From a highly comic debutante ball to the heart-pounding spectacle of lucha libre, it’s an epic inaugural season for new Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. In her first curated line-up as creative head, voices familiar and new come together for eight plays—seven world or Chicago premieres, plus one major revival—the 46th annual production of A Christmas Carol and the 19th New Stages Festival. The 2023/2024 Season begins September 2023 and continues through August 2024. Memberships, including flexible packages, are now available for purchase. Five-play Albert Theatre packages start at $110; three-play Owen Theatre packages start at just $48. Call 312.443.3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org/Remix. Single tickets go on sale for select productions beginning in July.
“Whether thinking about our country, our field, this theater or the season ahead, the common denominator is paradigm shift,” said Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. “The opportunity and responsibility of curating for a legacy institution in a time of radical shift comes down, for me, to interrogating point of view. To tell a familiar story from an untold perspective. To dive head-first into a polarizing topic via a subversive and deeply irreverent new musical. The season has spoiler-alert-worthy true stories and does-this-constitute-theater explorations of form. And I’m delighted and grateful to produce a slate of plays that celebrate the mess and the magic of all of us in my first season.”
The Goodman’s 2023/2024 Season—“Remix Reality”—marks the 98th year of Chicago’s largest not-for-profit theater.
“Susan has planned a smart, bold new season that offers abundant opportunities for audience engagement. She is a collaborative partner, forging connection at every level within our organization and deepening community relationships,” said Executive Director/CEO Roche Schulfer. “With each project aligned with the Goodman’s values and priorities and appealing to a wide audience, it’s an exciting inaugural season.”
Launching the new season are two projects, each produced in partnership with Chicago peer theaters and organizations:
A citywide salute to Booth’s longtime creative collaborator, Pearl Cleage—the nationally renowned playwright, essayist, poet and New York Times best-selling author—opens the season. The Chicago premiere of Cleage’s The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years directed by Lili-Anne Brown takes the Goodman’s Albert stage. At the same time, partnering organizations including Congo Square, Definition Theatre, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, Ma'at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre (MPAACT) and Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, offer other entry points to the award-winner’s body of work.
Next door, the Goodman’s Owen stage transforms into a professional wrestling arena for Lucha Teotl, an immersive, 90-minute thrill ride of high drama and rich cultural history of lucha libre. Conceived by Prism Movement Theater and produced in partnership with Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA) as part of 2023 Destinos Festival, actors and luchadores (wrestlers) in masks representative of Aztec gods play out an exciting wrestling story about family, honor, tradition and redemption.
The complete 2023/2024 Season line-up follows.
About the Productions in Goodman Theatre’s 2023/2024 Season
Plays are listed in chronological order by venue
The Goodman is grateful to its 2023/2024 Season sponsors, including Leading Sponsors: Shubert Foundation, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Goodman Theatre Women's Board, the Julius N. Frankel Foundation, Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Insurance Company, ComEd, and Exelon Company, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Northern Trust and Winston & Strawn LLP. Major Support of New Work Development: Ruth D. and Ken M. Davee Fund for New Work.
IN THE ALBERT THEATRE (856-SEAT PROSCENIUM STAGE)
The Nacirema Society
Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years
By Pearl Cleage
Directed by Lili-Anne Brown
September 16 – October 15, 2023 | A Chicago Premiere
Susan Booth launches her first season as Artistic Director with this “laugh-out-loud” (BroadwayWorld.com) “hilarious comedy” (ArtsATL.com) by Pearl Cleage—nationally renowned playwright, poet and New York Times best-selling author.
Every year since Emancipation, The Nacirema Society of Montgomery, Alabama introduces six elegant African American debutantes to a world of wealth, privilege and social responsibility. For these young ladies, bus boycotts and freedom marches are less interesting than making a perfect entrance—or, plotting the perfect blackmail. As the Society celebrates its centennial…with young love brewing, old flames simmering and national media attention abounding…what would dare go awry? This Chicago premiere marks 25 years since playwright, poet, activist and novelist Pearl Cleage’s work has appeared on the Goodman stage (1998’s Blues for an Alabama Sky, directed by Chuck Smith). The Nacirema Society will be the centerpiece of a citywide celebration of Ms. Cleage, produced with partnering organizations—including Congo Square, Definition Theatre, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, MPAACT, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company and more—who offer other entry points to the award-winner’s body of work.
“Pearl Cleage is one of my all-time favorite American writers (and a dear friend). What August Wilson contributed to the canon of roles for Black actors, Pearl has added to the canon for Black actresses. And she has done it with plays that are expansively welcoming to all comers. The Nacirema Society is, at once, a comedy, a romance, and a history lesson—though you’d never know it. I’m thrilled to open my first Goodman season with Pearl’s joyful, beautiful play.” –SVB
Highway Patrol
Text Arranged and Curated by Jen Silverman
Based on the Digital Archives of Dana Delany
Created by Dana Delany, Mike Donahue, Dane Laffrey and Jen Silverman
Directed by Mike Donahue
January 20 – February 18, 2024 | A World Premiere
Emmy Award-winner Dana Delany (China Beach, Desperate Housewives) stars in this new thriller—part love story, part ghost story—crafted from hundreds of tweets and DMs.
TIMESTAMP: October, 2012: “@DanaDelany, Are you married? If not, I’d marry you.” When Cam, a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation captures actress Dana Delany's attention on Twitter, she’s quickly swept into an intense, around-the-clock online friendship. But when Cam starts receiving messages from beyond, Dana is thrust into a world where unexpected revelations raise the question of how far we go to love and be loved.
“We live in an age where a whole lot of people have more meaningful relationships online than they do IRL. And that makes me wonder what we mean when we say, ‘relationship.’ Dana Delany’s brave, extraordinary new piece, which arrives 10 years after her remarkable lived experience, delves into the expansiveness of love, and the frailty that results in our dogged desire to hope for it. It’s also a story about the decision to believe—to choose faith, to choose the spiritual, to choose an experience that feels true, even when the facts might say otherwise.” –SVB
The Penelopiad
By Margaret Atwood
Directed by Susan V. Booth
March 2 – 31, 2024 | A Chicago Premiere
For her first production as Goodman Theatre Artistic Director, Susan Booth directs an unexpected remix of Homer’s The Odyssey—“stunning theater…satanically witty, profoundly moving” (Toronto Star)—told by the celebrated and subversive author of The Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s her turn. Penelope has waited 20 years for her husband to return from the Trojan War. Now, as authorial control of the famous story shifts to Odysseus’ long-suffering wife—and the 12 faithful maids who have long tended to her—we discover a new perspective on the domestic vigil. This ancient tale told anew by “one of the most admired authors in North America” (NPR) gives voice to those left behind.
“When you think about stories of journeys, there is always someone left at home—and their story tends not to be told. I devoured Margaret Atwood’s funny, subversive novella on a plane ride, immediately struck by the paradigm shift of a story I thought I knew well. To my great delight, Margaret Atwood had already adapted the novella into a play. I’m imagining each night, as the 12 maids pull apart the threads of Penelope’s Scheherazade-worthy shroud, it’ll be a raucous moment of subversion. It makes my heart glad—and it just feels like an essential part of my first season leading this theater.” –SVB
August Wilson's
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Directed by Chuck Smith
April 13 – May 19, 2024 | A Major Revival
A journey of self-discovery leads to salvation in this major revival of the Pulitzer prize-winner’s masterwork.
On the heels of Gem of the Ocean (2022), expert August Wilson interpreter Chuck Smith revives the second work in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s famed cycle—one of his best-loved, most compelling plays. Herald Loomis searches the country with his young daughter to find his estranged wife. But first, he must regain a sense of his own heritage and identity in this story of spiritual and emotional resurrection.
“I think we have an incumbent responsibility to respect and honor the elders in our field. And for the Goodman, as the first theater in the world to have produced all 10 plays of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, it’s an honor and a privilege to revisit these stories in their historically chronological order. It’s easy to forget, amidst the sheer force of his poetry, that August Wilson was also telling the century long story of the Black American journey in our vividly complex country. To my mind, there is no one better than Chuck Smith—whose acclaimed productions over two decades have cemented his expertise—to breathe new life in these works for our current moment.” –SVB
Female Troubles
A Period Piece
Music by Curtis Moore, Lyrics by Amanda Green
Written by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden
June 25 – August 4, 2024 | A World Premiere
An original musical comedy from the head writers for Seinfeld and Veep.
Elinor Benton finds herself surprisingly and undeniably knocked up—and, since she's unmarried and this is 19th century England, she has a very big problem. Facing devastating ruin, Elinor and her girlfriends set off on a raucous carriage trip to London seeking the services of Madame Restell, an infamous midwife who advertises cures for women with “female troubles.” Through the lens of the past, this original musical comedy comments on the present, asking the trenchant question, “Can You Believe This Sh*t's Still Happening in 1810?”
“A team of brilliant theater artists come together to create a wholly original comedic work about female reproductive rights? In the midst of the rollback of Roe v. Wade? How could anyone say no to this? With wit, buoyancy, and just the right amount of irreverence, Female Troubles goes full tilt into the very heart of our current American moment via the Regency era.” –SVB
IN THE OWEN THEATRE (350-SEAT FLEXIBLE STAGE)
Goodman Theatre and Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA) present
Lucha Teotl
Written and Directed by Christopher Llewyn Ramirez and Jeff Colangelo
Originally Developed by Prism Movement Theater
September 29 – October 29, 2023 | A Chicago Premiere
Pro wrestling bursts onto the stage in a high-octane, immersive, 90-minute thrill ride.
It’s a night in the theater that you’ll never forget. Experience the heart-pumping action ringside, as the Goodman transforms into a professional wrestling arena—a perfect backdrop for the high drama and rich cultural history of lucha libre. Originally developed with Prism Movement Theater and produced in partnership with CLATA as part of 2023 Destinos Festival, actors and luchadores (wrestlers) in masks representative of Aztec gods play out an exciting wrestling story about family, honor, tradition and redemption.
“I love performance that makes its audience ask, ‘is this theater?’ There’s something expansive just in the asking of that question. And I’m equally smitten with the Owen Theatre’s capacity to shapeshift to accommodate the particular needs of each narrative it hosts. A brilliant pair of gentlemen from Dallas’ Prism Movement Theater have imagined a space of wild inclusion, creating this piece that takes live wrestling and adds a theatrical wrap around it. Yes and yes.” —SVB
The Matchbox Magic Flute
Adapted and Directed by Mary Zimmerman
February 10 – March 10, 2024 | A World Premiere
In her acclaimed signature style, Mary Zimmerman conceives a brand new theatrical adaptation of Mozart’s beloved opera.
Big music in a small space, this “matchbox” presentation of The Magic Flute features a cast of 10 and orchestra of five—following the fantastic adventures of Prince Tamino and Princess Pamina. With dragons, a man who is a bird, trials by fire and water and underground corridors, Day and Night do battle.
“I’ve learned that when Mary Zimmerman says, ‘there’s this idea that’s obsessing me,’ it’s worth one’s time to pay attention. This time around, what she has conceived is a deeply intimate imagining of The Magic Flute. This new little dream of an opera is being built for a range of ages, ears and eyes.” –SVB
English
By Sanaz Toossi
Directed by Hamid Dehghani
May 10 – June 9, 2024 | A Chicago Premiere Co-Production with Guthrie Theater
This smash Off-Broadway hit and Obie Award-winning “rich new play, contemplative and comic” (New York Times Critics’ Pick) makes its Chicago premiere.
“English Only.” Four adult students in Karaj, Iran are studying for the Test of English as a Foreign Language—the key to their green card, medical school admission or family reunification. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole. But it might be splitting them each in half.
“I love this play more and more every time I read it. It speaks to our desperate need to be somewhere we feel we belong, and what we’ll do to make that happen. And it speaks to the experience of being a stranger in a strange place (so, like all of us). There’s a question at the heart of this play about how we know ourselves and the role language plays in our understanding of that. And there are impossibly elegant captures of how we lose our true selves when living with strangers—or even when trying to express ourselves in a non-native language.” –SVB
46th Annual A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens In the Albert Theatre
Adapted by Tom Creamer
Directed by Jessica Thebus
Starring Larry Yando as Scrooge
November 18 – December 31, 2023
More than 1.5 million theatergoers have attended “the crown jewel of the holiday season” (Daily Herald) since the Goodman established it as an annual offering in 1978—a time when only a handful of U.S. theaters mounted the production. Dickens’ holiday classic is the iconic tale of greedy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge, whose sizable bank account is only matched by his disdain for the holidays. One Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by four ghosts who take him on a spectacular adventure through his past, present and future, helping him rediscover the joys of life, love and friendship.
New Stages Festival November and December 2023 (Dates TBA)
FREE In the Owen Theatre
The 19th annual New Stages Festival of new plays includes developmental productions and staged readings. Founded in 2004, the New Stages Festival is a celebration of innovative new plays designed to give playwrights an opportunity to take risks and experiment. New Stages offers Chicago theatergoers a first look at dozens of plays, many of which have gone on to become successful full productions—including Noah Haidle’s Smokefall, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined and more.
ABOUT GOODMAN THEATRE
Chicago’s theater since 1925, Goodman Theatre is a not-for-profit arts and community organization in the heart of the Loop, distinguished by the excellence and scope of its artistic programming and community engagement. Led by Artistic Director Susan V. Booth and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, the theater’s artistic priorities include new play development (more than 150 world or American premieres), large scale musical theater works and reimagined classics. Artists and productions have earned two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards and more than 160 Jeff Awards, among other accolades. The Goodman is the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson’s “American Century Cycle.” Its longtime annual holiday tradition, A Christmas Carol, now in its fourth decade, has created a new generation of theatergoers in Chicago. The Goodman also frequently serves as a production and program partner with national and international companies and Chicago’s off-Loop theaters.
As a cultural and community organization invested in quality, diversity and community, Goodman Theatre is committed to using the art of theater for a better Chicago. Using the tools of the theatrical profession, the Goodman’s Education and Engagement programs aim to develop generations of citizens who understand the cultures and stories of diverse voices. The Goodman’s Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement is the home of these programs, which are offered free of charge for Chicago youth—85% of whom come from underserved communities—schools and life-long learners.
Goodman Theatre was founded by William O. Goodman and his family in honor of their son Kenneth, an important figure in Chicago’s cultural renaissance in the early 1900s. The Goodman family’s legacy lives on through the continued work and dedication of Kenneth’s family, including Albert Ivar Goodman, who with his late mother, Edith-Marie Appleton, contributed the necessary funds for the creation of the new Goodman center in 2000.
Today, Goodman Theatre leadership also includes the distinguished members of the Artistic Collective: Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Dael Orlandersmith, Steve Scott, Kimberly Senior, Chuck Smith and Mary Zimmerman. Jeff Hesse is Chairman of Goodman Theatre’s Board of Trustees, Fran Del Boca is Women’s Board President and Craig McCaw is President of the Scenemakers Board for young professionals.