Kotis, Hwang, LaBute, Lucas & Hwang Lead ATC's 30 Play 'Silver Project'

Chicago's American Theater Company has announced that it will feature 30 short plays in its 25th Anniversary Season for its Silver Project. The plays will be written by some of the United States' most acclaimed playwrights, including Tony Award winners Greg Kotis and David Henry Hwang, Joel Drake Johnson, Neil LaBute, and Pulitzer Prize nominee Craig Lucas.

Performances of the 30 short plays will be held on 10 performance evenings, one night of 5 plays a month for 6 months, beginning February 8th, 2010 and running through June 20, 2010. ATC's artistic director PJ Paparelli chose the playwrights from throughout the country and asked them pick a year within the time period of 1985 and the present and explain within their short play what it means to be an American, the company's mission statement.

Finally, ATC will present the entire set of plays at the Theatre Communications Group Conference on June 16th to June 20, 2010. ATC announced that "As a prologue for the evening, Paparelli will collaborate with internationally-acclaimed Cuban playwright Maria Irene Fornes on a world premiere piece exploring America over the last 25 years."

The playwrights for the Silver Project will include Usman Ally (Public Enemy, American Ethnic), Stephen Belber (Emmy-nominated writer of The Laramie Project, Tape), Kristiana Rae Colon (The Darkest Pit), Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Welcome to Arroyo's), Zayd Dohrn (Sick, Magic Forest Farm, Long Way Go Down), Laura Eason (Sex with Strangers, Around the World in 80 Days), Maria Irene Fornes (Promenade, Mud, The Conduct of Life), Yussef el Guindi (Back of the Throat, Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat), Steve Harper (Lions and Donkeys), Andrew Hinderaker (Suicide), David Henry Hwang (Tony Award-winning writer of M. Butterfly), Naomi Iizuka (award winning writer of 36 Views, Language of Angels), Laura Jacqmin (And When We Awoke There Was Light and Light, Ski Dubai), Kyle Jarrow (Obie Award-winning writer of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant), Rolin Jones (The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow), Joel Drake Johnson (A Blue Moon, The Fall to Earth), Stephen Karam (Speech & Debate, columbinus), Nambi E. Kelley (Hope VI, How Kintu Became a Man), Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winning writer of Urinetown, Yeast Nation, Pig Farm), Joe Kraemer (The American Occupation), Neil LaBute (Tony-nominated writer of reasons to be pretty; The Shape of Things), Dan LeFranc (60 Miles to Silver Lake), Craig Lucas (Pulitzer and Tony-nominated writer of Prelude to a Kiss, Light in the Piazza), Laura Lynn MacDonald (Peer Gynt), Rohina Malik (Unveiled), Itamar Moses (Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us), Carlos Murillo (Dark Play or Stories for Boys, Diagram of a Paper Airplane), Justin D. M. Palmer (As Fat as You Can, War with the Newts), PJ Paparelli (columbinus, Raven Odyssey), Joshua Rollins (American Rex), Tanya Saracho (Our Lady of the Underpass, The House on Mango Street), ReGina Taylor (award winning writer of Crowns, Magnolia), BrIan Tucker (ST. James Infirmary, Bathing Van Gogh), Beau Willimon (Farragut North).

The 6 installments of plays will take place on the following dates: Monday, February 8th; Monday, March 1st; Monday, May 24th; Tuesday, June 1st; Monday, June 7th; and the full set of 30 plays each night from June 16th to 20th.

For information regarding tickets, please contact the American Theater Company's box office at 773-406-4125 or visit their website at www.atcweb.org.

In addition, ATC has announced that it will increase the number of its ensemble members to include Usman Ally, Patrick Andrews, and Jaime Castañeda.

American Theater Company (ATC) was founded in July 1985 as American Blues Theatre, a company dedicated to exploring, nuturing, and developing theater that addressed and affected the real working-class people of Chicago. American Theater Company is an ensemble of artists committed to producing new and classic American stories that ask the question: "What does it mean to be an American?"

For more information, visit the ATC website at www.atcweb.org.