boom By Peter Sinn Nachtrieb Directed by Jason Southerland Chicago Premiere September 11 - October 11, 2009 Performances of boom run 80 minutes without intermission.

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It’s the end of the world. Do you have a date?
As an undiscovered comet hurtles towards earth, a lone scientist takes it upon himself to preserve the human race through a personal ad. But his plan for “intensely significant coupling” is more than his first date bargained for, food is running out, and his marine lab-turned-shelter is now beyond repair. This darkly funny experiment is an off-beat and hilarious look at the end of the world and how we might start anew.

“Mr. Nachtrieb has a gift for darkly funny dialogue and an appealing way of approaching big themes sideways.” —New York Times

“Sex! Planet-ruining cataclysms! Loads of booze! We’re ready for whatever strange places boom wants to take us.”—Variety

"Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play flips from pants-around-the-ankles comedy to hipster ‘Twilight Zone’ takeoff…boom is imaginative and easy to like. —The New Yorker

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END DAYS By Deborah Zoe Laufer Chicago Premiere October 29 - November 29, 2009

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The Stein’s are having an identity crisis: Mom has been “born again” and spends all day chatting with Jesus in the kitchen; Dad hasn’t gotten out of his pajamas in weeks and is starting to smell; and 16 year old Rachel is coping by going “goth.” Who will save this family? Jesus? Stephen Hawking? Or Rachel’s awkward new classmate who shows up at their door in his Elvis jumpsuit? To everyone’s surprise, the invasion of his big heart and blind optimism might be their best hope for a new beginning. End Days is both “enormously funny, warm and uplifting” (CurtainUp) and also a thoughtful examination of faith, renewal, and the needs of ordinary people.

“…rapturously funny play…proves that the right playwright can inspire healing laughter in even the most sobering subjects.”
–The Miami Herald

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RETURN TO HAIFA By M.E.H Lewis Directed by Jason Southerland World Premiere February 4 - March 7, 2010

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Israel, 1948: during the violent birth pains of the State of Israel, a young Palestinian couple flee their home in Haifa amidst the fighting. The house is given to a Jewish couple, refugees from the detention camps of Eastern Europe. Twenty years later, days after the Six Day War, the Palestinian couple, now refugees themselves, return to see the house and everything else they left behind. A lyrical and intimate story about the lines of home, family and identity drawn across years and politics.

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WAR WITH THE NEWTS By Jason Loewith and Justin D.M. Palmer Based on the novel by Karel Capek World Premiere May 21 – June 20, 2010 Presented in association with the Department of Theater at Loyola University Chicago Performed at the Mullady Theater

Can one man stop an empire? In 1936, Czech-born Karel Capek wrote a spooky, fantastical novel about the discovery of an intelligent race of giant salamanders, which humanity enslaves for profit and national advantage. This highly-anticipated adaptation comes to us from Jason Loewith and Artistic Associate Justin D.M. Palmer in collaboration with puppet designer Michael Montenegro. On the heels of an enlightening research trip to the Czech Republic, the artistic team has truly unlocked the theatrical magic of this portentous story. Brought to life with pools, puppets and projections, War With the Newts is an incredibly timely satire about a global economy planting the seeds of its own destruction.

"Capek had in mind the totalitarian deluge that [in 1938] began to engulf Europe. But his satire aims, above all, at human blindness and greed. The enemy is always within, he reminds us."
—Heda Kovaly, New York Times Book Review

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