After two years of waiting, Paramount Theatre will launch its new Bold Series next month to bring a new, four-show subscription series, and a new type of live theater, fearless, unexpected and thought-provoking, to the heart of Aurora’s downtown entertainment district.
The inaugural production is Sweat, Lynn Nottage’s acclaimed modern-day drama about life in an American Rust Belt town being battered by the constant threat of company shutdowns. Sweat will run March 9-April 24 and is the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and a landmark achievement of American theater.
Just as exciting, Paramount will lift the curtain on its new home for its Bold Series, the newly-remodeled Copley Theatre, directly across the street from Paramount at 8 E. Galena Boulevard, in the North Island Center.
Following a two-year, $2 million, top-to-bottom renovation, the Copley is no longer an unknown, underutilized space, but an intimate, state-of-the-art theater with 165 comfortable new seats and a modern new lobby bar, ready to attract more audiences to downtown Aurora.
Sweat is set in a bar in an impoverished American town, where factory workers gather to laugh, talk, and drink, their cares away, in spite the constant threat of company shutdowns. When promotions and layoffs are rumored, tensions and jealousy begin to rip apart their community. Can friendships and family endure when all hopes of economic stability and mobility disappear? An intense examination of race, class and the human costs of capitalism, Sweat captures the ever-present battle between human needs and business in America’s Rust Belt.
Veteran Chicago director Andrea J Dymond is director. The cast features Jordan Anthony Arredondo (Oscar), Tiffany Bedwell (Jessie), Emmanuel K. Jackson (Chris), Linda Gillum (Tracey), Joshua L. Green (Brucie), Bryant Hayes (Evan), Shariba Rivers (Cynthia), Randy Steinmeyer (Stan) and Gage Wallace (Jason).
The production team includes Jeffrey D. Kmiec, scenic designer; Yvonne L. Miranda, costume designer; Jessica Neill, lighting designer; Jeffrey Levin, sound designer; Jesse Gaffney, properties designer; David Woolley, fight choreographer; Khalid Long, dramaturg; Jinni Pike, stage manager; and Lanita VanderSchaaf, assistant stage manager.
—Jay Kelly PR