Jackalope Theatre wins 2015 Broadway in Chicago Emerging Theater Award

The League of Chicago Theatres has announced that Jackalope Theatre Company is the recipient of the 2015 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award. This is the ninth year of the award, which provides $5,000, consultation with Broadway In Chicago staff members, and a marketing package that includes advertising support.

The award was created in 2007 to encourage, support and promote young theaters in Chicago that have demonstrated great ability and promise, artistic excellence and fiscal responsibility in business practices. Jackalope Theatre was selected from a group of five finalists by a majority vote of member companies of the League of Chicago Theatres.

“Chicago has such an extraordinary and vibrant theatre community, so to be selected for this honor by organizations we admire is a source of great pride and inspiration,” said Jackalope managing director Nate Silver, in a prepared statement.

The Finalists for the 2015 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award were Filament Theatre, Pride Films and Plays, Route 66 Theatre, and Sideshow Theatre. Eligible companies must be members of the League of Chicago Theatres, have been incorporated at least three and no longer than 10 years, and have demonstrated artistic excellence, fiscal responsibility, community leadership, and potential for future growth.

The award will be presented to Jackalope Theatre at the League of Chicago Theatres Annual Gala, which brings together friends of Chicago theater to raise funds for programs to support Chicago’s 240 member theater companies. This year’s event will be held on May 18, 2015 at the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel Chicago, 636 S. Michigan Ave. The Gala will also honor executive director of the Goodman Theatre Roche Schulfer with the Lifetime Achievement Award and Chairman of the Illinois Arts Council Shirley Madigan with the Tribute Award.

Tickets are available for $325 per person, and all proceeds benefit The League of Chicago Theatres which promotes, supports and advocates for theater in Chicago. To purchase tickets, or for sponsorship opportunities and participation information, visit www.chicagoplays.com or call 312-554-9800.

And one final note: Next up at Jackalope will be “LUNACY! (A Cryptohistorical Comedy),” a play by Andrew Burden Swanson, to be directed by Gus Menary. It will run May 12 – June 20 at Jackalope’s home in the Broadway Armory Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N. Broadway. Tickets are available via jackalopetheatre.org. (Tickets are $5 – $20.)

Swanson, Jackalope’s resident playwright, has imagined a madcap 1969 in which the conspiracy theorists may have been right. Kennedy guaranteed a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and NASA is running out of time to fulfill the promise that will awe the world and unite a nation. March 15: A young physicist reports for duty at MGM Borehamwood Studios. The mission at hand? Film a simulated moon landing that the whole world will fall for. With a young Donald Rumsfeld in the director’s chair, CIA agents in the roles of our space-bound heroes and the whole of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic technology at their fingertips, what could possibly go wrong? Perfectionists in both science and art unite to reinforce American ambition, reinvigorate a sense of wonder, and inspire through knowledge of possibility – however unfathomable it may seem.