Maddie Sachs

Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alum Maddie Sachs ’16, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BFA Program in Musical Theatre Performance, is featured in the Grippo Stage Company’s world premiere of Shaw vs. Tunney, a new play written by Douglas Post. Based on the book The Prizefighter and the Playwright by Jay R. Tunney, the show runs May 25 through July 8 at Theatre Wit, located at 1229 W. Belmont in Chicago’s Belmont Theatre District. For tickets, click here.

Shaw vs. Tunney concerns the deep and enduring relationship that developed between George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright, and Gene Tunney, the American world heavyweight boxing champion.

Maddie Sachs (left) in “Shaw vs. Tunney.”

The play begins with Shaw and Tunney’s first meeting in London and culminates on an island in the Adriatic where Gene and Polly Lauder Tunney spent their honeymoon. It is there that Shaw and the Tunneys experience an extraordinary event that changes their lives forever. Sachs plays Polly Tunney.