Cast and production team have been announced for Invictus Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere of NETWORK. Lee Hall’s adaptation of the screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, one of the late 20th Century’s most successful and influential dramatists, premiered in London in 2017 and opened on Broadway in 2018. The story concerns Howard Beale, a network television anchorman who is fired for his declining ratings but becomes embraced by the public as a symbol of their collective angst. Chayefsky’s 1976 screenplay, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, was prescient in its foretelling of television’s adoption of reality-based programming and exploitation of grievances. Invictus Theatre Company Artistic Director Charles Askenaizer is directing the immersive staging, which will use a combination of live feed and pre-recorded video and projections to bring the audience into the world of the play, as if they were a studio audience for the Howard Beale Show. NETWORK will run from August 13 to September 29. The press opening will be Monday, August 19 at 7 p.m.
Leading Askenaizer’s cast as Howard Beale – the role of the “mad prophet of the airwaves” for which Peter Finch posthumously won an Oscar and Bryan Cranston won a Tony – will be James Turano, remembered for his Jeff-nominated performances as George in Invictus’s 2022 Jeff Award winning production of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and as Governor Danforth in 2023’s Jeff-nominated THE CRUCIBLE. The role of Max Schumacher, the network News Division Chief, will be played by Chuck Munro, known for his roles in Invictus’s HAMLET and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, as well as City Lit’s THE INNOCENCE OF SEDUCTION. The Programming Chief and eventual lover of Schumacher, Diana Christensen (the role in which Faye Dunaway earned a Best Actress Oscar), will be played by Anne Trodden, currently appearing as Lady Montague in Midsommer Flight’s ROMEO AND JULIET. Joe Sergio (Laertes in HAMLET and Antonio in TWELFTH NIGHT) both for Midsommer Flight, will play the network executive Frank Hackett. Also in the cast are John Chambers (Harry Hunter), Joe Feliciano (Nelson Chaney), Fred Wellisch (Edward Ruddy), James Lewis (Director), Whitney Minarik (Floor Manager), Colin K. Jones (Continuity Announcer), Tom Shea (Ensemble, Jack Snowden, Warm-up Guy), Patrick Blashill (Ensemble, Technician, Arthur Jansen), Jeff award winner Keisha Yelton-Hunter (Ensemble, Louise), Ophelia Harkness (Ensemble, Schlesinger), Layke Fowler (Ensemble, Technician), and Liam Ryan (Ensemble, Technician).
Understudies are Orion Silvertree (Howard Beale), Bob Sanders (Max Schumacher), Charlie Irving (Diana Christensen, Ensemble 1, Ensemble 5), Nick Dorado (Frank Hackett, Director 2nd Cover, Floor Manager 2nd Cover, Continuity Announcer 2nd Cover), Layke Fowler (Harry Hunter, Director 3rd Cover, Floor Manager 3rd Cover, Continuity Announcer 3rd Cover, Ensemble 3), Rory Jobst (Chaney, Ruddy. Ensemble 4, Director 1st Cover), and Renae Stone (Ensemble 2, Ensemble 6, Floor Manager 1st Cover/Cont. Announcer 1st Cover
Top Row L-R: Patrick Blashill, John Chambers, Joe Feliciano , Layke Fowler
Row Two L-R: Ophelia Harkness, Colin K. Jones, James Lewis, Whitney Minarik
Row Three L-R: Chuck Munro, Liam Ryan, Joe Sergio, Tom Shea
Row Four L-R: Anne Trodden, James Turano, Fred Wellisch. Tekeisha Yelton-Hunter
Row Five L-R: Nick Dorado, Charlie Irving, Rory Jobst, Bob Sanders
Row Six L-R: Orion Silvertree, Renae Stone
The design team includes Jeff award-winners Kevin Rolfs (Technical Director / Scenic Designer) and Petter Wahlbäck (Sound Design); Rachel Livingston (Scenic Dresser / Props Designer, Jeff award nominated Jessie Gowens (Costume Designer / Wardrobe Supervisor), Chad Lussier (Lighting Designer / Technical Consultant), Jay Donley (Fight/ Intimacy Designer), Also on the production team are Todd Henry Faulstich (Executive Producer), Rooney G. (Production Manager), Becca Holloway (Assistant Director, Casting Director), Hanna Smaglis (Stage Manager), Sam Flipp (Associate Stage Manager), Karina Osbourne (Master Electrician), Jeff award nominated DJ Douglass (Projectionist / Technical Consultant), Craig Duff (Journalism/ Broadcasting Consultant, Dramaturg), and Ana Schedler (Graphic Designer).
Invictus Theatre Company has been one of the most notable success stories among Chicago’s storefront theatres in spite of the challenges facing the theater community in recent years. When the pandemic shut down in-person performances just three years after the company’s founding, they responded with a thrillingly intimate Zoom production of ‘NIGHT, MOTHER. They returned from the pandemic by acquiring their own space – the former Jackalope Frontier Theater – which they renamed in honor of the late founding company member Reginald Vaughn. In that space, they continued to build a reputation for intimate and honest interpretations of classics with fidelity to the original texts and close attention to character development. The company’s extraordinarily successful 2021-22 season netted the company five Jeff Awards for its 13 nominations.
The company continued its upward trajectory during its 2022-23 season. That season began with intimate, yet full-scale stagings of the epics JULIUS CAESAR and THE CRUCIBLE along with the two-hander THE MOUNTAINTOP. BUZZ CENTER STAGE’s Wesley David said in reviewing JULIUS CAESAR that “Invictus Theatre Company is quickly becoming one of my favorite venues in Chicago” and of THE MOUNTAINTOP said “They constantly exceed their reach. I have to remind myself this is a storefront theatre.” The CHICAGO READER’S Jack Helbig said of THE CRUCIBLE “This is a production that grabs an audience in the first seconds, pulls us in, and doesn’t let go until the final lights go out.” After the 2023 fire that gutted the building housing the Reginald Vaughn Theatre, the company took up residence in the Windy City Playhouse in early 2024. NETWORK is its third production in this new home, following its acclaimed and Jeff Recommended productions of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG and THREE SISTERS.
Tickets for NETWORK are $45 for Friday through Sunday performances, $25 for Monday performances and $25 for previews August 13-18 Tickets and further information are available at www.invictustheatreco.com
LISTING INFORMATION
NETWORK
CHICAGO PREMIERE
Adaptation by Lee Hall of the screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
Directed by Charles Askenaizer
August 13 – September 29, 2024
Previews: Tuesday 8/13/24, Friday 8/16/24, Saturday 8/17/24 at 7 p.m. Saturday 8/17/24 and Sunday 8/18/24 at 2 p.m.
Press Opening Monday 8/19/24 at 7 p.m.
Regular performances Fridays, Saturdays, and Mondays at 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at
2 p.m.
Performances at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago
Ticket prices: Previews $25. Monday $25. Friday through Sunday $45.
www.invictustheatreco.com
Stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning film in which a network TV news anchorman is plunged into despair when his ratings drop and he is fired. He turns suicidal and threatens to kill himself live on air at an appointed time. Bizarrely, this announcement leads to a dramatic resurgence in popularity. Beale is reborn as "the mad prophet of the airwaves," a man who channels the anger of the common man. A nihilistic satire on the direction that television, and specifically news coverage, was headed in the Seventies.
BIOS
Charles Askenaizer (Artistic Director, Director) is the Founding Artistic Director of Invictus Theatre. He won the 2023 Jeff Award (Non-Equity Wing) for his direction of the company’s WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, which also won Jeff Awards for Production of a Play, Scenic Design (Kevin Rolfs), and Performer in a Supporting Role – Play (Rachel Livingston). Other recent directing credits include THREE SISTERS (Jeff Recommended), THE CRUCIBLE (Jeff Award Nomination- Director, Jeff Award Nomination- Production), JULIUS CAESAR, and HAMLET (Invictus Theatre), readings with Chicago Dramatists, 'NIGHT, MOTHER (Associate Director-Invictus Theatre), THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Invictus Theatre), OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE (Invictus Theatre), TITUS ANDRONICUS (Bare Knuckles Theater), JULIUS CAESAR (Associate Director- Brown Paper Box), TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Reutan Collective), and THE DIFFERENCE (Reading-Piccolo Theatre). Charles has worked with Citadel Theatre, Teatro Vista, the Artistic Home, City Lit, Raven, Brown Paper Box, Chicago Dramatists, the Side Project and many more. Charles graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Theatre and Communications. In 2024, Charles was named one of Newcity Magazine’s “Players 50 2024: The Rising Stars and Storefront Stalwarts.”
Paddy Chayefsky (Writer of the original screenplay) was an American playwright and screenwriter whose work was part of the flowering of television drama in the 1950s. He also wrote several critically acclaimed films. His greatest success was MARTY (1953), about the awakening of love between two plain people, a butcher and a schoolteacher. The film version in 1955 won four Academy Awards, including one for Chayefsky’s screenplay, and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. Another television drama, MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT (1954), became, in expanded form, Chayefsky’s first stage play and marked his Broadway debut (1956). His next two stage productions, THE TENTH MAN (1959) and GIDEON (1961), were on religious themes and attacked contemporary cynicism, while THE PASSION OF JOSEF D. (1964) was a treatment of Joseph Stalin and the Russian Revolution. THE LATENT HETEROSEXUAL (published 1967; performed 1968) tells of a successful homosexual author who marries for tax purposes and enjoys it.
Chayefsky also wrote numerous film scripts and scenarios. In addition to MARTY, he received Academy Awards for his screenplays for THE HOSPITAL (1971), about a depressed chief of medicine in a hospital experiencing many inexplicable deaths, and NETWORK (1976), a brilliant satire of network television.
Lee Hall (Adapter) is an English playwright and screenwriter who has also written radio plays, a children’s opera and translated plays by Carlo Goldoni, Bertolt Brecht and Herman Heijermans. His most commercially successful work was the screenplay for the 2000 film BILLY ELLIOT. The film was later turned into a stage musical, with music by Elton John and lyrics by Hall. After a long run in the West End, BILLY ELLIOT opened on Broadway in 2008 and won Hall the 2009 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. He has co-written the screenplays for adaptations of Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and Kenneth Grahame's THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. His play THE PITMEN PAINTERS played in 2009 in the National Theatre in London and on Broadway in 2010. Hall was the original writer on the screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's WAR HORSE. His stage adaptation of the film SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, opened in London in July 2014 and played in the 2016 Stratford (Ontario, Canada) Festival season.
ABOUT INVICTUS THEATRE COMPANY
At Invictus Theatre Company, our mission is to create theatre that promotes a better understanding of language: its poetry, its rhythm, its resonance; through diverse works by diverse artists. We respect the power of heightened language: spoken, written, sung; to express the breadth of the human condition. We work to harness the power of language: to promote diversity, to engender respect, to foster collaboration; and to empower our communities to share their voices.
Invictus Theatre Company incorporated in January 2017 and received its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in February 2017. A diverse group of Chicago actors and directors founded Invictus with the vision to empower their communities through theatrical productions of heightened language. We are committed to the idea that our productions should reflect the communities we represent, and, to that end, we are committed to non-discriminatory hiring practices. In working with local artists, designers, and production teams, Invictus Theatre Company does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, nationality, citizenship, religion, or any other status protected by law.
Invictus Theatre Company's 2024 season is generously sponsored by Michael and Mona Heath of The Heath Fund, with additional support from The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Untouchable Times Tours, Inc., and the Illinois Arts Council.