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Hannah Free is a feature-length motion picture for distribution in worldwide theatrical and ancillary markets. Coming Summer 2009.

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Hannah Free Executive Producers Tracy Baim, Claudia Allen

Producers: , Wendy Jo Carlton, Martie Marro, Sharon Zurek Cast Sharon Gless (Cagney & Lacey, Queer As Folk, , Nip/Tuck)

Taylor Miller (All My Children)

Ann Hagemann Maureen Gallagher Kelli Strickland Jacqui Jackson Executive Summary

Logline Hannah Free is a feature film about the lifelong love affair between an independent spirit and the woman she calls home.

Hannah and Rachel grew up in the same Midwest town, where traditional gender expectations even- Kelli Strickland as younger Hannah and Ann Hagemann tually challenge their deep love for one another. as younger Rachel. Hannah becomes an adventurous, unapologetic and Rachel a strong but reserved home- maker. Weaving between past and present, the story reveals how the women maintained their love affair despite a marriage, a world war, infidelity, and family denial.

The Project Hannah Free is a feature-length motion picture shot in HD for exploitation in worldwide theatrical Sharon Gless as older Hannah and Maureen Gallagher as and ancillary markets. older Rachel.

The Budget Budget U.S. $200,000

Timeline Financing: Summer/Fall 2008 Principal Photography Finished: Nov. 2008 Premiere: Summer 2009 The Hannahs and Rachels pose together on location in Beecher, , from left: “Hannahs” Casey Tutton, Kelli Strickland and Sharon Gless, and “Rachels” Maureen Gallagher, Ann Hagemann and Elita Ernsteen. Executive Producers Tracy Baim Claudia Allen

Producers Sharon Gless, Wendy Jo Carlton, Martie Marro, Sharon Zurek

Music and Sound by Martie Marro Makeup Designer Jillian Erickson Costume Designer Iris Bainum-Houle Edited by Sharon Zurek Production Designer Rick Paul Director of Photography Gretchen Warthen Written by Claudia Allen Based on the play by Claudia Allen Directed by Wendy Jo Carlton

Director of Photography Gretchen Warthen

Director Wendy Jo Carlton Play, Book, Film The play Hannah Free was written by Claudia Allen, a playwright-in-residence at Victory Gardens Theater in . She has won two Jefferson awards—Chicago theater’s Tonys— and written many plays, including Movie Queens, Hanging Fire, Xena Live!, and The Gays of Our Lives. A hallmark of Allen’s plays is their portrayal of strong, compassionate women. Hannah Free was among four Allen plays published by Third Side Press under the title She’s Always Liked The Girls Best. Author’s note: “Few plays are written about elderly . Fewer plays deal with their extreme vulnerability in a system that doesn’t recognize our rights. I wanted to deal with those issues while also creating a love story about two women who loved each other for decades despite a few flaws and more than a few differ- ences.”

Ripe Fruit Films Ripe Fruit Films was founded to produce Chicago-based films and other media with a focus on gay and lesbian issues. The first project is the feature film Hannah Free, which focuses on two older women who have shared a lifetime of friendship and love, and who are now separated physically but not in their minds. We see, through flashback, the passion of their early life together.

Writer Claudia Allen Scenes from the film Hannah Free. Top two photos, Kelli Strickland and Ann Hagemann. Below, Sharon Gless and Maureen Gallagher. Biographies of principal team Wendy Jo Carlton, Producer, Director Wendy Jo Carlton is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer Tracy Baim, Executive Producer with a background in radio, teaching, and media activism. Tracy Baim is the publisher and managing editor of Wendy Jo is a former artist-in-residence at 911 Media Arts in Chicago’s largest gay and lesbian publications. Windy Seattle and a recipient of the Navona Fellowship and Provost City Media Group (WCMG) reaches 50,000 readers Award from the University of Illinois Chicago, where she with its weekly newspaper (founded earned a graduate degree in film/new media. Her award-win- 1985), OUT!, Nightspots, and Identity. WCMG also ning narrative and experimental short films have screened produces Chicago’s oldest gay radio program, Windy internationally, including the American Film Institute, City Queercast. Baim is founding co-chair of the Sundance, and many other film festivals. In addition to found- Chicago Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of ing a media literacy program for teen girls called Chicks Make Commerce, was recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Flicks, Wendy Jo was a co-producer of the official Chicago Gay Business 40-Under-40 leaders, received the 2005 Studs Games 2006 feature-length documentary and is a field produc- Terkel Award, and is an inductee to Chicago’s Gay and er for Sirius Radio. Lesbian Hall of Fame. Baim served as vice co-chair of Gay Games VII; she also co-produced the event DVD. Martie Marro, Producer, In 2008, she edited the first history book of Chicago’s Sound, Editing, and Music Score gay community, Out and Proud in Chicago: An Martie Marro, head of Materville Studios, has extensive sound, Overview of the City’s Gay Community (Surrey Books, music and editing experience. Her team of sound and video 224 pages), a companion book to the WTTW film Out experts have worked on dozens of projects, including music and Proud in Chicago. She is author of Half Life, which videos, short films, and music CDs. They have expertise in Web has been adapted for stage and screen, and Where the site design, sound design, post-production editing, film music World Meets: Gay Games VII. See www.windycitymedi- scoring, and more. agroup.com. Sharon Zurek, Producer, Editor Sharon Zurek is the owner of Black Cat Productions in Claudia Allen, Executive Producer, Chicago and enjoys working on independent features, short Writer films and social issues documentaries. Her film and video expe- Claudia Allen is perhaps the most prolific contemporary rience includes producing, directing and editing commercials, writer of lesbian-themed plays. Born in 1954, she grew broadcast and corporate programs and independent films. She up in Clare, Mich., and moved to Chicago in 1979. Of is happy collaborating as an editor with many talented Chicago Allen’s repertoire of 24 produced plays, 11 have either a filmmakers like Mike Meiners who produced and directed the lesbian relationship as the central focus or a major char- soon to be released, The Trouble With Dee Dee and produc- acter who is lesbian or bisexual. tion team Jennifer Vincent, Christina Varotsis and director, Allen is playwright-in-residence at Chicago’s Victory Bruce Terris on Dirty Work. Earlier feature film editing work Gardens Theater and has been associated with that play- includes Runaway Divas, Stray Dogs, Constructing Mulligan's house for more than two decades, but her plays have also Stew, The Chameleon, and the video mockumentary, The been produced at many other Chicago venues and at Orphan Saint. She has worked as the post production supervi- theaters around the country. Her works are wide-ranging sor on The Merry Gentleman, Root of All Evil and and always contain elements of humor; Allen describes Drunkboat. a recurring central theme as “people finally getting the nerve to do what they want.” Gretchen Warthen, Chicago magazine chose Allen as Best Playwright in 1999. She has won two Joseph Jefferson Awards and five Director of Photography Jeff nominations. She was given the Trailblazer Award Warthen is an experienced filmmaker and has operated cam- from the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. eras on the set of numerous realty TV programs, including Allen teaches playwriting at Victory Gardens and has The Real World, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, and also taught at the and Lake Forest Treasure Hunters. She has served as director on TV shows College. Four of her lesbian-themed plays were pub- including The Real World, Love Cruise and Road Rules. She lished as a collection, She’s Always Liked the Girls Best also directed a dcoumentary about growing up as a lesbian, (1993, Third Side Press). and she has been director of photography on short films. Sharon Gless, actor, producer ’s : The Scarlett O’Hara Wars, in which Show business is in Sharon Gless’ blood. Her grandfather, Neil she played screen goddess . S. McCarthy, was the most respected entertainment lawyer of In 2000, Gless created the role of the outrageous and beloved Hollywood’s Golden Age. His clients included Howard Debbie Novotny in the groundbreaking Showtime series Hughes, Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille. The famous Queer as Folk, and remained with the series throughout its five- McCarthy Chopped Salad at the legendary Polo Lounge was season run. Wherever she goes, Gless is regularly approached named after him. He also drew up the first contract between a by fans wishing to express their appreciation for her honest studio and a player – a fact that is of special interest to Gless, portrayal of a loving parent of a gay child. as she has the distinction of being the last contract player in the Gless’ theatrical film credits include the suspenseful and history of Hollywood. She was under exclusive contract to provocative film, The Star Chamber, in which she played the Universal Studios, where she learned and flourished for 10 wife of Michael Douglas. She has recorded several ‘Books on years, leaving “The Lot” in 1982. Tape’ and has starred in numerous radio plays, one of which, In April of 2008, Gless was the recipient of The Theatre ’Night, Mother, for the BBC, earned Gless the International School at DePaul University’s prestigious Sony Award. She continues to do radio plays for L.A. Theater Award for Excellence in the Arts. In 2007, she celebrated the Silver Anniversary of Cagney & Lacey, the first season of which was released on DVD in 2008. Gless co-stars in USA Network’s hit series Burn Notice, currently in production in Miami. In the series she plays the chain- smoking, hypochondriac mother to ’s character. She recently com- pleted a multiple-episode arc in the hit FX series Nip/Tuck as Colleen Rose, an ambi- tious Hollywood agent with dark secrets. In 2006, she received rave reviews, both in the US and UK, for her starring role as US Secretary of Defense Lynne Warner in the BBC/BBC America miniseries, The State Within. Beginning with her starring role in Faraday & Company in Works and the BBC. 1973, Sharon Gless has brought her own brand of humor, She has starred twice on stage in ’s famed West End, intelligence and dramatic flair to each of her roles. She is best the first time in 1993 with , when she created the known for her portrayal of New York Police Detective, role of Annie Wilkes in the stage version of ’s Christine Cagney, on the hit series Cagney & Lacey, a role that Misery at the Criterion Theater, and four years later, opposite garnered her two Emmys®, a Golden Globe®, and six Emmy® , in ’s Chapter 2 at the Gielgud Theater. nominations. Following Cagney & Lacey, Gless re-teamed with She starred at Chicago’s Tony Award-winning playhouse, The the show’s executive producer, Barney Rosenzweig, on The Victory Gardens Theater, in Claudia Allen’s Cahoots, and at Trials of Rosie O’Neill, for which she was awarded her second Madison Square Garden with the National Company of Eve Golden Globe® and two more Emmy®nominations. Gless mar- Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Gless made her stage debut ried Rosenzweig in 1991. in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine at Stage West in In 1994 and 1995, Gless and her television partner, Tyne Springfield, Mass. Daly, joined together to recreate their title roles in a quartet of Gless is an active participant in the ongoing struggle for a critically acclaimed and popular Cagney & Lacey television woman’s right to choose, and joined hundreds of thousands of movies which they fondly call “The Menopause Years.” Other women in Washington, D.C. for the first-ever “March For television series in which she starred include Switch, House Women’s Lives,” where she stood in solidarity with her enter- Calls, and the short-lived but critically lauded tainment industry colleagues. In 2005, she was honored by half-hour, Turnabout. Gless has received much acclaim for her Norman Lear’s PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY for dramatic roles in such television movies as Separated By her unwavering support of human rights. Gless spends her Murder, Hard Hat and Legs, Honor Thy Mother, Hobson’s time at home in three of her favorite cities: , Miami Choice and Letting Go, among others, as well as the mini- and Toronto. series The Immigrants, The Last Convertible, Centennial, and Additional Cast ANN HAGEMANN (YOUNGER RACHEL) is very proud MAUREEN to be a part of the GALLAGHER (OLDER Hannah Free family. RACHEL) has appeared She received her the- in the films Road to atre/film training from Perdition, Mercury Rising, Edgecliff College, Uncle Nino and American Dramatics Everything He Touched. Academy and Actors As a Chicago actor, she has Center of Chicago, with performed in many of the her favorite medium city ‘s theaters, including being film. Some of her Steppenwolf, Goodman, on screen credits include: Dixie in the feature film Victory Gardens, Chicago Maureen Gallagher Shakespeare, and Ameri- Sand Prairie, Carol in Stalling, Annie in can Theatre Company, where she is an Affiliate Artist. She has Ann Hagemann been nominated several times for Joseph Jefferson Awards and Bully Breath, Detective Citations. She received the Jefferson award for principal O’Neal in Cracking, Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett, and actress in a play for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in The Becky’s Mom in One Hour Fantasy Girl which just played at Belle of Amherst. In recent years, she has begun writing plays the 2008 Toronto Film Festival. She played Vi Petty in Mercury and screenplays. Martin Furey’s Shot, her play about photo- Theatre’s production of The Buddy Holly Story, directed by journalists in South Africa preceding the election of Mandela, Janet Lauer, and performed in both the Chicago and Ft. was produced at Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre. Lauderdale’s productions of Respect. Some of her other favorite stage roles include: Kate in Taming of the Shrew, TAYLOR MILLER (MARGE) studied in NYC with Max Nancy in Oliver, Catherine Holly in Suddenly Last Summer, Gartenburg doing emotional recall work. She was able to put and Nora in A Doll’s House. her training into practice every day for ten years starring on ABC’s All My Children KELLI STRICKLAND (YOUNGER HANNAH) is on fac- as Nina Cortland and ulty at Loyola University Chicago in the Department of Fine then as Sally Frame on and Performing Arts Another World. While where she has taught on break from AMC she Introduction to Theatre, did a comedy in NYC Theatre History, Dramatic with Judith Ivey and Literature and Theatre in Christine Estabrooke Chicago. She is also the called Pastorale. Taylor director of Education and moved to LA to do night Outreach at the Raven time TV and films. She Theatre where she advo- studied with the late, cates for arts education in great Peggy Fuery, but the Chicago Public School as luck would have it, system. As a dramaturg, true love brought her Ms. Strickland has worked back to the East Coast with Guthrie Theatre, Taylor Miller Kelli Strickland and eventually to Missouri Repertory and Chicago. She has raised a family in Chicago over the past twen- locally with Shattered ty years. She has a flourishing voiceover career, has become a Globe. She has acted or directed with Bailiwick Repertory, great cook and is on her way to becoming an avid golfer. Over Women’s Theatre Alliance, 20% Theatre Co., Zebra Crossing, the last couple of years, she has worked with Victory Gardens Entelechy Theatre, and Avenue Theatre Co. Her articles have theater once doing Claudia Allen’s play Unspoken Prayers and appeared in American Theatre and The Mamet Review. She then going with Sandy Shinner to the Humana Festival in has presented multiple times before the Mid-America Theatre Louisville Kentucky, performing in the “best play” of that sea- Conference. son, Memory House. It was reprised in Chicago later that year. JACQUI JACKSON MEG THALKEN (MAIL LADY) has extensive staff, TV and (GRETA) received her BFA film credits. Her films include The Company, US Marshall, A in acting from DePaul Family Thing, The Babe, III and Class. Her work in University. She has been in TV includes What About Joan?, E.R., Chicago Hope, Turks, Chicago plays and film. Her Early Edition, The Untouchables, Jack & Mike, and The stage work includes A Dream Richard Speck Case. Her work in theater has included numer- Play, SOSX2, The Bald ous productions for Victory Gardens Theater and Northlight Soprano, Life’s A Dream, Theater.. Antigone, and Talking to Terrorists. In Hannah Free, BEV SPANGLER (NIGHT NURSE) is a veteran Chicago she takes on the role of Greta, actor. Her theater work includes plays with American Theatre acting opposite Sharon Gless, Co., Viaduct Theatre, Strawdog and Bailiwick. She has a wide Taylor Miller, and other stage range of sketch comedy, music and variety experience, includ- and screen veterans. Jacqui Jackson ing All Girl Revues, Pow Wow, Estrojam, Girlie-Q and Gurlesque Burlesque. She also co-produced Half Life, a stage ELAINE CARLSON (NURSE) has had the privilege of work- play about lesbians and gays in the Gulf War. ing on the Chicago productions of many Claudia Allen stage plays including Winter, Change, Reunion and Gays of Our This is the third feature film for 11-year-old CASEY TUTTON Lives. She played Rachel in the 1992 premier stage production (YOUNG HANNAH) can be seen the 2008/9 releases of The of Hannah Free and is thrilled to now be looking at the same Key Man and The Poker House. She appeared as Kathy world through the eyes of the nurse. Elaine has appeared in Buchanan in the TV movie Gifted Hands airing on TNT many Chicago area theaters. She can be seen at the Royal throughout the month of February, 2009. When she was four George Theater as Sister in the long-running, one-woman years old she did her first, of many commercials, for Berkeley comedies Put the Nuns in Charge! and Sunday School Cinema. Farms, where she had a lively conversation with a dairy cow. She has been acting, singing and dancing ever since. Theater credits After an early career in stage and television as an actor/director, include Gossamer (Littlest), Jakes Women (Molly), Lilly’s Purple LES HINDERYCKX (OLD MAN) joined the academic Plastic Purse (Amy), Laurel’s Love (Young Laurel), and world as a director and teacher of theatre. For more than 40 Milwaukee Ballet’s Nutcracker (Goose). years he has concentrated on sending new talent into the theater world from . While teaching he has This is the feature-film debut for 10-year-old ELITA kept in touch with the professional scene. He has most enjoyed ERNSTEEN (YOUNG RACHEL). She was in the 2008 originating roles for the world premieres of such plays as Sound of Music Asian Tour and has acted in student films Grover’s Corners at Marriott, The Angels of Warsaw for including Random Acts, Get Well Prince and Nightmare. Her Victory Gardens Theatre, The Great Gatsby for Wisdom theater experience includes roles in Annie and Jungle Book, Bridge Theatre, and two Chaim Potok works for the National both for the South Park School. She has training in tap, jazz and Jewish Theatre. Les has also earned many television and indus- ballet, and training in drama at the Apletree Theatre in trial film credits over the years. Highland Park, Ill.

PATRICIA KANE (MINISTER) is an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s About Face Theatre where Pulp premiered, garner- ing After Dark Awards for “Best New Work” and “Outstanding Production” and four Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, including “Best New Work” and “Best Original Music.” Her previous play Seven Moves (adapted from Carol Anshaw’s novel) premiered at About Face in 2002. As an actress, Pat has appeared in numerous productions throughout Chicago, includ- ing Seven Moves, Fascination, The Gift, Terrible Girls, Whitman, Dancer from the Dance, Cloud Nine (About Face); Finding the Sun, Dancing at Lughnasa (Goodman Theatre); Hannah Free (Victory Gardens); and All in the Timing Casey Tutton and Elita Ernsteen. (Northlight). Nov. 7, 2008 AfterEllen.com November, 2008 The Advocate December, 2008 ReelChicago.com November, 2008 Windy City Times November, 2008 Stage Productions of Hannah Free Chicago Boston and Oregon