Event

A Place in the Woods

a new play by Erik Gernand
directed by Patrick Kenney

When his mother is found incoherent and wandering on a country road late one night, Shaun, a gay man living in Chicago, is called back to his childhood home in small-town Indiana that he has all but abandoned. With his teenage son in tow, Shaun is forced to confront this present crisis, as well as a past trauma that won't stay hidden.

Featuring:
James Bould
Barbara Berndt
Jacob Bond
Mike Rice
Natasha Tsoutsouris

PLAYWRIGHT
Erik Gernand is a playwright and filmmaker. His plays have been in production and/or development at theaters including Redtwist, American Theater Company, Chicago Dramatists, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Barrow Group, and T. Schreiber Studio. His award-winning short films have screened at more than 100 film festivals around the world including SXSW, Mix Milan (Italy), and Cinequest, as well as been broadcast on IFC, PBS, and the Logo Channel (MTV Networks), and distributed on DVD by Strand Releasing and First Run Features. He is a lecturer in Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University.

Gernand's previous play, The Beautiful Dark, premiered at Redtwist Theatre last summer and will open in Manhattan in April with The Barrow Group. The New York Times called the play "Affecting, thought-provokingawash with resonant dialogueMr. Gernand has created complicated, recognizable people who are, like most of us, victims of their own flaws." The Beautiful Dark was recently recommended for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, is the recipient of the 2012 New Works Project Winner at T. Schreiber Studio in New York, and was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award.

DIRECTOR
Patrick Kenney is co-founder and artistic director of The Fine Print Theatre, where he most recently directed the world premiere of Boy Small by MT Cozzola. TimeOut Chicago called the show "refreshing [in] its attention to both realistic emotion and theatrical physical exploration...dark and murky, but with a streak of humor that compounds its visceral effect."