Pictured: (l-r) Juan Castaneda, John Arthur Lewis, and Erica Vannon.

Promethean Theatre Ensemble has announced their 17/18 season influenced by the current political environment.

The company’s twelfth season will open in October with Jose Rivera’s MARISOL directed by Juan Castaneda. In February, the company will stage Jean Giraudoux’s 1943 satire, THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT directed by John Arthur Lewis. The season concludes with a joint world premiere with Moving Arts at Atwater Village Theatre in Los Angeles and in association with Moxie Theatre in San Diego of Jami Brandli’s BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) directed by Erica Vannon.

“2016 saw a landmark election that exposed deep divides within our country, and promised a shifting socioeconomic and political landscape,” says Artistic Director Brian Pastor. “This led us to choose plays that are examples of how to respond, through the art of storytelling, to a changing political environment.”

Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s 17/18 Season (from the press release):

MARISOL
by José Rivera
directed by Juan Castaneda
Raven Theatre West Stage
6157 N. Clark St., Chicago
October 20-November 26, 2017

Marisol Perez is a copy editor for a Manhattan publisher. Though she is a white-collar worker, she still chooses to live alone in the tough section of the Bronx where she grew up. The play opens with Marisol barely escaping a vicious attack on her subway trip back to the Bronx. Later that evening, Marisol’s guardian angel pays a visit to tell her she can no longer serve as Marisol’s protector because she has been called to join the revolution already in progress against an old and senile God who is dying and “taking the rest of the universe with him.” Soon, Marisol is caught up in the Armageddon being fought on the streets of New York City.

THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT
by Jean Giraudoux
directed by Artistic Associate John Arthur Lewis
Athenaeum Studio 1
2936 N. Southport Ave., Chicago
February 9-March 17, 2018

THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT reveals a plot by a group of corrupt business executives who are planning to dig up the streets of Paris so they can pump oil that they believe lies beneath. Their plot is challenged by the titular “Madwoman,” the eccentric Countess Aurelia, an idealist who resolves to fight back and rescue humanity from the scheming and corrupt developers with the help of her fellow outcasts and her fellow madwomen.
BLISS (or Emily Post Is Dead!)
by Jami Brandli
directed by Erica Vannon
Athenaeum Studio 1
2936 N. Southport Ave., Chicago
July 20-August 25, 2018

it’s 1960 in North Orange, NJ. Clytemnestra and Medea are now housewives with a pill addiction, and Antigone is the teenage girl next door who is in love with a Black boy. On the surface, they’re seemingly blissful to follow the “rules” of Emily Post, the American author famous for writing on etiquette. But that’s just the surface. Then Cassandra, a Black working girl, moves into their neighborhood and all routines are interrupted. Cassandra is determined to finally break the curse of Apollo, the gorgeous and egotistical God who gave her this “gift” of prophecy but made it so no one would ever believe her. He makes it clear his curse is practically indestructible: yet all she must do is convince someone to believe her. Can Cassandra convince them they now have a choice in this modern era? That they don’t have to live a doomed existence? Can all four women escape their ongoing fate?
For more information on Promethean’s upcoming season visit prometheantheatre.org.