Stage Left Theatre has announced plans for its 36th season, including a move from its longtime residency at Theater Wit to the Athenaeum Theatre. The new slate is the first to be selected by the company’s new co-artistic directors, Amy Szerlong and Jason A. Fleece.
The season opens with the Chicago premiere of Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright’s rapid response to last fall’s presidential election. Written in under a week, the two-character play imagines a near future in which President Trump has declared martial law and rounded up immigrants into prison camps; the play is set in the aftermath, after a return to the rule of law. Productions of the play were announced by theaters across the country soon after Schenkkan completed it; it’s been well received in Los Angeles, where it opened in March at the Fountain Theatre and has been extended into August, but the show’s Off Broadway production posted an early closing notice this weekend after struggling to find an audience. Stage Left’s production, running September 21 to October 22, will be directed by Szerlong.
Wardell Julius Clark will make his Stage Left directing debut with the Chicago premiere of Insurrection: Holding History by Robert O’Hara (Bootycandy). The 1996 comedy imagines a gay, black graduate student writing his thesis on Nat Turner’s rebellion getting the opportunity to go back in time and meet Turner in person. Insurrection runs January 11 to February 11.
The third play in the season is the previously announced The Luckiest People by Meridith Friedman (The Firestorm), presented by Stage Left as part of the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere program (the play will also be produced within the next year by Denver’s Curious Theatre Company and Charlotte, North Carolina’s Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte). The family drama centers on Richard, about to become a new father with his partner, when his elderly father demands to move in with him. Stage Left’s production runs March 26 to April 29; Fleece directs.
Stage Left’s 15th annual LeapFest presentation of new plays in progress will take place in summer 2018, with exact dates and venue to be determined.
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