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Mission Statement Polarity Ensemble Theatre is a professionally diverse group of artists who strive to advance the state of Chicago theater for both local and international audiences by developing new works and bringing new life to the classics through live performance, workshops, and publishing. Our Vision We bring new life to the classics and new work to life. Polarity Ensemble Theatre brings together the yin and the yang. We marry tradition with innovation. Like the ancient Greeks, we create theatre to honor the spirit embodied in Dionysos, god of inspiration, wine and fertility, as well as of madness and destruction. We create classic and brand new theatre that teases the intellect and stirs the soul. We each bring our piece of the craft into collaboration to create art that lives in the hearts of you, our audience.

Richard Engling, Artistic Director

Polarity Ensemble Theatre is a nonprofit theatre production and publishing company. Our goal is to bring new life to the classics and to develop and produce new works by Chicago area playwrights. When we work with local writers, we bring them into the circle of the ensemble and the community to assist them with a multilayer process to bring their scripts to full maturity. As an ensemble, we are a collective of actors, writers, directors and designers working to deepen our connections as artists, as interpreters of story, and as servants of our audience. As a literary organization, we develop and publish works of fiction and poetry as well as new plays and adaptations. In all cases, we present public performances in conjunction with our publishing efforts.

Polarity Ensemble Theatre is steeped in tradition. We seek to restabilish the glory of theatre as ritual that inspires, challenges and entertains. Theatre started with an argument and a script. With every emotional scene, there was a lesson to be learned, and it was discovered thru rich performances and the discussions afterwards. At Polarity, we strip productions to their essence. We make theatre that brings stories to life through the imagination of the actors and the audience's desire to play an active role. We use music, dance and spectacle to bring human conflict and complexity front and center. Entertainment is everywhere, but intellectual challenges and moving performances are rare. At Polarity, we intend you to come away with both.

Ann Keen, Co-Founder

Irv Gorman, Publisher

We recognize the primacy of the written word, and it is our hope to provide a venue for new and emerging writers. We understand how much great work there is out there and how little of it ever makes it into print. We publish plays as well as producing them. With a luck and hard work, we bring new voices to the public arena while providing a rich experience for our live-theatre audience. In time, we also plan to publish works of fiction and poetry that cannot find a home with more commercial houses.