Gift's COME CLOSER Night With Playwright Eric Bogosian To Take Place 5/20

Wednesday, May 20th, is a one-night only Come Closer performance of our Jeff nominated production of Talk Radio with a pre-show reception  at Gale Street Inn and post-show Q & A with the playwright, Eric Bogosian.

Tickets for the Come Closer performance, sponsored by The Gale Street Inn, are onsale at www.thegifttheatre.org. Tickets are $50 and $100.

$100 package includes cocktails and appetizers with Bogosian before the show, one ticket to Gift’s production of Talk Radio that evening, a post-show wine & cheese Q & A with the cast and playwright, and an autographed copy of Talk Radio by Bogosian.

$50 package includes one ticket to Gift’s production of Talk Radio as well as a post-show wine & cheese Q & A with the cast and playwright.

For tickets: call (773) 283-7071 or buy online at www.thegifttheatre.org.       

Eric Bogosian is best known for writing and starring in the play and the film adaptation of that play, "Talk Radio" (NYSF - 1987). For this work he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and received the Berlin Film Festival "Silver Bear Award."

He is also well known for his six solo performances Off-Broadway ("Men Inside," "FunHouse," "Drinking in America," "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll," "Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead," "Wake Up and Smell The Coffee") between 1980 and 2000, for which he received three Obie awards.

The Gift Theatre is conveniently located at 4802 N. Milwaukee in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood—two storefronts north of Lawrence, on the west side of Milwaukee—and is easily accessible by the Kennedy Expressway, the Lawrence and Milwaukee buses, and the CTA Blue Line.

Preview tickets are $15.

Regular run prices are $20 (Thursdays and Sundays  $25 (Friday and Saturday nights). Group rates are available for groups of 10 or more by calling the Box Office.  $15 tickets are available at all performances for students, seniors, and industry with proper identification.

Jeff Award winner Courtney O’Neil is the set designer, Scott Pillsbury is the lighting designer, Driehaus Award For Fashion Excellence Winner Branimira Ivanova is the Costume Designer, Jeff Award-nominee Miles Polaski is the Sound Designer.

Talk Radio is the second production of The Gift’s ’09 season.  The Gift concluded a successful 2008 season with White People, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, W;t,, and Streamers, and Santa’s Great American Depression Holiday Show! America.

The Gift Theatre is dedicated to telling great stories on stage with honesty and simplicity.  Since its 2002 debut, The Gift has consistently established itself as an actors’ theatre, eschewing directorial cleverness for honest, powerful connections between the actors and The Audience.  With the conception of The Lab—an ensemble-only forum dedicated to artistic growth and exploration—The Gift continues to deepen its commitment to the idea of ‘ensemble’ by training together on an ongoing basis.  Previous and future instructors in The Lab include Sheldon Patinkin, Jeff Perry, and Dr. Eric Forsythe.

PrevioUs Productions include Stop/Kiss, Santa’s Great American Depression Holiday Show! America, Streamers, W;t, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, White People, Three Sisters, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Blithe Spirit, 365 Days/365 Plays, The Halloween Show, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Glass Menagerie (Remount—Theatre on the Lake), The Good Thief, The Clearing, Hurlyburly, The Glass Menagerie, The Pavilion, A Young Man In Pieces, Language of Angels, 6, County Fair, The Countess, Alcatraz (Abbie Hoffman Festival), Orestes 2.0, Boys’ Life, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (giftSYDNEY).

The educational program of The Gift Theatre Company, giftED., continues its work at The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) by combining theatre and speech therapy to combat pediatric oral aversion in addition to its work through Chicago Public Schools, staging extant productions such as Pecos Bill as well as creating new pieces for the theatre, such as HOME / ROOM.  The Gift is also beginning to secure equipment for its first feature-length project under its film component, giftFILM.

The Gift Theatre is the only professional theatre company in the working class neighborhood of Jefferson Park.  As one of Chicago’s most exciting theatre companies, The Gift is marked by acting of the highest caliber with continual training in The Lab, the important educational work being done at RIC through giftED., and sold-out houses on the northwest side of Chicago.  Recent generous support has been provided by the Donnelley Foundation and Driehaus Foundation as well as The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Illinois Arts Council.