The House Theatre of Chicago has announced its 2017–18 season, to open with a remount of United Flight 232, last year’s Jeff Award winner for best production of a play (midsize category) and best ensemble. The season also includes another remount from further in the company’s past: Shawn Pfautsch’s Hatfield & McCoy, first produced in 2006. Additionally, the House announced the appointment of Erik Schroeder as managing director.
United Flight 232, adapted and directed by Vanessa Stalling and based on Laurence Gonzales’s nonfiction book Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, draws on interviews and news reports about a 1989 airliner crash in Sioux City, Iowa. First produced in March 2016, it returns September 1–October 21. That remount will be followed by the House’s now perennial holiday take on The Nutcracker (November 3–December 30).
Hatfield & McCoy, Pfautsch’s backwoods brawler with a touch of Romeo & Juliet, is infused with bluegrass-style songs by Pfautsch and Matt Kahler. The show’s original director, Matt Hawkins, returns to the helm for the new staging, January 19–March 11.
Finally in the mainstage lineup is the season’s one brand new piece, Ellen Bond, Union Spy. Conceived and directed by Jess McLeod, the historically-inspired tale of a female freewoman who went undercover as a slave in the Confederate White House; it’s written by Jenni Lamb, with music, lyrics and movement by Tanji Harper and Blu Rhythm Collective (March 30–May 20). All four productions can be seen at the House’s longtime home, the Chopin Theatre.
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