On the heels of Steppenwolf ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Oscar wins for Moonlight Sunday night, Edgewater’s Raven Theatre has announced it will open its fall season with the Chicago premiere of McCraney’s play Choir Boy. The piece, about a young gay man looking for his place in an all-black prep school, premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2013; Raven artistic director Michael Menendian will direct here (Sept 27–Nov 12).
Another Chicago premiere, Melissa Ross’s Nice Girl, will be staged by Lauren Shouse (Jan 24–Mar 11). The 2015 play follows a woman in her late 30s in the early ‘80s, semi-resigned to caring for her elderly mother at the expense of finding a relationship of her own. Ross’s plays Thinner than Water and A Life Extra Ordinary have been seen locally at the Gift Theatre.
A new play by Chicago-based writer Philip Dawkins, The Gentleman Caller, will imagine the private encounters between Tennessee Williams and William Inge, in the days before and after the career-making Chicago debut of Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. Cody Estle will direct (March 28–May 13). A fourth production, to be directed by Krissy Vanderwarker, remains to be announced.
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