League of Chicago Theatres Unveils Productions for Juneteenth and Pride

Throughout June, many Chicago theatres are presenting productions that encourage and celebrate Pride Month and Juneteenth. To highlight these productions, and others throughout the summer season, The League of Chicago Theatres recently published its Summer Theatre Guide, which includes 100+ shows running in the Chicago area through September.
 
Additional details about each of the Pride Month and Juneteenth offerings are available at the League of Chicago Theatres website, ChicagoPlays.com. Many summer shows will also be available at HotTix.org, Chicago’s local, discounted ticketing service.
 
Juneteenth, or Freedom Day, is a date that commemorates the end of slavery. To celebrate through theater on and around June 19, there are several shows playing in Chicago that reflect the Black American experience, including:
 

Shakin' The Mess Outta Misery

Pegasus Theatre Chicago at Chicago Dramatists
May 15 – June 15, 2025
Pegasus Theatre reprises the 2017 smash-hit production, Shakin’ The Mess Outta Misery, a coming-of-age tale that follows Daughter, a young black girl growing up in the Jim Crow south after the tragic loss of her mother. As an adult she relives the memories of the community of women who raised her, instilling lore and spirituality that taught her survival, healing and radical love. Get your tickets now for this freshly reimagined work of a timeless classic helmed by Pegasus’ Artistic Director and former visionary of the acclaimed 2017 production, Ilesa Duncan.
 

Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women

Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre at Noyes Cultural Arts Center
May 16 – June 1, 2025
Immersive interviews of some 25 women-loving women are recounted within a fantasy framework in which this community of women, who range from late teens to elders, is depicted allegorically as a hive of bees. Original music, choreography, prose, and poetry will be employed along with powerful, deeply moving oral histories of brutality, love, joy, activism, art, and personal growth.
 

Golden Leaf Ragtime Blues

American Blues Theater
May 23 – June 29, 2025
From the team of critically-acclaimed The Reclamation of Madison Hemings. Pompey is an aging white vaudevillian; Jet is a Black teenager. Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, they show us how basic needs and emotions transcend barriers of race, religion, and age. Don’t miss Ensemble member and veteran TV star Dennis Cockrum’s (“Shameless”) return to American Blues Theater!
 

TINA – The Tina Turner Musical

Broadway In Chicago at Cadillac Palace Theatre
June 3 – 8, 2025
An uplifting comeback story like no other, TINA – The Tina Turner Musical is the inspiring journey of a woman who broke barriers and became the Queen of Rock n’ Roll. Set to the pulse-pounding soundtrack of her most beloved hits, this electrifying sensation will send you soaring to the rafters. One of the world’s best-selling artists of all time, Tina Turner won 12 Grammy Awards and her live shows were seen by millions, with more concert tickets sold than any other solo performer in music history. Featuring her much loved songs, TINA – The Tina Turner Musical is written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall.
 

She Who Dared

Chicago Opera Theater at The Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building
June 3 – 8, 2025
Everyone has heard of Rosa Parks, but she wasn’t the first to refuse to move. She Who Dared recenters the spotlight on the courageous women who helped desegregate the Montgomery bus system in the 1950s. These Civil Rights pioneers pay homage to the quiet struggle for justice that has often gone unknown – further amplifying the effects of the historic case of Browder V Gayle. While often riotous and sometimes hilarious, these women demonstrate how everyday people have the power to challenge the systems around them and affect tangible change – if only they dare. She Who Dared will feature sopranos Jasmine Habersham, Jacqueline Echols, Lindsey Reynolds, and mezzo sopranos Chrystal E. Williams, Jazmine Olwalia, Leah Dexter, and Cierra Byrd. Conductor Michael Ellis Ingram and director Timothy Douglas make their COT debuts at the helm of the world premiere production.
 

Oscar Peterson's Africa Suite

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
June 13, 2025
Honoring the legacies of Oscar Peterson and Nelson Mandela. In a rare live performance, Oscar Peterson’s Africa Suite is presented by an all-star ensemble including his protégé Benny Green and led by legendary composer and arranger John Clayton. The suite, inspired in part by Nelson Mandela and the intense struggle for human rights in apartheid South Africa, accentuates Peterson’s “technically brilliant and melodically inventive” (All About Jazz) style and reverence for social justice activism.
 

The Color Purple

Goodman Theatre
June 21 – July 27, 2025
Twenty years since its Broadway musical debut, The Color Purple is reborn in Lili-Anne Brown’s revelatory production. It’s a celebration of life, hope and the healing power of love! The musical stage adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel is a heart-rending, yet ultimately joyous, story of a young woman’s perilous journey of personal awakening in the American South. Come ready to shout in church, stomp at the juke joint, laugh and cry with unforgettable “come-to-glory gospel hymns, down-and-dirty bump-and-grinds, jazz that stutters, dips and dives, and gorgeous alto arias” (Chicago Sun-Times).
 

Black Bone

Definition Theatre
May 30 – June 29, 2025
A winner of Amplify Series Two, Black Bone is a sharp satirical fantasy that blurs the line between game show theatrics and real life. The play follows a group of Black academics at a predominantly white institution (PWI) who discover that one among them is "passing" as Black. Chaos quickly unfolds—mutiny erupts, panic spreads, and the consequences turn deadly. In a desperate bid for survival, we are posed with the question of “how is Blackness defined or performed—and who gets to decide who’s in and who's out?”
 
 
June is a month-long observance of LGBTQ Pride to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in June of 1963.  Several LGBTQ-themed shows are playing in Chicago throughout June:
 

MY Cabaret: DRAGARET

MY Cabaret at Briny Swine Smokehouse & Oyster Bar
Open Run
A FREE 100% live singing Drag Cabaret by MY CABARET! Muffy Fishbasket and Mrs. Yuka Layme combine the best elements of drag and live cabaret to bring you a night of music, sass, shade, and booze! This is an evening you won’t want to forget. So, gather that tipping cash and fix you a plan and cocktail for this interactive DRAGARET experience you’re not likely to find anywhere else! This show is rated R, so use your own discretion on who you bring to the show.
 

Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women

Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre at Noyes Cultural Arts Center
May 16 – June 1, 2025
Immersive interviews of some 25 women-loving women are recounted within a fantasy framework in which this community of women, who range from late teens to elders, is depicted allegorically as a hive of bees. Original music, choreography, prose, and poetry will be employed along with powerful, deeply moving oral histories of brutality, love, joy, activism, art, and personal growth.
 

Scandalous Boy

Open Space Arts
May 23 – June 8, 2025
The story of the love between the emperor Hadrian and Antinous in pre-Christian Rome but framed in a twenty-first century setting with the statue of Antinous coming to life in modern Australia to tell his story.
 

Angels in America