Press Release

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER WINS CITY LIT THEATER’S FIRST ART OF ADAPTATION FESTIVAL PRIZE

Tuesday August 28, 07
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Chicago, IL - Ivan Faute's four-person adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher won the $500 cash prize offered by City Lit Theater in its first juried festival of new stage adaptations, The Art of Adaptation, Artistic Dir-ector Terry McCabe announced today.  The festival featured seven world premieres of stage adaptations of six pieces of fiction and one ancient mythic poem, chosen from 43 sub-missions to the festival.

"We're thrilled with the way the festival turned out," McCabe added, "three perfor-mances, three full houses, and seven imaginative scripts by talented adaptors all given bracingly strong performan-ces.  We're proud to have pre-sented them all on our stage."

The Art of Adaptation was a competitive juried festival, funded in part by The Saints, Chicago's volunteers for the performing arts.  Over a three-day period, August 17-19, each piece performed twice. After the final per-formance Faute's Poe adapta-tion was named the best of the festival and awarded $500.00. 

The Fall of the House of Usher was directed by Stephen F. Murray and performed by Kyla Embrey, Matt Johnston, Nicole Pellegrino, and Ned Record. Costumes were designed by Nikki Delhomme

The other six adaptations in the festival, were: The Chaser by John Collier, adapted by Ed Rutherford; Frigg's Grief, adapted by Russell Berns; Native Speaker by Chang Rae-Lee, adapted by Nambi E. Kelly; Taibele and Her Demon by Isaac Bashevis Singer, adapted by Jordan Mann; The Wall-Reader by Fiona Barr, adapted by Thomas Murray; and Why Dogs Don't Talk by Dean Monti, adapted by David Rice.

City Lit's 2007-2008 sea-son is supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs CityArts pro-gram, the Alphawood Founda-tion, Chase Bank, Kraft, Polk Bros. Foundation, and The Saints. Its outreach program is sponsored in part by A.R.T. League.  For subscription in-formation, call 773/293-3682.