Oracle Theatre, the Lakeview storefront operation that presents its performances under the free-admission "Public Access Theatre" model and took home more Jeff Awards than any other company at last month's Non-Equity ceremony, has announced three mainstage productions for its 2015 season.
First up is Full Circle, Charles Mee's version of The Chalk Circle set against the fall of the Berlin Wall, directed by Thom Pasculli (January 24–March 14). The summer brings a revival of Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play, a 1994 work in which an African-American man works as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, presaging the similar theme in Parks's later Topdog/Underdog; Vanessa Stalling will direct (June 13–August 1). In the fall, Oracle artistic director Max Truax will stage his own new adapation of Shakespeare's Richard III; titled No Beast So Fierce, the play will star Katherine Keberlein, the Jeff-winning lead of Oracle's The Mother, as Richard.
Oracle also announced it will debut a new work at this year's Chicago Fringe Festival in Jefferson Park (August 28–September 7). This House Believes the American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro is adapter-director Zachary Baker-Salmon's dramatization of a 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr.