Playwright Wendy MacLeod's latest, Schoolgirl Figure, will receive its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre of Chicago's Studio space. Previews will begin March 31, 2000, for an opening on April 10 and a run through April 30.
MacLeod is the author of The Water Children, which received an acclaimed run at Playwrights Horizons in New York in 1998, and The House of Yes, which was later made into a film starring Parker Posey.
Schoolgirl concerns a clique of high school girls who, in their to the-death competition to land a class hunk, try to attain a perfect size 4 by any means necessary. The play examines the mores of teenage society and the madness of applying "magazine model" perfection to the real world.
David Petrarca, who directed The Water Children, will stage the play.
As previously reported, Millennium Mambo, the one-woman piece conceived by actress- playwright Regina Taylor which was due to open the new season at the Studio space, has pushed its opening date back from Oct. 8, 1999 to Feb. 4, 2000, for a Feb. 13 opening and a run through March 5. The theatre said Taylor has taken a movie offer, forcing the postponement of the work. Mambo will feature one of Taylor's plays, along with the work of five other prominent, African-American women playwrights. Taylor, an artistic associate at the Goodman, has previously been represented at that theatre by her plays, Escape from Paradise and Oo-Bla-Dee, performing in the first and co-directing the second. For Mambo, Taylor asked scribes Kia Corthron, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange and Cheryl L. West to either write or select a 15-minute text which could be performed by one actress -- in this case, Taylor. Taylor -- who contributed a short play herself -- then penned some connective text, linking the half-dozen playlets.
Henry Godinez, another Goodman artistic associate, will direct.
Regina Taylor recently appeared in Cheryl L. West's Jar the Floor at New York's Second Stage.
The rest of the Goodman's 1999-2000 has yet to be announced. For information, call (312) 443-3800.
-- By Robert Simonson
