500 Clown and the Elephant Deal is an original theater production for adults with music - a rocking three-piece band, an alluring Mistress of Ceremonies, and a daring stage crew have everything they need for a night of theatre...except for the story, which has gone MIA.
The sequel to Wilson's acclaimed Talley's Folly, which was produced by Festival Theatre in 2007. Set in rural Missouri in 1977, it revolves around the Talley family and their friends, and focuses on the disillusionment with America in the wake of an unpopular war. At once poignent and marvelously funny, 5th of July is a compassionate portrait of a generation trying to decide whether to abandon their past or find the courage to cope with it and to begin anew.
Take your family to a magical, far away land, and join Aladdin, Jasmine and the lovable Genie in this exciting musical adventure full of unforgettable songs based on the Academy Award-winning Disney film. Soar on a magic carpet with the jovial Genie, and tag along with our clever hero Aladdin as he fights for his true love, the beautiful Princess Jasmine. Oh, and there’s the kingdom of Agrabah to rescue from the villainous Jafar’s evil grasp, too. Featuring “A Whole New World” and “Friend Like Me,” Disney’s Aladdin will enchant audiences young and old alike. Recommended for ages 5 and up.
Each summer Halcyon Theatre produces The Alcyone Festival, celebrating female playwrights. Because female playwrights are horribly represented on stages across America, they created the Alcyone Festival to combat this directly, by celebrating the depth and breadth of women writers.
Broadway's smash hit musical returns to Chicago! With angelic voices and divine dance moves, five small-town boys believe they're destined by God to speak the Holy Spirit through hip-hop. This charming Christian boy-band (with one nice Jewish boy) will alter your mind and raise your spirits as they look for their big break in New York while saving souls along the way. Destined to rock the masses of all denominations!
Its official – the United States is moving forward. We have a new President taking office, sweeping international economic crisis, and the effects of global warming all around us. It’s time to fire up the Rahminator and transplant a little Midwestern charm to Washington making America: All Better!
Tony Award-winning Ensemble Member Mary Zimmerman returns to the Water Tower Water Works, following the successful run and three city tour of Argonautika, with her Lookingglass Original adaptation of one of the world's most enduring works of literature. When he discovers his wife in the arms of another man, King Shahrayar vows to ruthlessly murder every virgin in the kingdom. His brutality is interrupted only when he encounters the cunning maiden Scheherezade, whose captivating stories may just save her life. This boldly re-imagined visual feast celebrates the redemptive power of story telling.
British vernacular for jailbird, Blackbird is a real-time account of the awkward reunion of Ray and Una, 15 years after a passionate affair when he was 40 and she was a minor. Ray is confronted with his past when Una arrives unannounced at his workplace. Guilt, rage and raw emotions run high as they recollect their forbidden relationship.
Blue Man Group is best known for its award-winning theatrical productions which critics have described as "ground-breaking," "hilarious," "visually stunning" and "musically powerful." These performances feature three enigmatic bald and blue characters who take the audience through a multi-sensory experience that combines theatre, percussive music, art, science and vaudeville into a form of entertainment that is like nothing else.
In BOMBS AWAY! Mishkin and his troupe of actors dare to present his collection against the wishes of the writers of the classic musicals and despite a stop order directive from a judge. Selections to be performed are “Krakatoa” which was the original island setting for South Pacific, “I Own A Nail Salon” from the rarely seen flash-forward ending of Miss Saigon, “Too Fat To Dance” trimmed from A Chorus Line, “I Shake Me Green Shillelagh” which at one point anchored Finian’s Rainbow, and the catchy “See Ya In Ikea” from Mamma Mia. And of course, very few people remember the title song “Bombs Away!” was Mother Abbess’ initial response to Maria’s question about how to handle the Nazi’s in Sound of Music.
As the national election coverage subsides and the mysterious promise of change lingers before us, our focus returns to our own uncertain little worlds. Under the direction of Bruce Pirrie. Facebook, interracial child rearing, and the great opera of Chicago-style politics take the stage.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Buried Child” is a macabre look at an American Midwestern family with a dark, terrible secret; a secret which has all but destroyed the family. With its lower-class, sometimes humorous, recognizable characters and dialogue, “Buried Child” resembles the mid-century American realism and grotesquerie of Arthur Miller (“Death of a Salesman”) or Tennessee Williams (“A Streetcar Named Desire”). However, its roots in ritual and its approach to monumental, timeless themes of human suffering—incest, murder, deceit, and rebirth—resemble the destruction wreaked by the heroes of Greek tragedy.
Wedding bells have finally rung for amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey and novelist Harriet Vane! But their quiet, country honeymoon becomes a series of misadventures with exploding chimneys and unwanted guests, including a body found murdered in their own home. This inauspicious beginning begs the question: when life gets in the way, can love persevere?
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with adaptor Frances Limoncelli and actors Jenifer Tyler and Peter Greenberg as they discuss the technical challenges of staging a mystery novel and speaking Dorothy Sayers' brainy dialogue, and romance on (and off) stage. Listen
After three smash seasons at Navy Pier, Cirque Shanghai returns with an all-new full-scale theatrical production, “Cirque Shanghai: Bright Spirit.” Embraced by Chicagoans and tourists alike as “Chicago’s Summer Circus” this dazzling showcase of strength, agility and grace is meticulously choreographed to a specially produced musical score and performed with ingenious stagecraft, offering audiences a full-scale theatrical experience.
Return of company's flagship show. Inane residents of a prison live in fear of the arrival of The Clown...and the big fight never disappoints. Ellen Stoneking reprises the role of Dame Toulouse, joined by a cast of some of the brightest performers on the Chicago comedy scene.
Paintings are created onstage in The Day On Which A Man Dies first with airbrushes to wet the surface of paper tacked to the floor, and then the lead character crawls naked onto the fresh red paint of the paper: turning his entire body into the instrument of art. When the artist/actor rises smeared with red paint he has himself become a work of art and counterpart to the image on the flat surface.
The victims: A dead woman. A missing girl. The suspects: A famed film director. A recently released mental patient. Detectives Mac and Chooch are on the case. The only trouble is, are they getting closer to a killer or are all their leads ending up dead wrong? The Factory Theater presents a tale of cops and killers in the city of Chicago that is not for the squeamish.
Earth is an experiment that has failed in this sci-fi, Mel Brooks style, current events inspired comedy.Including outrageous intergalactic battles in a provocatively stylized universe, every performance is unique as each audience suggests their own story line elements and determines Earth's fate in a final, climactic vote. Will it be "TTFN" (Ta Ta For Now) or "TTFE" (Ta Ta Forever)? Will Earth "evolve" in peace or be destroyed by The Developer who calls it a blight on the galactic neighborhood...? You decide!
Chicago's oldest cemetery is the backdrop for Graceland, the story of four lonely Chicagoans whose lives collide one August weekend while the Blue Angels airshow is in town. As fighter jets buzz the skies from dusk till dawn, estranged brother and sister Sam and Sara try to make sense of their father's recent suicide. Sara's one night stand with Joe, an aging lothario, brings further trouble in the form of Joe's mercurial teenage son, Miles. Graceland is a World premiere comedic drama about the loneliness of family, the tenderness of strangers and the unexpected benefits of bad decisions.
Ibsen’s masterpiece depicts a woman’s inevitable road to tragedy. Hedda has recently married a kind and reliable yet unexciting scholar. She is visited by two old acquaintances: a female schoolmate and another scholar. The former has saved the latter from an unsavory lifestyle, helping him find success as a writer; Hedda is resentful both of his talent and her schoolmate’s influence on it. Out of jealousy and boredom, she proceeds to destroy each of the people around her, and finally herself. Is Hedda a heroine, a villain, a victim… or all of the above?
The recipient of more than 30 major awards, including Tony and Olivier awards for Best New Play, The History Boys follows a rambunctious group of clever young men as they pursue higher learning, games, sexual identity and a place at university under the guidance of three wildly different teachers and a headmaster obsessed with results. Set during the 1980s in northern England, it is a hilarious and provocative play about the anarchy of adolescence and the purpose of education - specifically, how history should be taught.
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with director Nick Bowling, actors Will Allan and Donald Brearley, and dialect coach Eva Beneman about their work on The History Boys. Listen
Steep's special blend of grit, edge, and ensemble work comes to life in this story about America’s early pioneers. Jim, a young Irish immigrant, arrives in New York in 1815 with dreams of boundless freedom, legendary profits, and unseen kingdoms. It is the cost of his 40 year pursuit that becomes more than he imagined. The Hollow Lands traces a nation’s journey towards its Manifest Destiny and the trail it leaves behind.
This sociological musical centers on Love 1, a revered Chicago on-air personality who is about to begin his final broadcast. In the midst of his farewell show, HipHop arrives to tell her story the way it really is. Through the dialogue that follows, Love 1 and his listeners are told the story of Hip-Hop through her own words. Social issues such as feminism, parenting, racism, capitalist media domination and violence in the HipHop community are examined throughout the show, with relevant HipHop classics as the backdrop. By the end of his broadcast Love 1 reconciles his love affair with his culture and realizes that he must "always take time to listen to the soundtrack of his life".
The Improvised Shakespeare Co. creates a fully improvised play in Elizabethan style each evening. One audience suggestion creates the title for the play that is then written in front of the audience. Each of the players has brushed up on his “thee’s” and “thou’s” to create an off-the-cuff comedy using the language and themes of Shakespeare. Each play is completely improvised, making each performance entirely new.
Status updates from the walls of: Dave Awl - "Facebook 2020," Beth Ann Bryant-Richards - "Redface," Barrie Cole - "Another Brick in the Wall" and Tekki Lomnicki - "Love in the Time of Facebook."
Bank of America Theatre (formerly LaSalle Bank Theatre)
This is the story of how four blue-collar kids became one of the greatest successes in pop music history. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide – all before they were thirty! JERSEY BOYS features their hit songs “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Rag Doll,” “Oh What a Night” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”
An entire small town in western Ohio is vividly brought to life in this riveting fable. After a reckless driver kills her twin brother, Charlotte McGraw becomes a supernatural wonder to others when it appears she has received an eerie power from his dying kiss. A poignant summertime ghost story, this quirky and touching play offers the unexpected perspective of a child on the big questions of life, death and redemption.
Jerry Herman's music and Harvey Fierstein's book bring into glittering light the story of Georges and Albin, two men spending their lives together in St. Tropez. Georges and Albin’s twenty years of domestication are thrown into a whirl when Jean-Michel, the son, fathered by Georges during a one-night fling, comes home with news that he is engaged.
Cory Doctorow gives us a vision of the future as seen through the eyes of Marcus, aka “wln5t0n,” a seventeen year old hacker who decides to fight back against a government out of control. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco.
On December 4, 1956, an auspicious twist of fate brought together Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley. The place was Sun Records’ storefront studio in Memphis. The man who made it happen was the “Father of Rock-n-Roll,” Sam Phillips, who discovered them all. The four legends-to-be united for the only time in their careers for an impromptu recording session that embodied the birth of rock ‘n’ roll and has come to be known as one of the greatest rock jam sessions of all time.
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with actor Brian McCaskill, one of the stars of Million Dollar Quartet Stream or Download MP3
Set in a dilapidated greasy spoon in rural Claybourne Rising, Mud People is a hilarious and altogether uplifting story that highlights the importance of hope and faith in a world full of harshness and cynicism. The lives of these “mud people” are changed by the intercession of a mysterious stranger who has to power to inspire child-like hope as a means of finding freedom from the mistakes of the past.
Losing has been the national pastime for Chicago’s North Side for over 100 years, and Cubs fans have taken solace in defeat the only way they know how: beer. Next Beer Is Here!, an uproarious sketch comedy show from the guys who brought you Bye Bye Liver: the Chicago Drinking Play, poses the question: What would happen to Wrigley Field and Cubs fans should their beloved beer be taken away? Riotous fans, perennially injured players, and inept sportscasters provide the backdrop for this bizarro-Wrigley: a completely sober one.
Sean Graney’s new adaptation tells the story of a compassionate, albeit arrogant, leader whose zeal to heal his people causes his own demise. The promenade staging transforms the traditionally passive chorus into an actively engaging audience experience. The Hypocrites reinvent this 2,500-year-old play into a contemporary and thrilling theatrical event.
Set in the dawn of 1980, A Perfect Relationship is a comedy about two men living together in the heat of the gay liberation movement and the heart of the world's largest gay ghetto; NYC. Each is self involved in his own 'scene'; one into leather, the other into disco. They have a great thing going until a one night stand with a gorgeous stranger stirs shakes things up on the homefront! Throw in an overly amorous and hysterical landlady and you have a classicly written work of comic genius!
Set in Chicago between 1973 and 1983, “Pill Hill” is about six African-American buddies employed in the Chicago steel mills who are searching for the American Dream. Played out over a 10 year span, the men find the bonds of their friendship tested as they grow in different directions. Pill Hill is an examination of the effects of economic prosperity and disparity on black men.
A musical parody and homage to the classic 1972 cult film, The Poseidon Adventure, the granddaddy of all disaster films. The play celebrates and lampoons the beloved cult classic and explores films impact on our collective consciousness.
The pump boys sell high octane fuel on North Carolina’s Highway 57 and the sassy dinettes, Prudie and Rhetta Cupp, run the Double Cupp diner next door. Between changing tires and baking pies, the gang performs a rousing, down-home mix of country western, rock ‘n’ roll and blues in this charming tale of friendship, romance and life’s simple pleasures.
Politics and parody take center stage Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare with the Second City’s rollicking musical parody of the rise and fall of ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich. Following a sold out run at Second City e.t.c., the limited engagement on Navy Pier will feature new music and frequent updates—incorporating Blagojevich’s brother, his $100,000 book deal and Roland Burris’s son—as the Illinois political saga continues to unfold. After each performance, the cast will improvise a 20-minute political comedy set based on audience suggestions.
Snoopy!!! The Musical is a musical comedy by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady that is based on Charles M. Schulz’ comic strip Peanuts.
This sequel to the musical “You're a Good Man”, Charlie Brown focuses more on the life of Snoopy. Snoopy is joined by The Peanuts gang; Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally & Peppermint Patty in this charming, warm-hearted musical full
of laughs and life lessons on friendship and believing in yourself.
Incest! Gang-rape! Drunkenness! Firebombing! Forced-Blindness! And that’s just the King James Version. When the creators of Love Is Dead: A NecRomantic Musical Comedy and The Best Church of God join forces, they can’t seem to help themselves. From James Asmus, Sean Cusick, and Mike Descoteaux comes an unbelievable yet faithful musical recreation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction. With a woman turning in to a pillar of salt as the most boring part of the story, Sodomites!!! promises laughs and awe.
Inspired by the long line of mourners who came by Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects to Coretta Scott King, A Song for Coretta introduces five fictional African-American women, aged 17 to 57, waiting in the rain to say their final good-byes. Cleage shows the impact that Mrs. King had on the lives of these women, and the connections that they build with one another through her memory and legacy.
Steel Mags, the five-man sketch group who has brought the grotesque and hilarious mixture of genteel southern women and bro-humor to stages all across the city, now presents "Steel Mags Lets You Down Easy," wherein the group delivers news about the state of our society with all the finesse of a charging rhino. And, as always, Steel Mags incorporates their signature stage piece: five men delivering staged readings from the play Steel Magnolias.
"Is it real? Or isn't it?," marvels the Chicago Tribune. So will you, when you experience this funny and slightly creepy one-man show by Neil Tobin, Necromancer that explores the true stories of Chicago's paranormal past, and brings them to life for the audience through interactive demonstrations of psychic magic. It all takes place in the landmark (and reputedly haunted) Excalibur nightclub. Now in its fourth year of weekly performances.
A Tribute to the Black Crooner (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) is the story of the Stevens Family - two generations of crooners - facing the reality that their family business, a 60 year old night club that has been the home for many of the greatest stars, may be coming to an end. The story depicts the struggles, tribulations and finally the triumphs of overcoming and getting through life challenges
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a fun and endearing new Tony Award-winning musical, follows the story of six kids in the throes of puberty who are overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves. A hilarious tale of overachievers’ angst, the production chronicles the experience of adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. This quirky yet charming show even includes audience spellers, guaranteeing a different show every time. Hot off the Broadway stage, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will now make its premiere at the Marriott Theatre - can you spell i-r-r-e-s-i-s-t-i-b-l-e?
On the best day of his life, Walter built a flying machine that reached the clouds. Ever since, he’s tried to invent new ways to fly while his wife keeps the family afloat. Up is a quirky, bittersweet tale about escaping the boundaries of the everyday and how we dream ourselves into a future.
