Grippo Stage Company is proud to present the world premiere of Shaw vs. Tunney, written by award-winning playwright Douglas Post and directed by Nick Sandys, based on “The Prizefighter and The Playwright” by Jay R. Tunney, May 25 - July 8, at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago. In Shaw vs. Tunney, Post pens the story of the unexpected relationship that developed between George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright, and World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney. It premieres after another Post play, By My Will, written by Post and directed by Jeff Watkins, April 8 - 30, at Atlanta Shakespeare Company. By My Will looks at another famous author, William Shakespeare, and is a comedic look at the Shakespeare authorship question.
Douglas’ new works both premiering in spring and summer 2023 required intense research and a slightly different approach to gathering information.
FROM DOUGLAS POST:
"With By My Will, I was reading lots of books, articles, plays and poetry. I was researching Shakespeare, his life and times, as well as Queen Elizabeth I, Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe and many others."
"With Shaw vs. Tunney, I was highly dependent on the book that my play is based on, Jay R. Tunney’s The Prizefighter and the Playwright, but I also read numerous essays by Shaw and reread many of his plays. Gene Tunney wrote two autobiographies, so I combed through those as well. I had to be true to what I knew about Gene and his wife, Polly Lauder Tunney, but especially true to Shaw."
"There are many short films and recordings of him speaking in his very particular style, so that style had to go into my play. With Shakespeare, I felt much freer because we don’t really know how he talked except that it probably wasn’t in iambic pentameter. He had to sound like a full-blooded human being alive in the Elizabethan age."
"I also had Jay Tunney available to me as a resource and someone who could talk about his mother and father, as well as his recollections of Shaw. In terms of the man from Stratford and the authorship question, I consulted several living experts who led me to further insights and additional texts."
"It helps enormously that By My Will is a comedy with serious underpinnings while Shaw vs. Tunney is a drama with some laughs."
In addition to the two plays being about famous historical figures and their relationships with one another, they both take place in other worldly locations. "I can’t say too much other than in one play people are speaking from beyond the grave and in another they may be speaking from beyond the grave. There is a mystery surrounding this aspect of both scripts that is not revealed until their final moments."
Both plays were commissioned and Douglas is "enormously grateful to my benefactors for making this happen."
ABOUT BY MY WILL
Atlanta Shakespeare Company
By My Will
April 8 - 30
Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, 499 Peachtree St. NE Atlanta
An assortment of 16th century playwrights, poets and regal figures meet up in a unique location to determine who among them may have written the works attributed to Shakespeare. It's a comedic vivisection of the William Shakespeare authorship question/controversy premieres.
ABOUT SHAW VS TUNNEY
Grippo Stage Company
Shaw vs. Tunney
May 23 - July 8
Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, Chicago
Based on the book “The Prizefighter and The Playwright” by Jay R. Tunney, Shaw vs. Tunney introduces audiences to the deep, enduring and unexpected relationship that developed between George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright, and World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney.
ABOUT DOUGLAS POST, playwright
Douglas Post’s plays, which include Howards End, Bloodshot, Forty-Two Stories, Earth and Sky and Murder in Green Meadows, and musicals, which include God and Country, The Real Life Story of Johnny de Facto and The Wind in the Willows, have been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Canada, England, Wales, Germany, Austria, Russia, China and South Africa. He has also been commissioned to write screenplays for Warner Bros. and NBC, teleplays for WMAQ-TV, and 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, the Blue Ink Playwriting Award and three Playwriting Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and has been nominated for three Jeff Awards and an Emmy Award. Post lives in Chicago where he is a founding member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, teaches playwriting at the University of Chicago Graham School and serves on three committees for the Dramatists Guild of America.
ABOUT GRIPPO STAGE COMPANY
Grippo Stage Company, a 501 (c) (3) public charity, produces new plays and revivals of classic works of theater in the Chicago metropolitan area. Previous productions include Chagall in School (world premiere and Jeff Award-winner) by James Sherman, The Ben Hecht Show (world premiere) written and performed by James Sherman; Confessions of a P.I.M.P. (co-production with Dennis Zacek), written and performed by Tony Award-winning actor Andre De Shields and The God of Issac (Chicago revival) by James Sherman. Grippo Stage currently partners with pianist/actor/author Hershey Felder to present streaming shows from Florence, Italy.
ABOUT THE ATLANTA SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
The Atlanta Shakespeare Company (a 501 (c) (3) non profit) is a bright and talented group of professionals who interpret, direct, produce and perform the works of William Shakespeare. Its mission is the communion of actor and audience through poetry. To foster that communion, they have built the only Original Practice Playhouse®, The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, at 499 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, GA. Using this space as a laboratory for the exploration of Elizabethan stagecraft and theatrical techniques, all of their work is guided by a single clarion principle that Atlanta Shakespeare Company reveres above all others: the voice of the playwright. This is true whether the company is presenting an original piece, an American classic, or a timeless masterpiece by William Shakespeare.