Albany Park Theater Project will stage two productions in 2015, the first highlighted by a new collaboration with Third Rail Projects and the second by a continued partnership with Goodman Theatre. Tickets for both productions go on sale in Spring, 2015.
APTP’s 2015 season begins in April with Learning Curve, an immersive, site-specific performance about public education in Chicago. Learning Curve will be performed by the APTP youth ensemble – all of them students at Chicago public high schools – and devised by youth ensemble members in collaboration with Third Rail Projects, an award-winning company recognized as one of the foremost creators of immersive dance-theater. Like all of APTP’s work, Learning Curve will be based on interviews conducted by youth ensemble members, this time with Chicago students, teachers, principals, counselors, parents and education activists. The performance will be staged in an actual school building and will take audiences on a theatrical journey into the world of a Chicago high school, where they will experience the struggles, failures and triumphs of students and teachers. Given the ambitious and innovative nature of the project, Albany Park Theater Project and Third Rail Projects will create Learning Curve over two years. The Spring 2015 performances will showcase the work-in-progress, giving audiences the opportunity to shape the performance as it develops (the full production will premiere in 2016). Funding for Learning Curve is provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michael D. and Jolynn Blair Family Foundation, and the Theatre Seven Legacy Fund. April 18 – May 17, 2015.
In July and August, APTP will make its fifth appearance at Goodman Theatre with a new production of Feast, its celebratory 2010 tasting menu of stories gathered from the kitchens, street carts, restaurants, butchers, bodegas, farmers, fishermen, gardens and markets of multiethnic Chicago. Where the original 2010 production focused on food and culture in Albany Park, this new Feast will also celebrate food stories from neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Alongside returning favorite Albany Park stories from 2010, this new Feast will serve up a host of brand new material – including stories of urban agriculture from the south side to the north side – and will be paired with events involving both hidden-gem restaurants and celebrity chefs. Acclaimed by critics and beloved by audiences, Feast shares stories of food cultures from throughout Chicago and around the world, including tales of heritage and heirloom recipes, entrepreneurship, hunger and exploitation, migration and adaptation—and of the nourishment and delight that come from good food, lovingly prepared. July 24 – August 16, 2015.
ABOUT THIRD RAIL PROJECTS
APTP is devising Learning Curve in collaboration with Third Rail Projects, hailed as one of the foremost companies creating site-specific, immersive and experiential dance-theater in the United States. Third Rail Projects is dedicated to re-envisioning ways in which audiences can engage with contemporary performance. Third Rail’s long-running, award-winning immersive work, Then She Fell was named one of the New York Times’ “Top Ten Shows of 2012,” acclaimed as one of the best theater experiences of 2013 by Vogue Magazine, and has garnered accolades from Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and many others. Third Rail Projects is co-directed by Jennine Willett, Tom Pearson and Zach Morris. A team of artists from Third Rail, led by Jennine Willett, will be in residence with APTP in Chicago throughout the creation of Learning Curve.
ABOUT GOODMAN THEATRE
Since 2008, the partnership between Albany Park Theater Project and Goodman Theatre has introduced nearly 10,000 new audience members to APTP performances and brought thousands of new theatergoers to the Goodman. Goodman Theatre is world-renowned for the quality and scope of its artistic programming and its commitment to improving life in the community. Artistic Director Robert Falls’ and Executive Director Roche Schulfer’s leadership has earned unparalleled artistic distinction and experienced unprecedented success. Together, they have staged more than 80 world premieres, earning numerous awards—including the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre (1992) and the Pulitzer Prize for Ruined (2009)—and produced more than 25 new work commissions. Founded in 1925 and housed in a state-of-the-art two-theater complex in the downtown Chicago Theatre District, the Goodman is Chicago’s oldest and largest not-for-profit producing theater, named “Best Regional Theatre” by Time magazine and “top dog of the Chicago theater scene” by Frommer’s.