Full casting has been announced for City Lit Theater’s production of EMMA’S CHILD, a drama by City Lit Resident Playwright Kristine Thatcher about a Rogers Park couple who plans to adopt the child of Emma, a pregnant teenager. What follows threatens their marriage and reshapes what they think of parenthood. Director Terry McCabe has assembled a cast that has delivered some of the most acclaimed performances among City Lit productions in recent years. The press opening is Sunday, April 24 at 3 pm, following previews from April 15-23.
Playing adoptive mother Jean Farrell is Kat Evans, last seen at City Lit as Robert F. Kennedy in THIRTEEN DAYS. Her other recent City Lit roles include Bridget in Kristine Thatcher’s THE SAFE HOUSE and Io in Nicholas Rudall’s translation of PROMETHEUS BOUND. The adoptive father, Henry Farrell, will be played by James Sparling (Sherlock Holmes in THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, THE SEVEN-PERCENT SOLUTION and HOLMES AND WATSON). Rebecca Sparks (of City Lit’s HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES) and Jamie Black (VOICE OF GOOD HOPE) have been cast as Franny – a friend who visits Jean and Henry as they await the baby’s birth – and Franny’s estranged husband Sam. Katie MacLauchlan will be Emma Miller, the teen mother of the title. Click here or on image below to access files.
Kat Evans, James Sparling.
The cast also includes City Lit veterans Andrea Conway-Diaz (THIRTEEN DAYS, Barbara Jordan in VOICE OF GOOD HOPE), marssie* Mencotti (THE VIRGINIAN, THE SAFE HOUSE, DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS, and J.B.), Lee Wichman (The Devil in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" half of TWO DAYS IN COURT, and Sigmund Freud in THE SEVEN-PERCENT SOLUTION), MiKayla Boyd (Young Barbara Jordan in VOICE OF GOOD HOPE); and Maria Zoia. On the production team are Samantha Gribben (Scenic Design), Louise “Scout” Gregory (Costume Design), Benjamin Dionysus (Lighting and Sound Design), Jeff Brain (Props Design), and Hazel Marie Flowers-McCabe (Stage Manager).
* Lower case marssie is intentional
EMMA’S CHILD was the first play ever commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Its 1996 Chicago premiere at Victory Gardens was directed by Terry McCabe, who is directing this City Lit production. City Lit’s world premiere of Thatcher’s play THE SAFE HOUSE, which the company commissioned, was a 2019 Jeff award nominee for Best New Play. THE NEW YORK TIMES called it “a brave, humanizing play.”
Tickets are on sale now at www.citylit.org and by phone at 773-293-3682.
LISTING INFORMATION
EMMA'S CHILD
by Kristine Thatcher
directed by Terry McCabe
April 15 – May 29, 2022
Previews April 15, 16 and 22-23, 2022 (No performance Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022)
Preview ticket prices $30.00, seniors $25.00, students and military $12.00 (all plus applicable fees)
PRESS OPENING Sunday, April 24 at 3 pm
Regular run April 24 – May 29, 2022
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 3 pm. Mondays May 16 and 23 at 7:30 pm.
Regular run ticket prices $34.00, seniors $29.00, students and military $12 (all plus applicable fees)
Performances at City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. Chicago 60660 (Inside Edgewater Presbyterian Church)
Info and tickets at www.citylit.org and by phone at 773-293-3682.
One of the great Chicago plays. By City Lit's resident playwright, author of VOICE OF GOOD HOPE and THE SAFE HOUSE, it won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a half-dozen other playwriting awards when Terry McCabe directed the Chicago premiere at Victory Gardens twenty-five years ago. A Rogers Park couple plans to adopt the child of Emma, a pregnant teenager. What follows threatens their marriage and reshapes what they think of parenthood.
LATER IN CITY LIT’S 41st SEASON
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
By John Millington Synge
Directed by Brian Pastor
July 1 – August 14, 2022
AZTEC HUMAN SACRIFICE
By Kingsley Day and Philip LaZebnik
Directed by Terry McCabe
August 26 – October 9, 2022
HEALTH PRECAUTIONS AT CITY LIT
Everyone at City Lit--casts, crews, and office staff alike--is or will be fully vaccinated by the time performances begin. We will also be following CDC ventilation guidelines on a daily basis to ensure a complete exchange of air in the theatre between performances. City Lit will of course comply with the full set of whatever official health guidelines are in place at any time.
Additionally, City Lit Theater Company is requiring all audience members to be fully vaccinated in order to attend. If more than 6 months have elapsed since your second shot of a two-shot vaccine series (or one shot of a one-shot vaccine series), a booster shot is also required to attend performances at City Lit Theater.
Kristine Thatcher (Playwright) is City Lit’s resident playwright. Her 2017 City Lit commission THE SAFE HOUSE was Jeff-nominated for Best New Work. She was formerly a member of the Victory Gardens playwrights ensemble. She is an award-winning actress, director and playwright and began acting at age 16 with the BoarsHead Theatre in Michigan. She has since appeared on stages in New York and Chicago, and in regional theaters across the country from Seattle to Sarasota. Her published plays include NIEDECKER, UNDER GLASS, EMMA’S CHILD (winner of the 1995 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; a 1997 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the 1997 RESOLVE Award for Excellence in the Arts; the 1997 Cunningham Prize for Playwriting from DePaul University; and the 1997 After Dark Award for Outstanding New Work), APPARITIONS, VOICE OF GOOD HOPE (nominated for the 2000 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work), and AMONG FRIENDS (winner of the 2000 Scott McPherson Memorial Award). She also wrote THE BLOODHOUND LAW, the concluding play of City Lit’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Project.
Terry McCabe (Producer, Artistic Director, Director) has been City Lit’s artistic director since February 2005 and its producer since July 2016. He has directed plays professionally in Chicago since 1981. He was artistic director of Stormfield Theatre for four years, resident director at Wisdom Bridge Theatre for five years, and worked at Body Politic Theatre three separate times in three different capacities over a span of 14 years. His City Lit adaptations of HOLMES AND WATSON, GIDGET (co-adapted with Marissa McKown), THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, SCOUNDREL TIME, and OPUS 1861 (co-adapted with Elizabeth Margolius) were Jeff-nominated. He won two Jeff Citations for directing at Stormfield and has been thrice nominated for the Jeff Award for Best Director, for shows at Court Theatre, Wisdom Bridge, and Victory Gardens. He has directed at many Chicago theatres either long-gone or still with us, as well as off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre and at Vienna’s English Theatre. His book MIS-DIRECTING THE PLAY has been denounced at length in American Theatre magazine and from the podium at the national convention of The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas but has been used in directing courses on three continents and is now available in paperback and Kindle e-book.
ABOUT CITY LIT
For over forty-one years, City Lit Theater has been dedicated to the vitality and accessibility of the literary imagination. City Lit produces theatrical adaptations of literary material, scripted plays by language-oriented playwrights, and original material. City Lit Theater was founded with $210 pooled by Arnold Aprill (at the time the Body Politic Theatre’s box office manager), David Dillon, and Lorell Wyatt on October 9, 1979, and was incorporated on March 25, 1980. There were still so few theatres in Chicago that at City Lit’s launch event, they were able to read a congratulatory letter they had received from Tennessee Williams.
City Lit is in the historic Edgewater Presbyterian Church building at 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue. We are two blocks east of both the Bryn Mawr Red Line stop and the #36 Broadway and the #84 Peterson buses. We are one block west of the #147 Sheridan and #151 Sheridan buses. Divvy bike stations are located at Bryn Mawr & Lakefront Trail, and at Broadway & Ridge at Bryn Mawr. The metered street parking pay boxes on Bryn Mawr have a three-hour maximum duration and are free on Sundays. There are additional details about parking and dining options at www.citylit.org.
City Lit is supported by is supported by the MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Ivanhoe Theater Foundation, the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council Agency and is sponsored, in part, by A.R.T. League.