BEFORE WE ARE HISTORY opens with a double bill of ONE and BLOOD SPILL. ONE is Jeff Hagedorn’s groundbreaking solo play about a young man attempting to understand and confront his AIDS diagnosis at a time when the disease itself was still frighteningly new. Set in New York in...
Open Space Arts looks back at more than four decades of theater responding to the AIDS epidemic with BEFORE WE ARE HISTORY, a special three-week program of landmark plays, readings, conversations, and post-show panels. The program includes Robert Chesley’s groundbreaking JERKER...
A double bill pairing Jeff Hagedorn's ONE, a groundbreaking solo play about a young man confronting his AIDS diagnosis, with Lee Raines' BLOOD SPILL, set in New York in 1992 and following HIV-positive playwright Kenny King as he confronts Angela Turner, an old college friend...
The play follows J.R. and Bert, two gay men who develop an increasingly intimate relationship entirely through telephone calls. What begins with anonymous sexual fantasy slowly becomes affection, friendship and emotional dependence as AIDS reshapes the world around them.
A special pay-what-you-can staged reading of A QUIET END , Robin Swados’ deeply human drama about three gay men living together during the early years of AIDS. The play examines friendship, chosen family, anger, illness, love and mortality as the men confront an epidemic rapidly...
Erik Patterson’s provocative and darkly funny FUCKING STRANGERS, directed by Jack Dugan Carpenter, brings four people together in an intimate exploration of sex, loneliness, desire, and the complicated ways we search for connection. Bold, contemporary, and deeply human, the play...
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Whether you leave the theater with intensified despair or renewed hope is up to you — and that’s what makes this terrifying and achingly sad story, with just the right dose of humor, hope, and humanity, a brilliant piece of art. …
Premonitions Inc. is an oddball new cabaret and acrobatics show in the Spiegeltent of the Loop’s Cambria Hotel.…
Vladimir is a powerful and potent story of defiance, strength, and sacrifice.…
Michael R. Jackson’s wildly inventive and unique 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop now makes its Chicago premiere. A Strange Loop is a “big Black and queer-ass American Broadway show,” in the main character Usher’s words, about the lead trying to write a musical called A Str…
What did our critic think of JIMMY BUFFETT'S ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE at Music Theater Works At The North Shore Center For The Performing Arts?…
Dead Girl’s Quinceañera brings a missing person case to the stage — and the detectives are a group of three Latina teen girls in Miami, Florida. Phanésia Pharel’s play capitalizes on the pop culture obsession with true crime and murder mysteries — though Dead Girl’s Quinceañera is ultim…
Opening its 15th season, BrightSide Theatre in Naperville is presenting The Addams Family Musical which runs through October 18,. The musical, written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, is the first time the familiar characters created by Charles Addams appea…
Operation Mincemeat is an absolute smash. I adore this inventive and fun musical. It’s extremely original, and it’s the kind of show that gives me hope for the future of new one-of-a-kind musicals like it. Written by David Cummings, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mince…
Chopin in Winter is an imaginative work of art for those with an acquired taste of deep storytelling combined with some of the most beautiful piano compositions from the Romantic era. …
Steppenwolf opens its 51st season with a blistering and captivating production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s Topdog/Underdog. This play has long been on my theater bucket list, and it’s absolutely what I think of when I think of a “Steppenwolf play”: A gritty family drama about brothers undergoing h…
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THE SWALLOW is set during a private singing lesson between a choral director and a new student. As they work together on a song, what initially seems like a simple musical exchange becomes something more personal, more complicated, and more revealing. With humor, tension, and...
North American English-language premiere of the international hit by Spain’s Guillem Clua. When Alex leaves a voicemail for his ex, it lands in the inbox of Bruno—a stranger. What begins as a wrong message turns into an unexpected connection between two very different men. As...
BALLATA FEMMENELLA at Open Space Arts is featured as part of the League of Chicago Theatres' Pride Month LGBTQIA+ programming and events across the city during June 2026.
Seventeen-year-old Conor feels stuck in the London suburb of Croydon and dreams of doing something unexpected—entering a country-and-western dance competition. He’s joined by Michael , a fellow lifeguard at the local leisure center, and Zainab , sharp-tongued, brilliant, and...
Modern remix of Dorian Gray and the life of Oscar Wilde.
Junior is a queer sex worker in Hastings suffering from PTSD. His life is plunged into further turmoil during a booking with a new client when his homophobic gangster father “Senior” returns home. Why has his father returned? What does he want from his son? And why now? From...
The story of William Dorsey Swann, the first known drag performer and queer activist in U.S. history.
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.
A thrilling and provocative screenplay by Christian Reda, winner of the 2025 Queer Expression Writing Contest for Stage and Screen. This gripping romantic melodrama blends crime, suspense, and forbidden love in a story that challenges power and prejudice. Joe Kowalski, a 20-year...
a riveting 90-minute program of new short plays called 100 DAYS responding to the current political climate. Curated by PlaywrightPower.com and directed by its co-founder Tara Blau Smollen, the production will feature eight compelling new 10-minute plays written since the last...
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Love Story: A Tribute to Taylor Swift Raue Center For The Arts (11/07-11/07) |
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Million Dollar Quartet Stolp Island Theatre (10/07-1/03) |
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Rotary Rocks The Raue: James Garner's Tribute to Johnny Cash Raue Center For The Arts (10/24-10/24) |
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The Christmas Carol Paramount Theatre (11/11-1/03) |
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Topdog/Underdog Steppenwolf's Downstairs Theater (9/17-11/01) |
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Blond Ambition: A Tribute to Madonna Raue Center For The Arts (11/07-11/07) |
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Memphis The Musical Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building (10/24-10/25) |
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When We Were Young and Unafraid Greenhouse Theater Center (11/12-11/29) |
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Ride the Cyclone PM&L Theatre (10/09-10/31) |
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Third Coast Percussion "Time Pieces: The New Classical" ECC Arts Center (5/08-5/08) |
