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Isolation...Fear...Budding sexualities.... Technology as refuge.... A Chicago premiere and World Premiere...An unprecedented re-commitment to Ensemble...An Indiana Farmhouse, a CBS studio during the Golden Age of television, a clustered Cleveland sound studio where a bomb may explode, romance and destruction in pre 9-11 New York, post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual awakening on the razor-sharp coastline of a Maine summer retreat; Horrific acts of violence and humongous displays of love:

From a sunrise to a sunset, welcome to the themes and settings for The 2009 Season of The Gift Theatre Company.

STOP/KISS
January 15th – March 15th
By Diana Son
Directed by Ensemble member Michael Patrick Thornton

Are we really living our lives or just sleepwalking? What do we want? And how willing are we to go after it, even if we must, in the pursuit, lose ourselves to find ourselves? Son’s play about a friendship between two girls which blossoms into a romance with devastating consequences receives a bold storefront staging at Chicago’s award-winning Gift Theatre.

TALK RADIO
April 2nd - May 31st, 2009
By Eric Bogosian
Directed by Gift ensemble member Maureen Payne Hahner
Assistant Directed by Gift ensemble member Alexandra Main

"Your fear, your own lives, have become your entertainment."-Talk Radio

Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio-his breakthrough 1987 Public Theater hit that was made into a film by Oliver Stone-has been revived in a "mesmerizing"(Newsday) production on Broadway, with Liev Schreiber playing the role of the late-night shock jock that Bogosian himself originated. The drama is set in the studio of Cleveland's WTLK Radio over the course of Barry Champlain's two-hour broadcast, being scrutinized that night by producers with an interest in taking the show national, and fueled as always by coffee, cocaine, and Jack Daniel's. Barry's jousts with his unseen callers-ranging from a white supremacist to a woman obsessed with her garbage disposal-are peppered with insights into his character from his ex-deejay pal and his sometime girlfriend/producer, and punctuated with a transformative visit from an embodied voice.

THE RUBY SUNRISE
July 9th—August 30th, 2009
A Chicago premiere by Rinne Groff
Directed by Ensemble member John Gawlik

Setting off from a farm in Indiana as a young girl named Ruby struggles to turn her dream of the first all-electrical television system into a reality, and jumping forward to a McCarthy-era New York TV studio where Ruby's heirs fight over how her story should be told in a live teleplay, THE RUBY SUNRISE charts the course of the phenomenon of television: from early idealism and sparks of genius, to promises fulfilled and compromises brokered, and beyond.

SUMMER PEOPLE
October 15th - December 13th
A world premiere by Ensemble member Jenny Connell
Directed by Ensemble member Paul D'Addario

If the Postone family can rely on anything, they can rely on their summers in Maine. They spend every summer in a cottage by the sea and nothing -- the cold mornings, the creaky porch steps, the crusty veteran who runs the general store -- nothing ever changes. Until this summer. With a divorce on the horizon, a daughter on the brink of sexual awakening, and a veteran of the current war keeping watch from across the bay, after this summer nothing will ever be the same.

Jenny Connell's plays have been seen in Chicago, New York, Colorado,
Montana, and Texas. She was part of the inaugural year of the new Theatre Masters Program, was a finalist for the 2008 Bay Area Play Festival, and is a nominee for the Williamstown Theater Festival's Arnold L. Weissberger award. She received the writer's prize at Venture Theatre's 2007 short play festival, and just shot her first short film, Unmoored, with Trillium Studios. It will be making the rounds at film festivals in 2009. Jenny is currently pursuing her MFA
in playwriting at UT Austin, trained in acting at The School at Steppenwolf, and is a proud member of The Gift Theatre Company.