Eclipse Theatre Company, which devotes each of its calendar-year seasons to a single playwright, announced this morning that its 2017 slate will be pledged to Kia Corthron. The three full productions in Eclipse’s season will include at least one world premiere, Megastasis, a war-on-drugs commentary that depicts a single joint derailing a teenager’s future.
Also on Eclipse’s agenda is Force Continuum, a 2001 piece about African-American police officers and their relationship to the black community. That play will open Eclipse’s season, running April 13 to May 21 and directed by Michael Pogue. Megastasis will take the summer slot, July 13 to August 20, directed by Aaron Todd Douglas.
A final full production by Corthron, in November and December, remains to be announced. Eclipse will also produce readings of other works by Corthron to accompany the full stagings. All events will take place at the Athenaeum Theatre.
Corthron’s first novel, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, was published in 2016 to much acclaim. She’s received a number of industry awards for her work as a playwright as well as writing for the TV series The Wire. Yet though the New York–based writer garnered Chicago support early in her career—the Goodman Theatre commissioned her play Seeking the Genesis in 1993 and staged its world premiere in 1996—Corthron doesn’t appear to have had a full production here since Pegasus Players produced her Breath, Boom in 2003.
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