A cross-section of the Chicago theatre community's leading artistic directors, associate artistic directors and producers will join City Lit Artistic Director Terry McCabe and Associate Director Kristine Thatcher for a very special one-night-only performance of readings from their favorite literature in celebration of City Lit's thirtieth anniversary, McCabe announced today. "It's a thrill to have so many great figures from the best theatre town in the country joining us at our birthday party," McCabe said. "This is a line-up of performers you're not likely to see on the same bill again, each of them sharing something they love. All of us at City Lit are grateful for their participation, and looking forward to what promises to be a terrific evening." The performance is Monday, October 26, at 7:30 pm, in the Greenhouse Theater Center's downstairs mainstage at 2257 North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. A reception will follow the performance. Advance reservations are required; tickets are $35 each.

B. J. Jones of Northlight Theatre, Dorothy Milne of Lifeline Theatre, David New of Steppenwolf Theatre, Joyce Piven of Piven Theatre Workshop, Kathy Scambiatterra of The Artistic Home, Steve Scott of Goodman Theatre and Dennis Zacek of Victory Gardens Theater, as well as McCabe and Thatcher, will each perform a solo reading of something he or she has selected for the occasion. Longtime Chicago stage actor Mike Nussbaum, who directed and co-wrote last year's City Lit hit Dashiell Hamlet, will serve as the evening's master of ceremonies. Piven will read Anton Chekhov's short story "The Trick;" Scott will read an Arthur Miller essay on theatre; Thatcher will read a chapter of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird; and Zacek will read Carl Sandburg's poem "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind." The other readers are still selecting their material.

It was in this same building, then the Body Politic Theatre, during the summer of 1979 that Arnold Aprill, working in the Body Politic's box office, laid plans with Lorell Wyatt and David Dillon to found City Lit as the nation's first theatre devoted to literary adaptations. City Lit's first performance, of Eudora Welty's short story Why I Live at the P.O., occurred that fall, and the theatre was incorporated in the spring of 1980. In the three decades since, City Lit has explored fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, essays and drama in performance. It has presented a wide array of voices, from classic writers such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Colette and P.G. Wodehouse to such contemporary writers as Alice Walker, W.P. Kinsella, Douglas Post, Raymond Carver, Edward Albee and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The opening show of its 30th Anniversary Season, McCabe's world premiere stage adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's detective novel The Thin Man, plays through this Sunday, October 11.