A major new theater makes its debut, and music makes its way into spring productions.

May dance highlights ...

Don’t be surprised if you recognize Charin Alvarez, as her extensive career in Chicago theater and film continues to grow. Alvarez has been acting in Chicago since 1996, and it would be simpler to ...

The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire has reinvented classic musicals and produced Chicago premieres and new works for fifty years—but they’re not out of surprises. “Our favorite shows,” says Peter ...

The founder of Making a Difference Dancing (the M.A.D.D. part of the name) continues to do just that. His twenty-three-year-old organization, founded to disrupt the “school-to-prison pipeline,” has ...

Gods give demigods life. So does Margaret Atwood. In Atwood’s retelling of the life of Penelope, the veiled, enigmatic, ever-weaving wife of Odysseus is reborn. In Homer’s “Odyssey,” Penelope is ...

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and Jackie Taylor is a bundle of high energy and vibrancy. She greets me with a friendly, “Hi sweetheart!” at the newly built Black Ensemble Theater, a 59,000-square-foot ...

It was the summer of 1980—the first season for American Players Theatre in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin. The company was performing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the hilltop stage. William Borth, ...

I arrived late to the puppet cabaret, but my friend had kindly saved me a seat. A standing-room crowd filled the larger of two studios housed in an unassuming one-story brick building on Western ...

Now in its thirty-first season, Writers Theatre continues its tradition of staging both new works and new interpretations of the classics. Artistic director Braden Abraham says that the Glencoe ...

The Saints have been a pillar of support for the cultural community for more than forty years, providing volunteer ushers to medium and small performing-arts companies throughout the Chicago area. The ...

Sought-after choreographer Aszure Barton was named Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s second-ever resident artist in 2023 and has been adding gems to the company’s wide-ranging repertoire since. Two of ...