Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA – Grippo Stage Company will present the world premiere of Shaw vs. Tunney by Douglas Post, based on The Prizefighter and The Playwright by Jay R. Tunney, May 25-July 8, at Theater Wit in Chicago. In Shaw vs. Tunney, Post pens the story of the unexpected relationship that developed between George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright, and World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney. It premieres after another Post play, By My Will, which will run April 8-30 at Atlanta Shakespeare Company. By My Will looks at another famous author, William Shakespeare, and is a comedic look at the Shakespeare authorship question.

Douglas Post’s plays, which include Howards End, Bloodshot, Forty-Two Stories, Earth and Sky, and Murder in Green Meadows, and musicals, which include God and Country, The Real Life Story of Johnny de Facto, and The Wind in the Willows, have been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Canada, England, Wales, Germany, Austria, Russia, China, and South Africa. He has also been commissioned to write screenplays for Warner Bros. and NBC, teleplays for WMAQ-TV, and several radio adaptations of his scripts. On three occasions, he has been selected to develop his work at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and once at the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference.  He has received the L. Arnold Weissberger Playwriting Award, the Midwestern Playwrights Festival Award, the Cunningham Commission Award, the Blue Ink Playwriting Award, and three Playwriting Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council and has been nominated for three Jeff Awards and an Emmy Award.  Post lives in Chicago where he is a founding member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, teaches playwriting at the University of Chicago Graham School, and serves on three committees for the Dramatists Guild of America.