This Week in Theatre: EARTH AND SKY Opens Tonight at Heartland

Douglas Post's neo-noir thriller Earth and Sky opens tonight at Heartland Theatre with a special Pay What You Can preview performance that begins at 7:30 pm. These previews tend to be quite popular, so you should probably plan to be there by 7 to get in line.

I watched one of Earth and Sky's dress rehearsals earlier this week, and I can tell you that director Don LaCasse and his cast and crew have put together a terrific little show. Heartland doesn't do mysteries all that often, which is why this show stands apart a bit. It's definitely mysterious, following the story of Sara McKeon, a librarian who also writes poetry, and what happens -- backwards and forwards in her life -- when her boyfriend disappears from her life. Sara's love story shifts into reverse so that we can see how she and David met and forged a connection, while the police procedural part of the plot goes forward, from the moment Sara finds out her lover is gone through her journey into danger and lies as she searches for the truth.

I tend to like plays and films that fool with form, and there are quite a few examples of this "reverse chronology" phenomenon. Harold Pinter's Betrayal is probably the most famous on stage, while the movie Memento may take those honors on film, but there's also Alan Ayckbourn's Time of My Life, with its three overlapping "time streams," including one moving in reverse, Merrily We Roll Along, which goes backwards in both the Kaufman and Hart original play and the Furth/Sondheim musical version, Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, and parts of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the technique is employed particularly effectively.

Since you're solving a mystery forwards as well as putting together the fragments of a romance backwards, Earth and Sky will command your attention throughout its 100-minute playing time. Karen Hazen, who plays Sara McKeon at Heartland, creates a compelling, sympathetic heroine, and the supporting cast is pretty terrific, too, with a range of suspicious cops and robbers that is quite fascinating. I was also impressed with Kenneth Johnson's "under the L" scenic design, which moves seamlessly inside and outside seamy Chicago corners, dives and alleys, and the sound and light cues from Caisa Sandberg and Anita McDaniel that move us from past to present and back.

Performances of Earth and Sky continue Friday and Saturday -- but not Sunday -- this week, with Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances during the rest of September. Ticket prices range from $15 for general admission to $12 for seniors and $5 for students. You can see show times here and get reservation information here.

Starry Dramatists Guild Panel Chats on Adaptation and Translation

The Dramatists Guild has been having its annual conference in Chicago this week, with all kinds of nifty panels and discussions devoted to the business and creative aspects of playwriting, composing, and creating librettos and lyrics. On Thursday, Douglas Post, the playwright behind Heartland Theatre's next production, Earth and Sky, introduced keynote speaker Martha Lavey, Steppenwolf's Artistic Director, and that was followed by sessions with notable people like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Theresa Rebeck and Jeffrey Sweet.

One of the most interesting panels involved adaptation and/or translation, or working with someone else's material from another medium or language to create something for the stage. The panelists were Carol Hall, composer and lyricist for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and lyricist for A Christmas Memory, a musical adaptation of a Truman Capote story; Winnie Holzman, who adapted Gregory Maguire's novel into the megamusical Wicked; David Ives, the playwright behind All in the Timing as well recent adaptations like The Liar, The School for Lies and Is He Dead? and the book doctor (surgeon?) for 33 different Encores! musicals; and Doug Wright, who wrote the play I Am My Own Wife and the books for musicals as disparate as Grey Gardens, The Little Mermaid and Hands on a Hardbody. That's quite a panel!

Luckily for those of us not in attendance at the Dramatists Guild conference, Broadway World is sharing the wealth by offering video of that panel that anyone can look at. Click here to see and hear the wit and wisdom of Hall, Holzman, Ives and Wright. It's jam-packed with good information (like the fact that it's better to adapt the work of someone who is dead, and maybe easier if you don't like the source material all that much) as well as a glimpse into the personalities of some different people who've all managed to make adaptations work.

And if, like me, you are now bound and determined to get to next year's conference, you can see information on joining the Dramatists Guild here.

Heartland Theatre Announces Cast for Douglas Post's EARTH AND SKY

Director Don LaCasse has announced his cast for the next show on Heartland Theatre's schedule, Chicago playwright Douglas Post's neo-noir thriller Earth and Sky. LaCasse's cast includes Karen Hazen, Richard Jensen and Dean Brown, all of whom appeared in Middletown, Heartland's last show of last season, along with Colleen Longo and Harold Chapman, who were in Time Stands Still last winter, as well as Dave Lemmon, Todd Wineburner, Michelle Kaiden and Kevin Paul Wickart.

Post's play involves Sara McKeon, a poet and librarian, who is told that David, the man she loves, is not at all what she believed. Instead, detectives Kersnowski and Weber paint a picture of a career criminal, someone involved in rape and murder. Sara doesn't believe them. How can she? But how can she distrust information that comes straight from the police?

Her journey to uncover the truth takes her into her own past with David as well as the present without him, as she is thrown into an urban landscape populated with liars, thieves and unreliable witnesses. Ultimately, Sara must decide what and who she can trust in a world turned upside-down.

For Heartland, Karen Hazen will play Sara, while Richard Jensen will take the role of David, who once seemed to be the perfect man but now is transformed into something very different. Harold Chapman and Dave Lemmon have been cast as the two policemen who drop the bomb into Sara's life, with Colleen Longo as a librarian colleague of Sara's and Dean Brown, Todd Wineburner, Michelle Kaiden and Kevin Paul Wickart as the shadowy characters Sara questions and encounters in her search for the truth. 

Performances of Earth and Sky begin September 12 and continue through the 29th. For information on the play, click here or here. To see the schedule of performances, click here.

Upcoming Auditions: EARTH AND SKY at Heartland Theatre

Heartland Theatre has announced it is holding auditions from 7 to 9:30 pm on July 21 and 22 for its September production of Earth and Sky, Douglas Post's "poetic thriller" that asks disturbing questions about how well we know the people we think we love, who we trust, and when it is right and important to keep asking questions.

For Heartland, director Don LaCasse will work with local actress and poet Kathleen Kirk as dramaturg. Kirk appeared in a Chicago production of the play some years ago in the lead role of Sara, a librarian and part-time poet who finds herself disappearing down a rabbit hole of murder, lies and betrayal after the death of her fiance. Sara thought David was the perfect man, but the police are telling her a very different story. Who does she believe? How much can she trust her own instincts when everything she thought she knew has been ripped away?

Other versions of Earth and Sky featured powerhouse actresses like Annette Bening, Kate Burton and Martha Lavey as Sara, so it will be very interesting to see who nabs the role here.

LaCasse will be looking for three women and six men to play the following characters:

SARA McKEON, late 20s
DAVID AMES, early 30s
DETECTIVE AL KERSNOWSKI, mid 30s
DETECTIVE H.E. WEBER, 40
JOYCE LAZLO, early 20s
BILLY HART, early 30s
CARL EISENSTADT, 50
MARIE DEFARIA, early 30s
JULIUS GATZ, 40

Keep in mind that the ages listed are those specified in Post's script, but the director may choose to be flexible with his cast's actual ages, depending on how they read and interact with each other.

To get an idea of what the play is about, you can visit its page at Dramatists Play Service or see some pages from the script at Google Books.

Performances of the play are scheduled for September 12 to 29, with specific dates and times here.

What's Coming Up From Heartland Theatre Company in 2013-14

Heartland Theatre Company has announced the schedule for its 2013-14 season, and it's full of mystery, secrets, deception and relationship drama.

Heartland's season will begin in June with the Annual 10-Minute Play Festival, every year presenting eight new short plays by winning playwrights from around the globe. This year's theme is "The Package,” with each play somehow involving a package, parcel or gift.

Next up is the Douglas Post play Earth and Sky, a tense psychological thriller, set for performances in September, 2013, and then Annie Baker's award-winning Circle Mirror Transformation, a sweet and insightful play about the members of an acting class, scheduled to hit Heartland's stage in November.

After the holiday break, Heartland will be back in February, 2014, with Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, a look at a privileged family with secrets, and Scottish playwright Rona Munro's Iron, moving mother-daughter drama inside a women's prison, in April, 2014.

Heartland's season announcement notes that flex passes to cover this whole season go on sale on April 30th. You can see all the details here.

In the meantime, here's the rundown of shows to whet your appetitie:

Annual 10-Minute Play Festival: THE PACKAGE
June, 2013
Packages have been used as McGuffins in more plays, movies and TV shows than you can fit inside the largest box UPS will deliver. But it’s what’s inside the parcel that counts, whether it’s mysterious microfilm, memories of the past, the key to your heart, an urn full of ashes, a dangerous snake or somebody else’s cheesecake. There’s plenty of dramatic potential inside every package!

EARTH AND SKY by Douglas Post
September, 2013
Doug Post’s neo-noir thriller opens when Sara McKeon, a “would-be poet and part-time librarian” is told that her lover, David, has been killed while involved in terrible crimes. How can she believe what the police are telling her? How can she not? EARTH AND SKY will keep you on the edge of your seat as it vaults from love to betrayal, from mystery to deception, from truth to lies.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION by Annie Baker
November, 2013
This look at a hapless acting class in a small town in Vermont was chosen as one of the Best Plays of 2010. There’s warmth and humor as well as all kinds of insight in this lovely piece about the power of seemingly silly acting exercises like the circle and the mirror to transform the lives of the people willing to leap into them.

OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz
February, 2014
The wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs enjoy access to the highest levels of American life. But then daughter Brooke comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about the family’s murky secrets. Baitz is a specialist when it comes to dysfunctional families, and OTHER DESERT CITIES, a nominee for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, is one of the best.

IRON by Rona Munro
April, 2014
Fay has spent the last 15 years in prison for murdering her husband. When her daughter Josie visits for the first time after all these years, she wants to know why it happened, what he did, what her mum did. She can’t even remember what her dad looked like. But there are no easy answers in Munro’s wrenching look at the justice and injustice in crime and punishment.

"New Plays from the Heartland" Take the Stage This Week

Heartland Theatre’s annual one-act play competition, “New Plays from the Heartland,” begins this week, with an open forum with playwright/adjudicator Douglas Post on Thursday night and then performances of the winning plays on Friday and Saturday.

The 2012 edition of “New Plays from the Heartland” began its process way back in 2011, with Heartland’s panel of experts (including Heartland’s Artistic Director, Mike Dobins, and local theater practitioners, writers and artists) choosing a theme for the year’s competition. They selected “Summer in the Heartland,” asking playwrights from throughout the Midwest to submit their one-act plays that dealt with some aspect of this time of year in the central part of the country.

And once they had the submissions before them, those judges read and analyzed all the “Summer in the Heartland” plays before choosing the best of the best to send to Doug Post, this year’s final judge, to select the winners to be performed this week at Heartland under the direction of Mike Dobbins.

To give the inside scoop on his own playwriting process as well as how he handled choosing the winning plays, Douglas Post (seen at right) will conduct an open forum on Thursday, July 12, at 7:30 pm at the theater. Post is a founding member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble in Chicago, plus he teaches at Chicago Dramatists and is the Chicago Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild. Nationally, his plays have been produced in New York, Chicago and LA, while internationally, he’s had work produced in Austria, Canada, China, England, Germany and Russia. He has also been commissioned to write screenplays for Warner Brothers. and NBC, teleplays for WMAQ-TV, and done several radio adaptations of his scripts. On three occasions, he has been selected to develop his work at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and once at the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference. He has received the L. Arnold Weissberger Playwriting Award, the Midwestern Playwrights Festival Award, the Cunningham Commission Award and three Playwriting Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award and an Emmy Award.

Post’s forum is open to the public and free of charge.

If you’d like to see what Doug Post chose and what Midwestern playwrights came up with on the idea “Summer in the Heartland,” you will want to attend the performances of the plays on Friday and Saturday. And if you do, you’ll be seeing these winning playwrights and plays:

Andrew Head (FIREFLIES)
Andrew is originally from Evansville, IN. He relocated to Normal last summer while chasing after the woman he finally married this May. Andrew graduated from Bradley University in 2007 with a degree in Theatre Arts. At BU he dabbled in acting and playwriting, performing in plays like ANGELS IN AMERICA and NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. He was also fortunate enough to have one of his own works, titled BUTCHER: THE PLAY (inspired by Cursive’s The Ugly Organ album) performed at BU. Andrew appeared on Heartland’s stage in February as Dennis in MARITIUS. In the fall, Andrew will begin his MFA in Acting at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Thanks always to Kat, for continually making his work better.

Terri Ryburn (LEMONADE AND LIGHTNING BUGS)
Terri retired from Illinois State University in 2005 and became active in Young at Heartland, the senior theatre troupe associated with Heartland Theatre. She began writing plays for the group and subsequently had published a book of short plays. In addition to acting and writing, she does stand-up comedy and is busy restoring a 1930s Route 66 building in Normal. She thanks the NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND sponsors and committee, Ann White, and Mike and Gail Dobbins for their hard work in keeping live theatre relevant and vibrant. She credits her late husband, Bill Sanders, for the inspiration for her most successful plays.

Lori Tate Matthews (FARMERS' MARKET)
This fall marks the world premiere of Lori Matthews’ first full-length play to make it to the professional stage. Barter Theatre, a regional theater in Abingdon, Virginia, will produce OCTOBER, BEFORE I WAS BORN, a script that won the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights in 2011 and was named as a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award in 2012. Milwaukee Chamber Theatre has also contracted the play for their 2013/14 season. Lori’s previous work has received readings at Chicago Dramatists, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and Madison’s Playwrights Ink. Workshop versions of her plays have appeared at the Wisconsin Wrights Festival and The Second City. Lori lives with her husband, Greg, and their two children in Stoughton, Wisconsin.

Andrew Head’s FIREFLIES involves a married couple who are quite sure they belong together. The question is where. Ryan yearns to see new sights and experience new adventures, while Jess prefers her own back yard. Yes, they are crazy about each other. But how do people – even people in love – resolve that kind of gap in hopes and dreams, in distant stars and nearby fireflies?

Instead of romantic love and its complications, Terri Ryburn’s LEMONADE AND LIGHTNING BUGS focuses on a mother and son. They, too, clearly love each other. But he is a practical lawyer who wants her to move forward, move on, face reality. And she just wants things to be the way they were. Progress? It ain’t progress if it means leaving her lemonade and lightning bugs behind.

Rounding out the group of winners is Lori Tate Matthews’ FARMERS’ MARKET, a look at the territorial implications of who goes where and who knows how to be neighborly when it comes to selling their wares. Sandy has manned the same stand for absolute ever, and she gives out advice, conversation and camaraderie along with her corn and cucumbers. But Anika is brand new. And her motives are a lot murkier than Sandy’s. The flowers she displays may be pretty, but Anika spells CONFLICT at the Farmers’ Market.

These three new plays will be presented in staged readings (with some costumes, props and set pieces) at Heartland Theatre on Friday, July 13 and Saturday, July 14, with both performances at 7:30 pm. There is no set ticket price, but you are asked to contribute a $5 donation at the door. For reservations, email boxoffice@heartlandtheatre.org or call 309-452-8709.

The “New Plays from the Heartland” project is funded by The Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant and sponsored by Paul and Sandra Harmon.

"New Plays from the Heartland" Winners Announced

Heartland Theatre Company has announced the three winners in its annual "New Plays from the Heartland" competition for one-act plays.

This year's theme was "Summer in the Heartland," with playwrights from nine states -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin -- invited to submit their short plays on that topic. After two rounds of judging, the winners are:

"Farmers Market" 
by Lori Tate Matthews (Stoughton, Wisconsin)
Sandy is an old hand at selling produce at the Saturday morning farmers' market. She’s eager to help Anika have a successful first day. What Sandy doesn’t know is that the newcomer is asking much too high a price for her merchandise.

"Fireflies" 
by Andrew Head (Bloomington, Illinois)
Ryan and Jess have everything they dreamed of when they were kids, including a home on Oceanview Drive. The fact that there’s no ocean and not much of a view has never bothered Jess. But Ryan can’t help wondering what’s outside the glass jar in which he unexpectedly finds himself.

"Lemonade and Lightning Bugs” 
by Terri Ryburn (Normal, Illinois)
How much is a memory worth in cold hard cash? As dusk settles on the back porch she has rocked on for 52 summers, Marge Wilson argues this question with her son. The answer is not in the empty bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Maybe the lightning bugs know.

The winning plays will be presented in staged readings at Heartland Theatre on July 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm, with a suggested donation of $5 at the door.

There will also be a forum, free and open to  the public, with this year's final judge, playwright Douglas Post, on July 12 at 7:30 pm. As the final adjudicator, Post will also conduct a master class with the winning playwrights. Post is a Founding Member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, teacher at Chicago Dramatists, and Chicago Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild. His plays have been produced all over the world. As someone with expertise in every area of the playwriting life and screenplay, teleplay and radio play credits on his resume in addition to stageplays, his insights should prove very interesting.

"New Plays from the Heartland" is one of two opportunities for new plays offered by Heartland Theatre, with the other being the annual 10-Minute Play Festival which opens this week. The "New Plays from the Heartland" project is funded by the Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant and sponsored by Paul and Sandra Harmon in conjunction with the NPH Sponsors Circle.

For more information about either project, call Heartland Theatre at 309-452-8709 or email boxoffice@heartlandtheatre.org