OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES to Open in Chicago This Fall

The hit off-Broadway show OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES takes up residence on the Main Stage of Chicago's Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted Street, beginning performances Tuesday, September 24, and officially opening Wednesday, October 2, at 7:30p.m.

Created by Peter Gethers and Daniel Okrent, OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES is directed by Marc Bruni (Associate Director, The Book of Mormon Chicago) and showcases five actors in a revue that pays tribute to and reinvents classic jokes of the past and present. Think you've heard them all before? Not this way. The show also features comic songs -- brand new and satisfyingly old - as well as tributes to some of the giants of the comedy world and to OldJewsTellingJokes.com, the website created by Sam Hoffman that inspired the show. If you've ever had a mother, visited a doctor, or walked into a bar with a priest, a rabbi and a frog - OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES will sit in the dark, give you a second opinion, and ask you where you got that.

The Off Broadway production of OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES opened to rave reviews in May 2012 at The Westside Theatre where it continues to play to sold-out houses. Casting for the Chicago production will be announced shortly.

Peter Gethers is President of Random House Studio, as well as an editor and publisher at Random House, Inc., a screenwriter, television writer and producer, novelist, and non-fiction author of the bestselling trilogy about his Scottish Fold cat Norton: The Cat Who Went to Paris, A Cat Abroad and The Cat Who'll Live Forever. His new novel, Ask Bob, will be published in August 2013. He, too, is a founding member of the Rotisserie Baseball League, the 1980 group that started the fantasy sports craze.

Daniel Okrent is a writer and editor, and best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times. He also invented Rotisserie League Baseball, and wrote several books, including Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, which served as a major source for the 2011 Ken Burns/Lynn Novick miniseries "Prohibition." Most of his career has been spent as an editor, at such places as Alfred A. Knopf and TIME, Inc. His book Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in history.

Marc Bruni's directing credits include Pipe Dream (Encores!), Fanny (Encores!), Ordinary Days (Roundabout), In the Mood (Berkshire Theatre Festival), 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Paper Mill/Philadelphia Theatre Company), Irving Berlin's White Christmas (Paper Mill), Such Good Friends (NYMF Directing Award), High Spirits (York Mufti), Glimpses of the Moon (Oak Room) and five shows for the St. Louis MUNY: The Music Man (Kevin Kline Award Nomination), Sound of Music (Kevin Kline Award Nomination), Legally Blonde, My One and Only, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. He has served as Associate Director on 15 Broadway shows including Nice Work If You Can Get It and the 2011 Tony winning revival of Anything Goes. He is the associate director for the current Chicago engagement of The Book of Mormon at the Bank of America Theater.

In addition to Okrent, Gethers and Bruni, the rest of the creative team is David Gallo (Set and Video Design); Jeff Croiter (Lighting Design); Alejo Vietti (Costume Design); Richard Fitzgerald/Sound Associates (Sound Design); and Adam Wachter (Musical supervision and arrangements). It is produced by Daniel Okrent and Peter Gethers, and Richard Frankel, Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch and Marc Routh.