23 shows found.
Company: Pegasus Players
Venue: Pegasus Players
Performances: Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 3 p.m.
Tickets: $12, student and senior discounts available
Closes: Runs Through Feb 1
When it comes to new work and new playwrights, Pegasus has the newest. Now in its 23rd year, the Young Playwrights Festival is a citywide, school-based program that takes hundreds of high-school kids and causes them to create hundreds of scripts. Four are selected by judges, and are performed by Pegasus actors. Sure, the work tends to smell of adolescence, but unlike a lot of playwrights out there, these kids have an iron-clad excuse. Show up to see bright young minds, slightly older theater artists helping them along and audience members supporting an amazing educational program. Get more details...
Company: Neo-Futurists
Venue: Metropolitan Brewery
Performances: Thursday 8 p.m. (preview 1/29), Friday 8 p.m. (preview 1/30), Saturday 8 p.m. (opening nite 1/31)
Tickets: $15, $10 students & seniors, pay-what-U-can Thurs.
Closes: Runs Through Mar 7
Company: Second City
Venue: Second City
Performances: Monday 8 p.m., Saturday 4 p.m.
Tickets: < $20 ($19)
Closes: N/A.
Company: Second City
Venue: Second City
Performances: Tuesday 8 p.m., Wednesday 8 p.m., Thursday 8 p.m., Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 7 p.m.
Tickets: $19–$25
Closes: N/A.
Company: N/A.
Venue: Briar Street Theatre
Performances: Tuesday 8 p.m., Wednesday 8 p.m., Thursday 8 p.m., Friday 7 & 10 p.m., Saturday 4, 7 & 10 p.m., Sunday 1, 4 & 7 p.m.
Tickets: $50+
Closes: N/A.
Celebrate our fair city's mad scripted-comedy skills at the eighth annual Chicago Sketch Festival. This well-attended (over 100 groups!) and heartily sponsored (free burritos!) event will completely sketch out the Theatre Building for two weeks, filling all three of its theaters with constant comedy. The festival can be hit-or-miss, but you can't fault the variety of the selection. This year the fun gets family-friendly, with “Sketch Day for Kids” on 1/10. Get more details...
Company: Annoyance Theatre
Venue: Annoyance Theatre
Performances: Friday 10:01 p.m.
Tickets: $15 ($25 opening night)
Closes: Runs Through Feb 27
Company: BLEWT! Productions
Venue: Playground Theater
Performances: Saturday midnight (first Saturday every month)
Tickets: < $20 ($10; $5 students)
Closes: N/A.
Company: British Stage Company
Venue: Royal George Theatre Center
Performances: Tuesday 7:30 p.m., Wednesday 7:30 p.m., Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 4:30 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m. & 5 p.m.
Tickets: $49.50-$59.50
Closes: Runs Through Jan 11
There is a place in Chicago for uncool theater. "Don't Dress for Dinner," is not gritty, innovative, locally produced, or off-kilter. It's just damn funny. This expert farce, about two sets of cheating lovers and one put-upon cook, has won raves from critics for its ever-escalating pace and the perfection of its comic machinery. And at the center? An irresistible performance from the inarguably cool ex-Neofuturist Spencer Kayden. Get more details...
Company: N/A.
Venue: Goodman Theatre
Performances: Wednesday 7:30 p.m., Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.
Tickets: $45
Closes: Runs Through Jan 11
The Goodman's Eugene O'Neill festival has a near-perfect lineup, bringing international superstars and local wunderkinds together in celebration of the great American tragedian. The soul-wrenching fun kicks off with the Wooster Group's cracked, iconoclastic take on "The Emperor Jones," about an escaped convict who sets himself up as a Caribbean Emperor. The (black, male) title role is played by the (white, female) Kate Valk, in a performance too strange and riveting to be called un-PC. Upcoming featured O'Neill plays include "Homens ao Mar" (Sea Plays), "Desire Under the Elms," "The Hairy Ape," "Rouw siert Electra" (Mourning Becomes Electra) and "Strange Interlude." Get more details...
Company: Annoyance Productions
Venue: Annoyance Theatre and Bar
Performances: Friday midnight
Tickets: < $20 ($8)
Closes: N/A.
Company: Urwintore
Venue: Chicago Shakespeare Theater
Performances: Wednesday 7:30 p.m., Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 p.m., Saturday 3 p.m. & 7:30 p.m., Sunday 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $46–$56
Closes: Runs Through Jan 30
Hellmania is here, and it has nothing to do with death metal. This is Lillian Hellmania, a Chicago fall/winter season featuring three plays from the controversial 20th-century dramatist, produced by three of our smartest small companies. Smart Hellmaniacs will have already picked up a "festival pass,” but latecomers can still buy single tickets for the remaining two shows. Next up? "The Little Foxes" from Shattered Globe, about a passel of backstabbing siblings vying for the rights to a cotton mill. Get more details...
Company: Lyric Opera
Venue: Lyric Opera of Chicago
Performances: Monday 7:30 p.m. on 1/12/09 only, Tuesday 7:30 p.m. on 1/6/09 only, Wednesday 7:30 p.m. (12/17/08 & 1/21/09 only), Thursday 7:30 p.m. (1/15/09 & 1/29/09), Friday 7:30 p.m. (1/9/09 only), Saturday 7:30 p.m. (12/13/08, 12/20/08, 1/24/09 only), Sunday 2 p.m. (1/18/09 only)
Tickets: $50+
Closes: Runs Through Jan 29
Centerstage admits it. We're suckers for Butterfly. It may be an unreconstructed, hopelessly sentimental tale of demented love, but Puccini's rending arias get us every time. According to critics, the Lyric's current production of the opera most likely to make you sob in public is sublime: conventional in concept, but elevated by a rapturous, clear-eyed performance from Patricia Racette. Listen to Cio Cio San fall in love all over again for just 20 bucks by registering here: http://www.lyricopera.org/next/login.aspx Get more details...
Company: N/A.
Venue: Apollo Theater
Performances: Wednesday 2 p.m & 7:30 p.m., Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 5 p.m & 8 p.m., Sunday 3:30 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.
Tickets: $49.50-$69.50
Closes: Runs Through Mar 29
Jukebox musicals are like a gateway drug for theater, pulling in conservative audiences with high production values and familiar tunes. But how to get your favorite aunt or uncle to take the leap from "Jersey Boys" to, say, Theatre Oobleck? Baby steps. Start with "Million Dollar Quartet." This critically lauded show, about an historic jam session between Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley, features a raucous cast of skilled performers/instrumentalists. It's the perfect way to lure Broadway in Chicago diehards away from the Loop. Get more details...
Company: Chicago victims of teen angst, aggression and heartbreak
Venue: Beat Kitchen
Performances: Sunday 7 p.m.
Tickets: $10 advance, $15 at the door
Closes: Runs Through Jan 18
It's Christmastime, and all children are rosy-cheeked darlings with visions of sugarplums and missing front teeth. But let's not forget the boys on the naughty list, or for that matter, the boys who've been put on the list for emotional brutality. Remind yourself of the cruelty of children with "Our Bad Magnet," a drama about three nine-year-old Scots who befriend and then defriend a fourth. Critics say it's funny, authentic and dangerous. Get more details...
Company: Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Venue: Steppenwolf Theatre
Performances: Tuesday 7:30 p.m., Wednesday 7:30 p.m. (2 p.m. on 1/14, 1/21/ 1/28 & 2/4), Thursday 7:30 p.m. (no shows 12/25 & 1/1), Friday 7:30 p.m., Saturday 3 p.m. & 7:30 p.m., Sunday 3 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. (evening shows through 1/11)
Tickets: $20-$48 previews; $20-$70 regular run
Closes: Runs Through Feb 8
Conor McPherson's latest combines pure mythology with the kind of grubby, miserable realism that makes an onlooker's nose wrinkle. Just how did this tribe of Dublin alcoholics get to this awful place, and are they ever going to clean their living room? Then the devil shows up, looking for a card game. The result is a play that reveals both the epic scope of everyday despair and the human emotions in epic poetry. It starts slowly, with plenty of charming, smelly Irish garrulity, and ends as the kind of tense, endearing wintertime yarn that can make you believe in Christmas. Get more details...
Company: The Gift Theatre Company
Venue: The Gift Theatre Company
Performances: Thursday 7:30 p.m. (preview 1/15, opening night 1/22), Friday 7:30 p.m. (preview 1/16), Saturday 2:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. (preview 1/17 at 2:30 p.m.)
Tickets: $20-$25; $15 previews
Closes: Runs Through Mar 15
Company: Neo-Futurists
Venue: Neo-Futurarium
Performances: Wednesday 11 p.m. (12/31 only), Friday 11:30 p.m. , Saturday 11:30 p.m. , Sunday 7 p.m.
Tickets: < $20 ($7 plus roll of one die)
Closes: N/A.
52 weeks a year, these shoestring-theater deities serve Chicagoans a rotating menu of 30 quick-fire world-premiere plays. And what did you accomplish in 2008? Celebrate another year of sold-out shows, persistent creativity and pizza with the Neofuturists. Tickets ($40) must be purchased in advance for this one (no long lines and dice rolls) and the "30 Plays in 60 Minutes" time restriction has a special urgency: the plays must wrap before 2009. Get more details...
Company: Rasaka Theatre with Premiere Theater & Performance
Venue: Strawdog Theatre
Performances: Monday 8 p.m. on 1/12 only (industry nite), Thursday 8 p.m., Friday 8 p.m. (preview 1/2), Saturday 8 p.m. (preview 1/3), Sunday 7 p.m. (4 p.m. opening nite 1/4)
Tickets: $10-$20; $10 previews; $5 industry (1/2 & 3, 1/12)
Closes: Runs Through Feb 1
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