The New Directors Series of The Theatre School, DePaul University, announces the Chicago premiere of ONE FLEA SPARE by Naomi Wallace, winner of the 1996-97 Obie Award for Best Play. One Flea Spare is directed by Barry Brunetti in partial fulfillment of The Theatre School’s Master of Fine Arts degree in Directing and features scenic and lighting design by John Glenn, costume design by Heather Lindsten and sound design by Jeffrey Webb.

Performances of One Flea Spare are January 30 - February 15, 1998 (previews 1/28 & 1/29). Performances are Wednesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. at the Victory Gardens Studio, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago. An Opening Night reception with cash bar, sponsored by the Alumni Club, 2251 N. Lincoln Ave., is scheduled after the performance on Friday, January 30. A post-show discussion will follow the performance on Thursday, February 5. For tickets, call (773) 871-3000.

Fleeing plague in the streets of 17th-century London, a poor sailor and a waif steal indoors and find themselves quarantined with the Master and Mistress of the house. Locked together in one cramped room, the desires of the four individuals are exposed as they wait for freedom or death. "How do we corrupt our moral values and our belief systems in the face of death? In order to survive, we modify behaviors and actions to meet our immediate needs," director Barry Brunetti says. The play also addresses the eroticism between people who find themselves in devastating circumstances, as the body becomes a form of currency used in exchange for goods and services. "When the demands of the body are fundamental to survival, order collapses," Brunetti says.

One Flea Spare premiered at the 1996 Humana Festival of New American Plays and was named one of the top 10 plays of that year by Time magazine. It received its New York premiere in February 1997 at the Public Theatre, starring Dianne Wiest. Playwright NAOMI WALLACE is also the author of Slaughter City and In the Heart of America. Her plays have been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Bush Theatre in London, American Repertory Theatre and the Long Wharf Theatre. She is the winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Mobil Prize for playwriting, and is under commission by the Royal National Youth Theatre, the BBC, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is also an award-winning and published poet.

Director BARRY BRUNETTI is in his third year of the M.F.A. Directing Program of The Theatre School, DePaul University. He moved to Chicago after working in Florida for 13 years with Kaleidoscope Theatre, where his directing credits include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, Equus, Crimes of the Heart and Dracula. At The Theatre School, he has directed John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, Romulus LinneyÕs Childe Byron, Caryl Churchill’s Three More Sleepless Nights and John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh, he also studied with Stephen Strimpell at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City, where he appeared off-Broadway in Irma La Douce and City of Life. Other acting credits include Salieri in Amadeus, Richard in The Lion in Winter, Nathan Detroit in Guy and Dolls and the Professor in Insignificance.

Regular-run ticket prices for One Flea Spare are $10 for general admission; $8 for Seniors (over 60), Theatre School subscribers, Corporate Partners, DePaul employees and alumni; and $5 for college students with a valid I.D. Preview ticket price is $6. For information and to purchase tickets, call the Victory Gardens Theater Box Office at (773) 871-3000.