RACE

The CWT and Resident Company Theatre on Fire present RACE by Jamie Pacheco, based on the best-selling book by Studs Terkel. Directed by Theatre on Fire Artistic Director Darren Evans.

Based on the national bestseller, RACE uncovers the true thoughts and emotions of ordinary Americans, both black and white, about this country’s most explosive issue. We see bus drivers, college students, civil rights workers, Klansmen, doctors, interracial couples and many more struggling with their feelings on affirmative action, drugs, prejudice, and dashed hopes, revealing attitudes that few are willing to admit in public. Featuring a multi-racial ensemble of nine actors, RACE reveals the opinions of your friends and neighbors – and perhaps you – regarding the “American obsession.”

Jamie Pachino is an award winning playwright and screenwriter with work produced around the world. Her plays WAVING GOODBYE, THE RETURN TO MORALITY, AURORA’S MOTIVE, THEODORA: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY and RACE have won more than two dozen awards, including the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays and Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson (“Jeff”) Award for Best New Work. Her plays have been nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Illinois Governor's Award, named Runner Up for Osborn and Jane Chambers Awards, Gold Medalist for the Pinter Prize for Drama (twice), and invited to playwright festivals throughout the world.

Studs Terkel almost defies categorization. Since graduating from law school at the University of Chicago in 1934, Terkel has worked as an actor, radio producer, jazz columnist, sportscaster, writer, and civil service employee. He is famous as host of a series of radio and television shows in Chicago starting in 1944. His television career was disrupted when he was blacklisted in 1953 for speaking out in favor of price and rent controls, against the poll tax and Jim Crow laws, and for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He continued on the radio, however, with a daily music and interview show, The Studs Terkel Program, which ran from 1952 until 1997. Terkel became an author in 1957 with GIANTS OF JAZZ, and since 1967 he has produced a dozen more books, including DIVISION STREET: AMERICA, HARD TIMES, WORKING, TALKING TO MYSELF, RACE, and THE GOOD WAR, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves as distinguished scholar-in-residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

“The reason RACE resonates with me is because it reveals the attitudes and experiences of actual Americans of all races, without artifice or fictionalization,” says Artistic Director Darren Evans. “These are real people speaking, in all their beauty, ignorance, hopefulness, quirkiness, and malice.”

Theatre on Fire exists to present socially relevant classic, contemporary and new productions of outstanding artistic merit, with an eye toward challenging preconceptions and re-examining the traditional. Now in its second season, Theatre on Fire is pleased to have been named a Resident Company at the Charlestown Working Theater.

For more information about Theatre on Fire visit www.theatreonfire.org.

January 19 - February 3, 2007 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm Sundays at 3pm Ticket Prices: $18 Fridays and Saturdays $12 Thursdays and Sundays $10 students and seniors Now buy tickets online!