THE HOUSE OF IDEAS 
 

World Premiere
by Mark Pracht
Directed by Former Artistic Director Terry McCabe
August 23, 2024 - October 6, 2024
(Previews Aug. 23 - Aug. 31)

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It was in the 1960s that Marvel Comics began creating dozens of memorable characters, one after another over a period of years, and built a single cohesive world for them to inhabit. In comic books, this was revolutionary. But the two men at the center of this renaissance struggle with the idea of credit now that they’ve made it something worth struggling over. The House of Ideas examines the rise of Marvel and the fraught relationship between the Lennon and McCartney of comic books, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Part Three of The Four-Color Trilogy, about the men and women who created a body of literature Americans both embraced and loathed.

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SEVEN GUITARS
 

30th Anniversary Production
by August Wilson
Directed by Manny Buckley
October 18, 2024 - December 1, 2024
(Previews Oct. 18 - Oct. 26)

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The Chicago non-Equity premiere of this searing August Wilson drama about six friends in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1948 mourning the death of their friend Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a rising blues star trapped by his circumstances and cut down in his prime. One of Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” of ten plays depicting the African American experience in each of the 20th  Century’s decades.

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GLASSHEART
 

Chicago Premiere
by Reina Hardy

Directed by Artistic Director Brian Pastor
January 10. 2025 - February 23, 2025
(Previews Jan. 10 - Jan. 18)

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Chicago premiere of a new play by Chicago-based playwright Reina Hardy. A modern-day reimagining of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. The Beast has moved into a low-rent district in Chicago with his last loyal friend, a lamp named Only. They meet a neighborly witch and a young woman who might, somehow, still break the curse.

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R.U.R. (ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS) 
 

World Premiere Adaptation
by Bo List
freely adapted from the play by Karel Capek
Directed by Artistic Director Brian Pastor
May 2, 2025 - June 15, 2025
(Previews May 2 - May 10)

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In 1920, Karel Čapek’s early science fiction classic R.U.R. coined the term “robot” and looked ahead to the wonders and dangers of artificial intelligence decades before it was cool to worry about such things. “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (“R.U.R.” for short) is a mysterious island factory that manufactures artificial human beings, run by the eccentric scientist Harry Rossum. When Helena Glory arrives to advocate for the rights of these machines, a series of events is set into motion that sees Harry and Helena married against the backdrop of a global robot uprising.