Sideshow Theatre Company's CAUGHT - Chicago Premiere!

Sideshow Theatre Company, recent winner of the 2016 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award, will conclude its 2015/16 Season with the Chicago premiere of CAUGHT, a new, head-spinning collaboration with playwright Christopher Chen, director Seth Bockley and Xiong Art Gallery. CAUGHT will play May 29 – July 3, 2016 at Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. Tickets are currently available at www.victorygardens.org, by calling (773) 871-3000 or in person at the Victory Gardens Box Office.

CAUGHT features Sideshow artistic associate Ann James with Ben Chang, Bob Kruse and Helen Young.

Inspired by the works and incredible story of dissident artist Lin Bo, playwright Christopher Chen, director Seth Bockley and Sideshow Theatre Company bring a new kind of play to Chicago, blending the mediums of theatre and visual art. Confinement gives way to freedom as layers of perception peel back, with reality itself eventually coming into question in this hilarious and dangerous play. A hallucinatory new experience featuring celebrated visual artists, Caught explores what happens when we blur the dangerous line between story and truth.

The production team for CAUGHT includes: Kurtis Boetcher (scenic designer), Izumi Inaba (costume designer), Claire Chrzan (lighting designer), Chris LaPorte* (sound designer), Gina M. Di Salvo* (dramaturg), Colleen Layton (stage manager) and Aaron Shapiro (production manager). *Denotes Sideshow artistic associate.

PRODUCTION DETAILS:

Title: CAUGHT

Playwright: Christopher Chen

Director: Seth Bockley

Cast: artistic associate Ann James (Joyce) with Ben Chang (Lin Bo), Bob Kruse (Bob) and Helen Young (Wang Min).

Location: Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago

Dates: Previews: Sunday, May 29 at 3 pm, Wednesday, June 1 at 7:30 pm and Thursday, June 2 at 7:30 pm

Regular run: Friday, June 3 – Sunday, July 3, 2016

Curtain Times: Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Sundays at 3 pm.

Tickets: Previews: $10 in advance or pay-what-you-can at the door. Regular run: $20 – $30. Students/seniors/industry: $5 off all performances. Tickets are currently available at at www.victorygardens.org, by calling (773) 871-3000 or in person at the Victory Gardens Box Office.

About the Playwright:

Christopher Chen's is an international award-winning playwright whose full-length works have been produced and developed across the United States and abroad, at companies such as the American Conservatory Theater, Arcola Theatre (London), Asian American Theater Company, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Beijing Fringe, Berkeley Rep/Ground Floor, Central Works, Crowded Fire, Cutting Ball Theater, Edinburgh Fringe, Fluid Motion, hotINK Festival, Impact Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Just Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, Magic Theatre, Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco Playhouse, Silk Road Rising, Sundance Theatre Lab, Theatre Mu, U.C. Berkeley/Zellerbach Playhouse and The Vineyard. Honors include the 2015-2016 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship for theater; the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, through which he was the 2013-2014 playwright-in-residence at The Vineyard Theatre in New York; the Barrymore Award; Phindie Critics Award; the Glickman Award; the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award; shortlist for the James Tait Black Award; nomination for the Steinberg Award; 2nd Place in the Belarus Free Theater International Competition of Modern Dramaturgy; a MAP Fund Grant; a Ford Foundation Emerging Writer of Color Grant; finalist for the PONY and Jerome Fellowships. Current commissions include American Conservatory Theater, S.F. Playhouse, Crowded Fire and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Publications include American Theatre Magazine, Theatre Bay Area and Theater Magazine (Yale). A San Francisco native, Chris is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and holds an MFA in playwriting from S.F. State.

About the Director:

Seth Bockley is a Chicago-based director and playwright. Directing credits include 2666, co-adapted and co-directed with Robert Falls from the novel by Roberto Bolaño, with Goodman Theatre; Basetrack Live with En Garde Arts; Lauren Yee's Samsara and Philip Dawkins' Failure: A Love Story with Victory Gardens Theater; Marcus Gardley’s The Box with The Foundry Theatre; the English-language premiere of Ewald Palmetshofer's hamlet is dead. no gravity with Red Tape Theater; Jason Grote’s Civilization (all you can eat) with Clubbed Thumb; Jon and Jason Grote's 1001 with Collaboraction; numerous events and spectacles with Chicago’s Redmoon; and the clown play Guerra, developed with Devon de Mayo and Mexico City-based troupe La Piara. As a playwright his works include February House, a collaboration with lyricist and composer Gabriel Kahane which premiered at The Public Theater in the spring of 2012; Ask Aunt Susan; The Elephant & The Whale (with Redmoon and Chicago Children’s Theatre); and adaptations of George Saunders’ short stories CommComm and Jon, which won the 2008 Equity Jeff Citation for Best New Adaptation. He teaches at the University of Chicago and is playwright in residence at the Goodman Theatre.

About Sideshow Theatre Company:

It is the mission of Sideshow Theatre Company to mine the collective unconscious of the world we live in with limitless curiosity, drawing inspiration from the familiar stories, memories and images we all share to spark new conversation and bring our audiences together as adventurers in a communal experience of exploration.

From its first production, 2008’s Dante Dies!! (and then things get weird) to its Jeff Award-winning productions of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Idomeneus (named one of the best plays of 2012 by Time Out Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times) and Elizabeth Meriwether's runaway robotic hit Heddatron at Steppenwolf Theatre, to the recent re-mount of its smash hit Stupid F##king Bird, Sideshow has consistently produced engaging, transcendent works across Chicago. Sideshow continues its multi-year residency at Victory Gardens in the historic Biograph Theater in the 2015/16 season. Sideshow was the recipient of the 2016 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award.

Sideshow also produces the Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLLAW), a wildly popular interactive fundraising event that benefits Sideshow Theatre Company and other local charities. CLLAW has been featured in local and national press, including The Washington Post, Reuters, Penthouse Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times and on WGN Morning News, ABC 7’s Windy City Live and CBS 2. The next CLLAW match is Saturday, July 30, 2016 at Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie Ave. in Chicago. For more information about CLLAW, visit www.cllaw.org.

For additional information on Sideshow Theatre Company, visit www.sideshowtheatre.org.