August 8, 2010
Thurs-Sat at 8PM | Sun at 7PM

July 25th show is at 3PM
No Show on July 4th.

Tickets: $18-22
Student/Senior/Group Discounts Available.

Theater review

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND

Mary-Arrchie Theatre. By Fin Kennedy. Dir. Richard Cotovsky. With ensemble cast.

IDENTITY DEFT Stark, left, sets Garcia up.

London playwright Kennedy’s 2006 work is about an in-over-his-head midlevel marketing exec named Charlie. It’s also about a cipher named Adam. Both are played with charming intensity by Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, who is not playing multiple characters. Or is he? That’s the question at the heart of Kennedy’s unsettlingly funny and provocative play.

“Charlie Hunt is nothing more than a collection of pieces of paper,” the slippery Mike (Kevin Stark, spot-on as an artful codger) tells Charlie, who’s gotten too deep into debt, drugs and embezzling. In the wake of his mother’s death, Charlie’s world has come crashing down, and a hunch has driven him out of desperation to Mike, a mysterious acquaintance who showed up at his mother’s funeral and becomes Charlie’s tutor in abandoning his old identity and adopting a new one as Adam.

William Anderson’s inventive, off-kilter set reflects Kennedy’s disorienting setup, in which Charlie finds cutting his ties with the world fairly easy logistically but perhaps too difficult psychologically. While the playwright’s first-act rants about the indignities of modern life are wholly relatable in Garcia’s hands, they also impede our sense of the play’s direction, and the device of a pathologist (Shannon Clausen) who keeps telling Charlie he’s already dead just confuses matters. But Kennedy’s points about the mutability of identity in the bureaucratic age will be turning over in our heads for quite a while.

How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
When: Through 12/20: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM,
Phone: 773-871-0442
Price: $5-$22

Centerstage Show Review
Reviewer: Sarah Terez Rosenblum
Friday Nov 13, 2009

Set in the world of advertising, Fin Kennedy’s “How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found” is a tale of excess and loss. When ad executive Charlie (Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, equally excellent in moments dire and humorous) loses consciousness and wakes to find himself inexplicably in the subway’s Lost and Found, it’s clear his grip on reality is slipping. Pursued by a mysterious pathologist who knows a little too much about him, and clutching his dead mother’s ashes, Charlie must navigate through an increasingly alienating and claustrophobic world in which Starbucks crowd every corner and, to quote the peculiar proprietor of the Lost and Found, “you are nothing so long as you are quiet.”

The show’s topsy-turvy set, all hidden doors and crooked walls, and moody lighting combine with its brisk, anxious pace to a create a rising sense of disquiet. Director Richard Cotovsky uses and reuses actors, contributing to the faceless society the play depicts. Although individually talented, the ensemble’s facility with dialects proves a unifying factor, allowing the audience to suspend disbelief as an unbelievable story unfolds. In totality a strong production, “How to Disappear” pushes all our postmodern buttons, reminding us of how fast we as a society scurry, only to remain standing still.
SOURCE:http://www.centerstagechicago.com/theatre/shows/8422.html

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co is proud to present the Midwest Premiere of Fin Kennedy’s How to Disappear And Never Be Found, set to open on November 12th with a 6 week run closing on December 20th, 2009. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8PM and Sundays at 7PM. There is no show on Thanksgiving.

About the Show:

If you had to disappear from your life, would you be able to delete yourself from Facebook? In this thrilling new play, a young advertising executive reaches the breaking point and decides to buck the system. He turns to an expert who can give him a detailed lesson in the art of escape. The mission? To dispose of everything that defined his former self. It’s an adrenaline-charged, apocalyptic journey to the edge of existence. HOW TO DISAPPEAR will have you questioning everything that makes us who we are in the 21st Century.

How To Disappear won the 38th Arts Council John Whiting Award for New Theatre Writing and a 2007 Peter Brook Award. It enjoyed a sell-out world premiere at Sheffield Crucible in 2007. Its US premiere took place at PCS in Portland, Oregon in Jan 2009.

Directed by Richard Cotovsky and features Shannon Clausen, Scott Danielson, James Eldrenkamp, Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, Kasia Januszewski, Kristina Johnson, Kevin Stark, and Britni Tozzi.

Designers include William Anderson (set), Stefin Steberl (costumes), Matthew Gawryk (lights), Joe Court (sound). Stage Management by Allison Goetzman. Assistant Direction by Brad Bukauskas.

*Purchase Tickets Online

or call 773-871-0442 to reserve by phone

We are pleased to announce our 24th Season of edgy, exciting, and risk-taking theatre. Our 2009-2010 season is teeming with new works, we are proud to bring you THREE Midwest Premieres, each uniquely compelling pieces of theater that reflect the decisions we face and the pursuit of what it means to live fully in the 21st Century! So without further ado, meet the plays!

Opening November 2009:
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND by Fin Kennedy
A MIDWEST PREMIERE
Directed by Richard Cotovsky (MA Artistic Director)
Featuring ensemble members: Carlo Lorenzo Garcia (Buried Child, MOJO) and Shannon Clausen (Beggars in the House of Plenty)

With guest artists: Scott Danielson, James Eldrenkamp, Kasia Januszewski, Kristina Johnson, Kevin Stark, Britni Tozzi.

Designers include: Bill Anderson (set), Joe Court (sound), Matt Gawryk (lights), and Stefin Steberl (costumes). Assistant Direction by Brad Bukauskas.

If you had to disappear from your life, would you be able to delete yourself from Facebook? In this thrilling new play, a young advertising executive reaches the breaking point and decides to buck the system. He turns to an expert who can give him a detailed lesson in the art of escape. The mission? To dispose of everything that defined his former self. It’s an adrenaline-charged, apocalyptic journey to the edge of existence. HOW TO DISAPPEAR will have you questioning everything that makes us who we are in the 21st Century.

How To Disappear won the 38th Arts Council John Whiting Award for New Theatre Writing and a 2007 Peter Brook Award. It enjoyed a sell-out world premiere at Sheffield Crucible in 2007. Its US premiere took place at PCS in Portland, Oregon in Jan 2009.

Opening February 2010:
THE RANT by Andrew Case
A MIDWEST PREMIERE

THE RANT is a gripping drama exploring racial bias and the perilous path to justice. When an young African-American autistic boy is gunned down by police in the Bronx, an investigator sets out to expose the officer’s crime only to learn that the truth itself is a sort of bias. She must wade through prejudice, deceit, and a volley of anonymous threats to find where culpability and truth really lie.

THE RANT is based on Andrew Case’s eight years of experience working on police misconduct issues for the City of New York. He served as the chief spokesman and policy officer for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates over 5,000 complaints every year against NYPD officers.

The Rant was originally developed at PlayPenn and has been produced at the New Theatre in Miami (Carbonell nomination, best new play), InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia (Barrymore nomination, best new play), and New Jersey Repertory Theatre in Long Branch, New Jersey.

NY Times: “The author’s passion is undeniable, giving ‘The Rant’ its dramatic power.”

Opening June 2010:
CHERRYWOOD: the modern comparable by Kirk Lynn
A MIDWEST PREMIERE
Directed by David Cromer

Finally, we are proud to welcome back David Cromer to direct the fascinatingly feral ensemble piece that is CHERRYWOOD. CHERRYWOOD was written as a series of simple lines, a play without characters, allowing the actors to assemble their roles from the lines they chose to speak, originally devised and created by the Rude Mechanicals and Kirk Lynn (Austin, TX) in 2004.

“Welcome to the neighborhood. CHERRYWOOD is probably unlike any place you’ve lived before. Or maybe it actually is all the neighborhoods you’ve ever lived in.” What starts off as a simple housewarming party, careens into a recruitment mission where werewolves cut frustrated party-goers from the herd, one-by-one, offering personal transformation in the form of a glass of milk. But someone brought a gun to the party and hiding it will only randomize the victim. The solution to the mystery is not who is responsible for the trauma, but what trauma we would inflict if we were responsible for making the world in the image of our desires. This is a high-larious and intriguing bender loaded with great music, social commentary, and cutting edge structure. Sure, to be one wild ride!

We hope you will find this season to be thought-provoking and entertaining as we strive to continue to bring you challenging theater and new works that stimulates conversation and your senses. We hope to see you very soon and we thank you for you continued support! It would be very difficult to maintain our operations for the past 23 years without the financial and moral support and care of our friends, family, and fans! So, thank you!

Wishing you all the best!
Richard Cotovsky, Artistic Director
Carlo Garcia, Company Manager
Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.
www.maryarrchie.com

Director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia treats Chicago to a brilliant US premiere of playwright Douglas Maxwell’s beguiling script. If there is ONE reason to bundle up and venture out into the otherworldly arctic tundra, it is to be sure to see one of the closing weekend performances of Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company’s incredible OUR BAD MAGNET.

It stands as a shining example of why Off-Loop theater in Chicago is one of the biggest reasons why this city is incomparable. You can spend $95 on a ticket to Dirty Dancing the musical, a by-product of a product, or you can spend about $20 on OUR BAD MAGNET which is thrilling bona fide theatrical art.

Maxwell is a storyteller of the highest order. His non-linier tale tells of three 9-year-old boys who befriend a sad misfit with the ability to write fantastical fairy tales. He constructs his characters beautifully by deconstructing stereotypes. They are warm and real, flawed and funny. The development of the story shows lovely and unpredictable dramatic architecture, gently transporting us from real to make-believe and ultimately creating an unpredictable emotional cross-over that is both tragically heartbreaking and endearingly enchanting. The ending is poignantly staggering.

The deceptively simplistic surface of the story requires intuitive complexity to execute successfully and Garcia compiles a wonderful ensemble to do so. The engaging performances create connection with the characters. You care deeply about these boys/men and that created compassion fuels the humor and drama. The undeniable and compelling chemistry between the characters is splendid.

Garcia stumbled on the script at a bookstore, read it through in one sitting and knew he had to tell the stories on stage. His magnificently realized vision is an outstanding achievement.

Not since The Hypocrites’ The Fourth Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide has the profound emotional impact of childhood fables been so beautifully created. Garcia is a gifted young director to be on the look out for and OUR BAD MAGNET is a powerfully enchanting and uniquely entertaining show NOT TO BE MISSED!

4 STARS

(”OUR BAD MAGNET” runs through January 18 at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan. 773-871-0442.)

By Venus Zarris, Chicago Stage Review

Source: http://www.chicagostagereview.com/?p=2434

It’s official! Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. will be extending the Jeff Recommended US Premiere of Our Bad Magnet at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan .

The final dates for 2008 will be December 18^th – 22^nd.

The extension will begin January 2^nd and run through January 18^th, 2009.

There will be no show on January 8^th

Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets are $18 on Thursday and Sunday, $20 on Friday, and $22 on Saturday. We will close on Sunday, January 18^th, 2009. There is parking available in the Mobil Gas Station across from the theater at a fee determined by Mobil Gas. For more info rmation and reservations call (773) 871-0442 or visit: www.maryarrchie.com.

Press snippets:

“well-cast American premiere…features some breathtaking moments…one of the most effective and surprising endings I’ve seen in a while…” - Chicago Tribune

“For anyone who wants to experience joy, sadness, and the potential to be moved to tears in their holiday theater-going experience, don’t miss Our Bad Magnet.” -Edge Chicago

“Maxwell’s play is rich, moving, funny and real, and well served by Carlo Lorenzo Garcia’s direction, which keeps the right balance of tension and humor. All four actors are excellent” -Centerstage Chicago (Must See Show)

“Giggles’s stories are believably childlike, funny and touching.” -Chicago Reader

“drama’s U.S. premiere is helped by Garcia’s note-perfect cast” -Time Out Chicago

“the amorphous ending is a thing of almost transcendental beauty, a surreal and unknowable benediction from some vast, benevolent god.” -Windy City Chicago

“This cliques with me” – CheekyChicago.com

“Recommended” by New City , ChicagoCritic.com, and Steadstyle Chicago

FOR RESERVATIONS AND INFORMATION CALL (773) 871-0442

VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT www.maryarrchie.com

OPENING MAY 25TH 2008! MARY-ARRCHIE THEATRE CO PRESENTS
THE CHICAGO PREMIERE PRODUCTION of JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY’S BEGGARS IN THE HOUSE OF PLENTY

In this deeply autobiographical work, Tony and Pulitzer Prize Winner John Patrick Shanley tackles his past. A surreal comedy, packed with the wit, insight, confusion, laughter and pain that only family can bring. At once vulgar, poetic and brutally honest, Johnny leads us on a journey through his childhood in the Bronx of the mid-1950’s to the turbulent late 60’s and finally the perspective of his adulthood.

“…Painfully funny…a memory play that is like Eugene O’Neill as seen through the eyes of a Tennessee Williams influenced by Eugene Ionesco.” -NY Post.

“…funny and profoundly painful at the same time…a play to be seen more than once.” -Chelsea Journal.

• Show Dates:
  May 25th, 2008 - June 29th, 2008
• Thurs.-Sat. @ 8:00PM
  Sundays @ 7:00PM
• OPENING NIGHT - MAY 25th at 8:00PM
• PREVIEWS:
  MAY 20, 21 & MAY 23, 24 at 8PM.
  Preview Tickets only $10!
• Tickets are $18-22
  Student, Senior, & Group Discounts available.
• Call 773.871.0442 for Reservations and Information
• 
  *Purchase Tickets Online

For Immediate Release

OPENING: MARY-ARRCHIE THEATRE CO. PRESENTS

THE CARETAKER BY HAROLD PINTER

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2008 AT 7 P.M.

AT ANGEL ISLAND 735 W. SHERIDAN RD. IN CHICAGO

CONTACT:  Susan Jodry (773) 459-1721 / susan(at)maryarrchie.com

Reservations: Angel Island (773) 871-0442

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. will present The Caretaker by Harold Pinter at Angel Island , 735 W. Sheridan .  It will open Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 7 p.m. and run Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m.  Tickets are $18 on Thursday and Sunday, $20 on Friday, and $22 on Sunday.   There will be previews on February 28, 29, & March 1 at 8 p.m.  Tickets for previews are $10.  We will close on Saturday, April 12.  There is parking available in the Mobil Gas Station across from the theater at a fee determined by Mobil Gas. For more information and reservations call (773) 871-0442.

Aston, a quiet, reserved man, lives alone in a tiny, cluttered apartment in a poor London district. He befriends and takes in Mac Davies, an old derelict who has been fired from a menial job in a café. In time Aston offers him a job as caretaker of the house. Aston’s brother, Mick - a taunting, quasi-sadist - harasses the derelict when his brother is away, countermanding his orders. Pinter uses elements of both comedy and tragedy in painting this picture. The complexity of the play, Pinter’s masterful use of dialogue, and the depth and perception shown in Pinter’s themes all contribute to The Caretaker’s consideration as a modern masterpiece.

The Caretaker is directed by Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.’s Producing Director, Hans Fleischmann. He is assisted by Colleen Moore. It features Richard Cotovsky, Dan Kuhlman, and Todd Lahrman.   Designers include John Wilson (set), Stefin Steberl (costumes), Matthew Gawryk (lights), Joe Court (sound). Dialect Coaching will be given by Tiffany Joy Ross.  Stage Management is by Anna M.K. Brenner.

FOR RESERVATIONS AND INFORMATION CALL (773) 871-0442

VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.maryarrchie.com