This year, the Piven Theatre Workshop celebrates 35 years of training actors how to play. Byrne and Joyce Piven founded the Piven Theatre Workshop in 1973 to teach then-revolutionary techniques growing out of the improvisational theatre games and story theatre of Viola Spolin and her son, Paul Sills.   The technique uses what Joyce.... Read More

The Hypocrites prepare for the opening of their 2008 - 2009 Season with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, directed by Sean Graney. The Hypocrites are taking their singular theatrical style and applying it for the first time to a musical. Performances of The Threepenny Opera will run August 30 -.... Read More

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. has been wrapping up its last 19 seasons by inviting theater groups and performing individuals into its performance space at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan to celebrate the anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair of 1969.  Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins was inspired by the need to do.... Read More

Eclipse Theatre Company of Chicago announced that their 2009 season, including four full productions, will be the second and final year of celebrating their past ten years focusing on one playwright per season.  Eclipse Theatre's 2009 Season: Celebration Series Part II will showcase some of Eclipse's past featured playwrights, including works by Rebecca Gilman,.... Read More

Nobody puts Baby in a corner, but come September 28 they'll certainly put her on stage, along with 39 other actors and actresses who make up the cast of the U.S. Premiere of Dirty Dancing, opening at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in downtown Chicago.  Already rehearsals are underway for what could prove.... Read More

Theatre reviewers make personal, un-testable and necessarily fallible judgments that have enormous impact on the careers of artists. Former New York Times critic Frank Rich could once single-handedly make or break a Broadway show.  He was rewarded with the moniker "the Butcher of Broadway."  The relationship between reviewer and reviewed can get pretty cranky. 

But most.... Read More

Broadway In Chicago has announced the surprise hit Broadway musical Xanadu will premiere in Chicago at the Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place beginning January 16, 2009.  Tickets will go on-sale at a later date to be announced.

Xanadu opened at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre to critical acclaim on July 10, 2007 as the first.... Read More

Artistic Directors Joe Jahraus and Darrell W. Cox announce Profiles Theatre's 20th Anniversary Season, to include five new plays- two by acclaimed Chicago playwrights Jason Wells and Ellen Fairey.  Profiles' 2008-2009 Season is the most ambitious offering in its distinguished twenty-year history and includes a world premiere, a U.S. premiere and two Midwest.... Read More

Due to high demand for tickets, Cirque du Soleil has added the final 18 performances to the Chicago engagement of Kooza. The final Kooza performance in Chicago will now be August 24, 2008, under the blue and yellow Grand Chapiteau at the United Center (parking lot K).

Kooza is a return to the origins.... Read More

Two years ago, Chicago actress and singer Alene Robertson suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm that sent shock waves through the theatre community.  When Theatre in Chicago reported the news, we were inundated with e-mails from friends and fans of the plucky musical theatre star, who was in the midst of starring in a.... Read More

Theatre Building Chicago will present Stages 2008, a festival of 4 new musicals in progress and 4 panel discussions of musical theatre in America on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, August 15-17, 2008. The three-day musical extravaganza performs each new work twice in concert style formats. Now in its fifteenth season, Stages focuses on the.... Read More

Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Theater introduces the Incubator Series, a program designed to support the creation of new work by emerging Chicago theater companies.  Utilizing Chicago DCA Theater resources and rehearsal space in the Chicago Cultural Center, participants will explore new projects, develop and refine styles, and share their process.... Read More

Jersey Boys, the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, will soon place a new block of tickets on-sale.  Audiences may plan for the season ahead as tickets for the holiday block of performances October 14, 2008 - January 11, 2009 go on-sale to the public Friday, July 25 at 10 a.m. 

Directed.... Read More

The vibrant history of the American musical is explored in Chicago author Sheldon Patinkin’s encyclopedic and opinionated new book, "No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance" : A History of American Musical Theater.  Patinkin guides readers through the evolution of the American musical from its roots in 19th Century burlesque, revue and operettato the phenomenon.... Read More

Coming to Millennium Park this summer for five days as part of the Family Fun Festival is Australia's Strange Fruit, the Melbourne-based performing arts company that fuses dance, circus and spectacle theater in their work. Perched atop fourteen-foot flexible poles that bend and sway in the air, Australia's Strange Fruit can be .... Read More

Raven Theatre has announced their 2008/2009 Season, which includes Stephen Adly Guirgis' searing Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, the world premiere of Tom Patrick's darkly comic Misamerica, and Jon Robin Baitz's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's classic Hedda Gabler. 

Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train 
October 7 – December

Raven begins its 26th season with the.... Read More

The U.S touring production of the international hit Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story On Stage has announced principal casting for the upcoming pre-Broadway U.S. premiere.  Josef Brown will re-create the role of Johnny Castle direct from the London production and Amanda Leigh Cobb will play Frances "Baby" Houseman.  Chicago's own .... Read More

Artistic Director Jamil Khoury and Executive Director Malik Gillani announced Silk Road Theatre Project's collaboration with San Francisco's Golden Thread Productions and New York City's Lark Play Development Center in New York to form Middle East America: A National New Plays Initiative. This tri-coastal initiative represents the first-ever national effort to.... Read More

Every year Live Bait Theater produces stellar solo performance, presenting world premiere shows on a wide variety of themes during the Fillet of Solo Festival. This year's lineup for the festival, now in it's 13th year, kicks off in July and will have solo performances exploring spirituality, woodland creatures and suburban sprawl.

The 2008.... Read More