“Welcome to the Midwest’s book processing center.” Every book you can imagine from “The Color Purple” to “The Beginnings of Western Science” makes its way here to be sorted and censored according to ...

Chicago stages have been described as petri dishes for talent development, with the city seen as a particularly fertile launching pad for the stars of tomorrow, whether in acting, comedy, writing or ...

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 ...

Oak Park Festival Theatre’s producing artistic director Peter Andersen directs this production in Oak Park’s “Secret Garden,” “where the world of the play meets the rhythms of the park.” City Lit ...

Stay gold: Ponyboy Curtis and the greasers face up against the rival Socs in this Tony-winning musical, “adapted from S.E. Hinton’s seminal novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic film.” ...

During Peter Andersen’s time as producing artistic director of Oak Park Festival Theatre, the company has seen tremendous growth in audience and artist engagement. Says Andersen, “Audiences have been ...

This season marks fifty years since a young group of Highland Park friends formed the storied Chicago performing arts institution, staging some of their first productions in a suburban Catholic school ...

In William Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the character Gloucester laments, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport.” But though many characters talk about the gods in ...

The annual international festival of body-forward theater features a sporty, sexy two-man (and one radio) locker room face-off from Argentina; an ode to Nina Simone from Scotland; and an acclaimed ...

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 annual series of free, outdoor dance lessons in everything from salsa to steppin’, followed by live music, returns to the Spirit of Music Garden and parks across the city. Chicago Dance Crash ...