Rebecca Gilman's latest, The Great Baseball Strike of 1994, will premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in spring of 2001. Each of the last three Goodman seasons have featured a Gilman play, most recently Spinning Into Butter. The new work, directed by Michael Maggio, will play May 11-June 16, 2001. Gilman is currently the playwright of the moment. Her controversial play about political correctness at a small Vermont college, Spinning Into Butter, opens this week at Lincoln Center Theater, marking her New York debut. Another play, Boy Gets Girl, is due to play at Manhattan Theatre Club this coming season.

As with many of her other, typically socially-minded play, Gilman's Baseball Strike takes its subject from contemporary new events. In 1994, the baseball players union went on strike, forcing the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in that event's history. Gilman explores the behind-the-scenes negotiations behind a sport that has become a big business.

--By Robert Simonson