Join us as we spend our 2010 season looking at American success. In these troubled economic times, how do we define ourselves without the longstanding markers of jobs and material acquisition? As Americans, so much of our own cultural identity is wrapped up in those concerns that we are struggling to hold on to ourselves as we find new jobs, new careers. What happens to us, and our family and friends when we are displaced by firings, relocations and poverty. With our characteristic wit, we seek answers for us all with a fantastic lineup of Chicago premiere comedies.

April 2010
Spin
by Penny Penniston

When Brent loses his high paying job as an art director for a big name advertising firm and goes through a divorce, he falls back on his Plan B, resolving to remake himself. With a host of good intentions and self-help books about Buddhism he takes in a street kid and renounces worldly possessions. But when tempted with prestige and cash by an old advertising buddy, he sells his life over to a beer company. Literally. When his best intentions bring him to a couch, a bomb, a celebrity hostage and the contempt of his co-workers and girlfriend, some serious self-examination is in order. The first comedy in a decade by Jeff-award winning playwright Penny Penniston, whose last comedy, now then again, ran for over 17 weeks at the Ivanhoe theatre, Spin is a farce that questions our own identity in the middle of a consumerist culture, and challenges us to consider what happens when consumerism ends and we need to rediscover ourselves.

August 2010
The Four of Us
Itamar Moses

A Chicago premiere by one of America's hottest new playwrights, The Four of Us is a comedy about friendship, male bonding through competition and the price of success. Friends since adolescence in band camp, David and Benjamin have great artistic aspirations. But when Benjamin signs a seven figure book and movie deal for his first novel their comfort zone abruptly disappears. David finds himself increasingly unable to negotiate a friendship with such dramatic inequality. What happens to our closest friends when professional jealousy cracks the bonds of years of camaraderie? This is a remarkably funny look at how men form friendships, and how the oldest and deepest relationships can be surprisingly fragile.