Time Out Chicago Theater Awards 2016

Possibly the most produced and most prolific Chicago playwright of his generation so far, Ike Holter hit a double whammy last spring with a concurrent pair of world premieres, both Chicago-set stories culminating on the same night. Sender’s hipster relationship antics and Prowess’s vigilante crime-fighting fantasy differed in tone but provided a real snapshot of young Chicagoans’ anxieties.

Chicago’s impressive number of actor-instrumentalists

It seems like you can’t go a week as a Chicago theatergoer without seeing an actor strap on a guitar or sit down at a piano or behind a drum kit. In the past season alone, cast members of the Hypocrites’ American Idiot, the House Theatre of Chicago’s The Revel, Strawdog Theatre Company’s Once in a Lifetime and Court Theatre’s One Man, Two Guvnors were among those accompanying themselves. In other locales, this kind of thing tends to be noted as  a signature of a particular director’s style; in Chicago, it’s a signature of the city’s scene.

Brilliant Adventures (Steep Theatre) and Mary Page Marlowe (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)

Steep’s U.S. premiere of English playwright Alistair McDowall’s time-travel thriller owes much to Curtis Edward Jackson and Ty Olwin’s ability to mirror each other as present and future versions of the protagonist. Tracy Letts’s world premiere at Steppenwolf took things fascinatingly further, with six actors, including Carrie Coon and Blair Brown, persuasively embodying a single character at different points in her life.

The Last Defender (The House Theatre of Chicago)

The House Theatre has a long tradition of breaking the fourth wall, but for this project, creators Nathan Allen, Chris Burnham and Sandor Weisz went so far as to eliminate actors entirely (aside from a filmed introduction). Instead, the audience became the protagonists in this Cold War–set escape game, which asks us to prevent mutually assured destruction by solving clever and complicated puzzles. Details weren’t confirmed at press time, but word is The Last Defender will return in a new venue in late 2016; don’t miss your chance to play.

R+J: The Vineyard (Red Theater Chicago)

Amid a much-needed, ongoing public conversation about racial and ethnic representation in theater in Chicago and elsewhere, Red Theater Chicago staged a thrilling experiment in another facet of inclusion: an inventive and moving adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that mixed deaf and hearing actors and relied heavily on American Sign Language, which wasn’t always translated into spoken words. The show’s warm reception (it transferred from Oracle Theatre to an extended run at the Den Theatre) was a strong example of how authentic experience enhances art.

Danielle Pinnock for Body/Courage (Rivendell Theatre Ensemble)

Combining Danielle Pinnock’s skills as an interviewer and editor, her impressive, subtle character transformations and the courage to weave her own history in with her subjects’, this solo performance about body image—expanded from Pinnock’s graduate thesis into an enlightening full evening—was sometimes enraging but always engaging.

Shakespeare 400 Chicago

Outdoing even England (if you trust the proclamations of Mayor Emanuel and the lead organizers at Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Chicago went all in for this yearlong celebration of the Bard’s legacy surrounding the 400th anniversary of his death. From a raft of international performances as part of CST’s “World’s Stage” series to discussions and lectures at local institutions to Shakespeare-inspired specials at Chicago restaurants, Shakespeare 400 will have reportedly touched a half million people by year’s end.