Life has been difficult for Jessie and her hope for the future has faded. Spiraling between a failed marriage and caretaker fatigue due to her criminal son and aging mother, Jessie is determined to take control of her life in the only way left to her. When society and technology isolate Jessie, when the world turns to chaos around her and a promised future fades away: Jessie digs up her father's old pistol with the intention to end her life. Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play launches audiences through a mother and daughter's darkest night together.

This year we bring back the longest running theatrical tradition at Northwetsern, and the largest student-written musical in the country, a tradition that predates modern broadway itself. When the biggest day of the year begins to unravel, students across campus are pulled into a fast-moving collision of ambition, chaos, and unexpected connection. Set over the course of one unforgettable musical festival, Dillo Day Disaster takes audiences on a whirlwind journey celebrating Northwestern traditions, campus culture, and the pressure-packed mythology of "the biggest day of the year". By turns hilarious, heartfelt, and spectacular, the show asks what it really means to be a hero when the plan falls apart and the spotlight doesn't shine the way you expected in an entirely original musical written and performed by undergraduate students.

When Asaf's student asks him to sign a petition condemning police brutality, he wants to do the right thing - until he realizes the manifesto turns out to be broader than he imagined, and every choice feels like betrayal. As the debate roars through his Midwestern campus and his ex-girlfriend takes the lead, Asaf is pulled into a political storm that tests his convictions and his sense of self. Will his fumbling entree into activism help or hurt the cause? Who's side is Asaf - and the audience - really on?

This musical play, complete with down home country humor and big-hearted emotion, includes hits "Crazy", "I Fall to Pieces", "Sweet Dreams", "Walkin' After Midnight" and more!

Young author Oliver Adams is on the brink of success, with his novel set to be published and soon to be adapted for the Broadway stage! When he, the famed (and married) playwrights, and his longed-for leading lady all converge for a weekend at a Newport mansion, the housekeeper that would rather they all leave isn't the only thing that goes awry. In a romantic screwball comedy that hearkens back to days gone by, only the power of theatre can save the play, Oliver's novel, and his heart.

This tender, touching story follows Ernestine Ashworth as she celebrates her birthday from age 17 to 101-all while baking her birthday cake. Through a seamless montage of moments, Ernestine grapples with love, loss, family and the passage of time, continually asking the timeless question: "What's it all about?" The Chicago Sun-Times calls it "emotionally rich;" and the Chicago Tribune says, "'Birthday Candles' is precisely why people go to the theater...It's a personal piece but you'd swear it was about you." BTE Managing Artistic Director Emeriti and Ensemble Member Connie Canaday Howard, who starred in Steve Scott's staging of BTE's 2020 production "The Cake," reteams with Scott as she takes on the lead role of Ernestine.

Xochi is dealing with a lot: a difficult pregnancy, a new relationship, a family that can't stand her and the loss of her twin brother Sebastian, who was declared missing last year. As she tries to navigate her life (and keep her sanity), the impossible happens: Sebastian reappears. Her family is overjoyed, but Xochi is suspicious: where has he been? And why does this version of Sebastian seem so different than the one she knew? BOTH is an eerie examination of family, love, memory and which version of the truth is the one worth believing.

A one-woman show about the life of Elizabeth Taylor, written and performed by Kayla Boye. Through an intimate conversation at the Beverly Hills Hotel, CALL ME ELIZABETH examines Elizabeth Taylor’s life, career, and loves as she grapples with the culture of celebrity and embraces her greatest role as a humanitarian. Act One, set in 1961, focuses on the formative events of Taylor’s life and career leading up to the filming of CLEOPATRA. Act Two, set in 1985, focuses on Taylor’s relationship with Richard Burton and her subsequent reinvention and entry into the fight against AIDS.

Candlelight Concerts in Chicago are intimate live performances where the music and the candlelit atmosphere do equal work—creating a night out that’s elegant, relaxed, and genuinely different. Presented by Fever, the series features local musicians (often a string ensemble) performing programs that range from classical to pop and themed tributes. Browse this guide for candlelight concerts Chicago audiences can attend now and in the coming months.

CHICAGO is still the one musical with everything that makes Broadway shimmy-shake: a universal tale of fame, fortune, and all that jazz, with one showstopping song after another and the most astonishing dancing you've ever seen. In the whirlwind of Chicago's Jazz Age, two of the Cook County Jail's most notorious murderesses-vaudeville star Velma Kelly and chorus girl Roxie Hart-become fierce rivals as they compete for headlines amidst a media frenzy.

Expect one devilish twist after another in Covenant, a mythic and suspenseful new play hailed as "blackout-and-blood-curdling-scream deliciousness" (New York Magazine),"undeniably spooky (and) absolutely enjoyable" (TheaterMania). He left the small Georgia town a struggling guitarist-and returned a blues star. As rumors of a darker deal abound, it becomes clear that he's not the only one with a secret...or seeking salvation. This "striking Southern gothic work" (New York Times) explores the power of belief and the thin line between rumor and truth.

Dostoyevsky’s epic novel distilled into a 90-minute play for three-actors and performed in TUTA’s hyper-intimate 24-seat theater. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT focuses on the plight of an intellectual young man whose moral struggle with his belief system compels him to commit a horrendous crime. A psychological game of cat and mouse ensues with the investigator who hunts him down. Dreams, waking visions, even ghosts paint this psychological portrait of crime, guilt, and retribution.

On a hot August night in a small Massachusetts town the last few weeks before school starts. Three teens try to navigate their way through the murky path to adulthood. Phoebe wants to grow up. Jason wants Evie. And Evie just wants to get as far away from everyone as she possibly can.

The stage is set in a hidden library with over fifteen thousand books. Five classically trained actors meet as members of "The Drunk Shakespeare Society." One of them has at least 5 shots of whiskey and then they overconfidently attempt to perform a major role in a Shakespearean play. Hilarity and mayhem ensues while the four sober actors try and keep the script on track. Every show is different depending on who is drinking ... and what they're drinking!

Sven Svensen and Ole Olsen have been best buds since kindergarten, but all that changes on the morning of Ole's ice-fishing bachelor party. Could they be something more than friends, or is Sven destined for something even more wild and strange. This fantasia on Midwestern masculinity invites us to consider the limits of Queerness. Dream ballet included.

When a respected doctor in small-town Norway makes a deadly discovery that threatens the health of the entire village, he raises the alarm. But as local leaders—including his own brother, the mayor—scramble to protect their own interests, the truth becomes inconvenient, and the doctor finds himself the target of the very community he’s trying to protect. Winner of the 2024 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation, this vibrant new version of Ibsen’s thunderous masterwork asks: what happens when doing the right thing means losing everything?

Farewell Opportunity tells the story of Halley, who visits the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and meets the Opportunity Mars rover. The two have something in common: a curious spirit and a shortened life expectancy. Halley and the NASA scientist in charge of the Mars mission find themselves transformed by an unlikely friendship-with each other, and with a rolling robot millions of miles away. With poetic language and magical realism, Farewell Opportunity explores the question "How do you keep on roving when you-or someone you love-faces a dust storm that threatens to block out the sun?"