Pictured: AstonRep Theatre Company’s 2019-20 Season directors (top, l to r) Co-Artistic Directors Derek Bertelsen and Sara Pavlak McGuire and playwrights (bottom, l to r) Sarah Treem and Peter Shaffer.

AstonRep Theatre Company has announced its 2019-20 season, to be presented at its new artistic home, The Edge Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.

The two show season kicks off this fall with Peter Shaffer’s EQUUS, directed by Co-Artistic Director Derek Bertelsen, followed by AstonRep’s 11th ANNUAL WRITERS’ SERIES, a daylong festival of workshops from local and regional writers. The season concludes next spring with the Chicago premiere of Sarah Treem’s drama WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID, directed by Co-Artistic Director Sara Pavlak McGuire.

AstonRep Theatre Company’s 2019-20 Season (from the press release):

EQUUS
By Peter Shaffer
Directed by Co-Artistic Director Derek Bertelsen
September 27 – October 27, 2019

Inspired by a true story, EQUUS sets out to explore the complex relationships between devotion and myth. When teenager Alan Strang’s pathological fascination leads him to blind six horses in a Hampshire stable, psychiatrist Martin Dysart is tasked with uncovering the motive behind the boy’s violent act. As Dysart delves into Alan’s world of twisted spirituality, passion and sexuality, he begins to question his own sanity and motivations in a world driven by consumerism.

Saturday, November 23, 2019
The 11TH ANNUAL WRITER’S SERIES
Titles to be announced.
April 9 – May 10, 2020

A festival of talented local and regional writers who have an opportunity to workshop near-finished plays and works in development. Over the course of a day, five to seven new works are read by professional actors followed by focused talkback sessions – a time-honored celebration of artistic collaboration.

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID – Chicago Premiere!
By Sarah Treem
Directed by Co-Artistic Director Sara Pavlak McGuire
April 9 – May 10, 2020

In the early 1970s, before Roe v. Wade, before the Violence Against Women Act, Agnes has turned her quiet bed and breakfast into one of the few spots where victims of domestic violence can seek refuge. But to Agnes’s dismay, her latest runaway, Mary Anne, is beginning to influence Agnes’s college-bound daughter Penny. As the drums of a feminist revolution grow louder outside of Agnes’s tiny world, Agnes is forced to confront her own presumptions about the women she’s spent her life trying to help.