TimeLine Theatre Company, celebrated for its powerful and provocative productions that connect past, present, and future, announces a landmark 29th season—culminating in a long-awaited inaugural production in its new theatre currently under construction at 5035 N. Broadway in Uptown.
TimeLine’s new home will open with an “eerily prescient” (Entertainment Weekly) 144-year-old classic brought forward to today in a “smart, sharp and relevant” (Deadline), Tony Award-nominated new adaptation that speaks directly to our times.
Before opening its new theatre in Uptown, TimeLine’s 2025-26 season will launch with two productions at venues across the city—including a world premiere by one of Chicago’s most celebrated “triple-threat” artists and the sharply funny Chicago premiere of a story The New York Times hailed as “the perfect play for our age of disagreement.”
Pictured (from left): TimeLine 2025-26 season artists Sandra Delgado, Kimberly Senior, Jonathan Spector, Lili-Anne Brown, Amy Herzog, and Ron OJ Parson.
TimeLine Theatre’s three-play 2025-26 subscription season includes:
- The world premiere of Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars by Sandra Delgado, directed by TimeLine Associate Artist Kimberly Senior, hosted by Lookingglass Theatre Company in the historic Water Tower Water Works, 163 E. Pearson Street at Michigan Avenue on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a captivating drama that mixes family dynamics with otherworldly wonder and shines a light on American identity.
- The Chicago premiere of the Tony Award-nominated Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, the Broadway hit satire of progressivism, parenting, and public health, hailed by Deadline as a “shiny, insightful and damn funny little gem”; presented at a venue to be announced.
- The Chicago premiere of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, a new version by Amy Herzog, directed by TimeLine Company Member Ron OJ Parson, presented as the inaugural production at TimeLine Theatre’s new home, 5035 N. Broadway in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, a fresh, Tony Award-nominated take on the historic masterwork about what it means when citizens stand up to power.
“For 28 years, TimeLine’s mission has brought to life stories that examine our past, grapple with our present, and strive to improve our collective future,” said TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers. “As we embark on a milestone year—opening our long-awaited new home in Uptown—our 29th season deepens our commitment to that mission, at a moment when examining an unvarnished history feels essential.”
Powers continued: “This collection of stories furthers our belief in the importance of uplifting everyone’s history, while creating a space for contemplation and respectful discourse about complex issues. Individually and collectively, these plays—led by three of Chicago’s most accomplished directors— showcase the power of three playwrights working at the top of their craft. These are probing stories about how communities engage with one another, navigating thorny issues amidst periods of historic significance. With this collection of new, provocative, and timely plays, we are proud to embark on an exciting next chapter for TimeLine.”
“This season is a striking reflection of TimeLine’s enduring mission and relevance, and we’re opening a new theatre that is an extension and expansion of our goal to foster connection, conversation, and reflection about the world we live in,” said TimeLine Executive Director Mica Cole.
"We're thrilled to welcome TimeLine Theatre to Uptown,” said Chicago 48th Ward Alderwoman Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth. “Uptown has long been known for its world-class entertainment venues and shows, and TimeLine Theatre will be a great addition to this tradition.”
“Uptown has a long history as an entertainment destination and we are thrilled to add TimeLine Theatre to the growing list of venues calling Uptown home,” added Sarah Wilson, Executive Director, Uptown United & Uptown Chamber of Commerce. “They are connecting two of Uptown’s historic districts: the entertainment district with the Asia on Argyle district. We are excited to work with TimeLine to connect their momentum with businesses and neighbors in the community.”
Save as much as 25% off regular ticket prices, enjoy impressive flexibility, and meet the moment of TimeLine’s 2025-26 season with a TimeLine FlexPass. Four options, priced from $134 to $278, are now on sale. For more information and to purchase, call (773) 281-8463 x6 or visit timelinetheatre.com.
Remember The Past. Embrace the Future. Meet the Moment.
Screen TimeLine Theatre's 2025-26 season sizzle video.
THE 2025-26 TIMELINE THEATRE SUBSCRIPTION SEASON IS:
World Premiere
HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF STARS
by Sandra Delgado
directed by TimeLine Associate Artist Kimberly Senior
October – November 2025
hosted by Lookingglass Theatre Company
in the historic Water Tower Water Works, 163 E. Pearson St. at Michigan Ave., Chicago
Like millions of Americans, Clara is doing her best to hold everything together—working hard, raising her tween daughter Stella, caring for an aging father, and supporting her under-employed ex-husband. But when she applies for U.S. citizenship ahead of a mother-daughter trip to Paris, her application is unexpectedly flagged, exposing minor infractions in her past and threatening the only home she’s ever known. Blending grounded family drama with otherworldly wonder, this Chicago-set world premiere is a moving and provocative exploration of our country’s most fundamental values.
Originally commissioned by the Chicago Park District’s Theatre on the Lake In the Works project, in partnership with The Chicago Dramatists, previous development of Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars included stagings as part of Goodman Theatre’s New Stages Festival in 2018 and Northeastern Illinois University’s thINKtank Series, co-produced in partnership with Teatro Vista, in 2024.
Chicago Premiere
EUREKA DAY
by Jonathan Spector
directed by Lili-Anne Brown
February – March 2026
presented at a venue to be announced
At Berkeley, California’s ultra-progressive Eureka Day School, every decision is made by consensus. But when a mumps outbreak hits, the school's carefully cultivated culture of inclusiveness spirals into chaos. As parents and board members clash over vaccines, personal freedoms, and viral misinformation, a community built on open-minded ideals implodes. Winner of the 2025 Drama League Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, this Chicago premiere tackles one of the defining questions of our time: how do you build consensus when no one can agree on the truth?
Acclaimed as “a powder keg of debate, liberal niceties, and hidden agendas” by The Daily Beast, Eureka Day is that rare combination—a “gaspingly funny” (New York Magazine) satire that captures the absurdity of modern discourse in ways that are intelligent, insightful, and real.
Eureka Day had its world premiere at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, Calif., in 2018. The play premiered Off-Broadway in 2019 and at the Old Vic in London in 2022, before returning to New York City and Broadway via Manhattan Theatre Club in 2024. The Broadway production has received five 2025 Tony Award nominations, including Best Revival of a Play.
Chicago Premiere
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
by Henrik Ibsen
a new version by Amy Herzog
directed by TimeLine Company Member Ron OJ Parson
May – June 2026
presented at TimeLine Theatre’s new home, 5035 N. Broadway, Chicago
When a respected doctor in small-town Norway makes a deadly discovery that threatens the health of the entire village, he raises the alarm. But as local leaders—including his own brother, the mayor—scramble to protect their own interests, the truth becomes inconvenient, and the doctor finds himself the target of the very community he's trying to protect. Winner of the 2024 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation, this vibrant new version of Ibsen’s thunderous masterwork asks: what happens when doing the right thing means losing everything?
Hailed by The New York Times as “crackling and persuasive … a bitter satire of local politics that soon reveals itself as a slow-boil tragedy of human complacency,” Amy Herzog’s new Tony Award-nominated version of An Enemy of the People is “brilliant” (The Daily Beast) and “a rousing adaptation of a story that carries a discomforting contemporary relevance” (The Guardian).
An Enemy of the People had its premiere on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre in March 2024, in a star-studded and headline-grabbing production directed by Sam Gold and featuring Jeremy Strong (Succession) and Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), among others.
ABOUT TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY
TimeLine Theatre Company, recipient of the prestigious 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, was founded in April 1997 with a mission to present stories inspired by history that connect with today's social and political issues. Currently celebrating its 28th season, TimeLine has presented 92 productions, including 14 world premieres and 42 Chicago premieres, and launched the Living History Education Program and TimeLine South summer arts program, which bring the company's mission to life for students in Chicago Public Schools and beyond. Recipient of the Alford-Axelson Award for Nonprofit Managerial Excellence and the Richard Goodman Strategic Planning Award from the Association for Strategic Planning, TimeLine has received 62 Jeff Awards, including an award for Outstanding Production 11 times.
The company departed its longtime home on Wellington Avenue in August 2024 and moved into new administrative offices at 5539 N. Broadway, Ste. B, a few blocks north of the site of its future new home, located at 5035 N. Broadway in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Construction is ongoing on that site, where plans feature an intimate black box theater seating up to 250 audience members, expanded area for the immersive lobby experiences that are a TimeLine hallmark, new opportunities for education and engagement, room to allow audience members to arrive early and stay late for theatergoing experiences that extend far beyond the stage, and more.
TimeLine is led by Artistic Director PJ Powers, Executive Director Mica Cole, and Board President Thaddeus J. Malik. TimeLine Company members are Tyla Abercrumbie, Will Allan, Nick Bowling, Janet Ulrich Brooks, Behzad Dabu, Charles Andrew Gardner, Lara Goetsch, Juliet Hart, Anish Jethmalani, Mildred Marie Langford, Mechelle Moe, David Parkes, Ron OJ Parson, PJ Powers, Maren Robinson, and Helen Young.
Major corporate, government and foundation donors providing season support via TimeLine’s Annual Fund include Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, Bayless Family Foundation, Carol Oppenheim and Jerome Lamet Charitable Fund, Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, and The Shubert Foundation. TimeLine also acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
For more information, visit timelinetheatre.com or Facebook or Instagram (@TimeLineTheatre on all platforms).
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Lili-Anne Brown (Director, EUREKA DAY), a Chicago South Side native, works as a director, actor and educator, and has performed in, directed, and produced many award-winning shows in Chicago and nationally. Recent directing credits include The Color Purple, The Nacirema Society…, School Girls, and the world premieres of Ike Holter’s I Hate It Here and Lottery Day (Goodman Theatre); Two Trains Running (The Acting Company, National Tour); Dreamgirls (McCarter Theater and Goodspeed Musicals); FELA! (Olney Theater); Joe Turner's Come and Gone (Huntington Theatre); Ain’t No Mo’ (Woolly Mammoth and Baltimore CenterStage); Waitress, Rent, and The Color Purple (The Muny); Once on This Island (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Acoustic Rooster... (Kennedy Center and National Tour); and Put Your House in Order (La Jolla Playhouse). She is the former Artistic Director of Bailiwick Chicago, where she focused programming on Chicago-premiere musicals and new play development with resident playwrights. She has received two Helen Hayes Awards, five Jeff Awards, two BTA awards and one African American Arts Alliance Award for excellence in directing. She is an inaugural recipient of the Walder Foundation’s Platform Award and a 2021 recipient of the 3Arts Award for Theatre. She is a member of SDC, AEA, SAG-AFTRA, and a graduate of Northwestern University.
Sandra Delgado (Playwright, HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF STARS) is a Colombian-Chicagoan writer, performer and producer. Hailed as “her own brand of triple threat” (Newcity), she writes plays inspired by underknown Chicago histories centering Latine lives. She is best known as the creator and star of La Havana Madrid, her smash hit play with music, originally produced by Teatro Vista with runs at Steppenwolf and Goodman theatres, in a co-production with Collaboraction at both The Den and at Pritzker Pavilion as part of Millennium Park’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, as well as productions at South Coast Repertory and New Village Arts. Delgado is also a respected veteran of the stage, with a career spanning more than two decades. In addition to her work at artistic homes Collaboraction and Teatro Vista, as an actress, she has been seen on stages across Chicago and the country including Goodman, Northlight, Lookingglass, Victory Gardens, and About Face. Highlights include the titular role in La Havana Madrid, La Ruta at Steppenwolf, and starring off-Broadway as Jocasta in the Public Theatre’s production of Oedipus el Rey. Her NALAC award-winning spiritual-cabaret-meets-dance party, The Sandra Delgado Experience, has played all over Chicago and at the Public Theatre’s iconic Joe’s Pub. Delgado was recently awarded the inaugural Platform Award from the Walder Foundation, named a Hall of Famer in Newcity's Players of Chicago Theatre, awarded a United States Artists Fellowship, and serves on the board of the Chicago Public Library. She is also an Illinois Arts Council Fellow in Literature, a recipient of the 3Arts Award, the Joyce Award, the Theater Communications Group (TCG) Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship in the Extraordinary Potential Category, a three-time Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events grantee, a 3Arts 3AP Project Grantee, and received the 2017 Latina Professional of the Year Award from the Chicago Latino Network. Delgado is one of the 20 women of Chicago arts and culture honored in Kerry James Marshall's mural “Rushmore” on the facade of the Chicago Cultural Center and her audio play, if you belong to me as I belong to you, is streaming on Audible as part of a collaboration with the Oscar-nominated film, Women Talking. She is currently developing The Boys and the Nuns, a new musical, inspired by the true-life alliance between LGBTQ activists and Catholic Sisters in 1980s Chicago; LIVE.LOVE.NOW., a solo show exploring death, life and love; and Crying Hispanic Woman, a book of essays about motherhood, being the daughter of immigrants and a life in the performing arts. For more information, visit sandradelgado.net or @yosoysandradelgado on Instagram.
Amy Herzog (Adapter, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) is a playwright and adapter whose plays include Mary Jane (New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award), 4000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Obie Award for Best New American Play), After the Revolution (New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award), and Belleville (Drama Desk Award nominee). She received the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Herzog teaches playwriting at Yale University’s David Geffen School of Drama.
Henrik Ibsen (Playwright, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, 1828–1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as “the father of prose drama” and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.
Ron OJ Parson (Director, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) is a director and actor based in Chicago and became a TimeLine Company Member in 2016. His TimeLine credits include Trouble In Mind, Relentless (also at Goodman Theatre), Too Heavy for Your Pocket, To Catch a Fish, Paradise Blue, Sunset Baby, and A Raisin in the Sun. He is a native of Buffalo, New York, and a graduate of the University of Michigan’s professional theater program. He is a Joyce Foundation grantee and Resident Artist at Court Theatre, and a former Associate Artist with Teatro Vista and Writers Theatre. He is the co-founder and former Artistic Director of Onyx Theatre Ensemble. He has worked at various theatres in and around Chicago and around the country and Canada. Chicago credits include work at The Chicago Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, America Blues Theatre, American Theatre Company, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Dramatists, Court, Black Ensemble Theatre, Congo Square Theatre Company, Northlight, Urban Theatre Company, City Lit, ETA Creative Arts, and Writers Theatre. Regional credits include Studio Arena Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Milwaukee Repertory, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, American Players Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Pasadena Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Virginia Stage Company, Roundabout Theatre, Wilshire Theatre, Studio Theatre, Center Stage Baltimore, St. Louis Black Repertory, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, Signature Theatre (New York), Kansas City Rep, Portland Stage Company, Paul Robeson Theatre (Buffalo), Ujima Theatre Company, and Indiana Repertory Theatre, among others. In Canada, he directed the world premiere of Palmer Park by Joanna McClelland Glass at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Ontario Canada. He is a member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, and SDC. For more information, visit ronojparson.com
Kimberly Senior (Director, HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF STARS) returns to TimeLine Theatre Company, where she is an Associate Artist. Senior began working with TimeLine in 2008, where she directed Inana, My Name is Asher Lev, All My Sons, and Dolly West's Kitchen. She has collaborated with Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars playwright Sandra Delgado on multiple projects going back to 1997. Senior is a freelance director whose award-winning work has been seen in 15 states in more than 200 productions. She directed the Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-nominated Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. She directed the HBO special Chris Gethard: Career Suicide and her work in audio has ranged from Marvel’s The Wastelanders to C13’s Ghostwriter. Senior is a member of the Goodman Theatre’s Artistic Collective and has taught at a number of universities. Her first book, What Would a Person Do? is available on Amazon. She is a proud union member of SDC and even prouder mother of Noah (18) and Delaney (16). For more information, visit kimberlysenior.net.
Jonathan Spector (Playwright, EUREKA DAY) is Tony Award-nominated playwright based in Northern California, whose work has been produced on and off Broadway, regionally, and internationally. His plays include Eureka Day (2025 Drama League Award, Tony Award nomination, and Drama Desk Award nomination for Best Revival, New York Critics Circle Award nomination, WhatsOnStage Award nomination, The New York Times Critics' Pick); This Much I Know (Edgerton Award, Glickman Award, Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award); Birthright; Best Available (Elizabeth George Commission); and Siesta Key. His work has been produced with Manhattan Theater Club, The Old Vic, Sonia Friedman Productions, Aurora Theater, Marin Theater Company, Pasadena Playhouse, Hampstead, Theater J, Asolo Rep, Syracuse Stage, Mosaic Theater, Colt Couer and Miami New Drama, among others. He is currently working on commissions for Manhattan Theater Club, Roundabout and La Jolla Playhouse.