UIC Theatre Announces 2019-2020 Season

UIC School of Theatre & Music is excited to announce the 2019-2020 Theatre Season.

THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Tyrone Phillips
Oct. 4-13, 2019

When an upwardly mobile African-American couple wants to buy a home in an all-white neighborhood in 1950s Boston, they pay a struggling Irish family to “ghost-buy” a house on their behalf. Fifty years later, the Irish family wants “their” house back. Moving across two eras, The Luck of the Irish explores racial and social issues and the universal longing for home.

Kirsten Greenidge wrote the play inspired by her grandparents’ efforts to buy a house in a white neighborhood. Tyrone Phillips, Artistic Director of Definition Theatre will direct at UIC Theatre for the first time.

IN THE NEXT ROOM or THE VIBRATOR PLAY
By Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Lydia Diamond
Nov. 15-24, 2019

In a seemingly perfect Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating “hysteria” in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor’s laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter – and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. Through a series of events and encounters with the patients, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage and what it truly means to love someone.

This laugh out loud, provocative and touching play premiered at Berkely Rep and subsequently marked Sara Ruhl’s Broadway debut in 2009. Faculty member and Jeff Award-winning playwright Lydia Diamond directs.

BARBECUE

By Robert O’Hara
Directed by Derrick Sanders
Feb. 21-March 1, 2020

The O’Mallerys have gathered in their local park to share some barbecue and straight talk with their sister Barbara, whose spiral of drugs and recklessness has forced her siblings to stage an open-air intervention. But the event becomes raucous and unpredictable as familial stereotypes collide with hard realities, and racial politics slam up against the stories we tell—and maybe even believe—about who we were and who we’ve become.

Jeff Award-winning director and the School of Theatre and Music faculty member Derrick Sanders directs.

EL NOGALAR

By Tanya Saracho
Directed by Marcela Munoz
April 17-26, 2020

Set in modern-day Northern Mexico, the Galvan family, led by Matriarch Maite, have come back to their pecan orchard to reclaim their land after she has squandered away their money while living in America. In the time they were away, however, the Mexico they once knew has slowly been taken over by a drug war. Focusing on the relationships between the sisters, and a mother and her daughters, will these women choose to adapt to the world around them or get left behind?

Inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, Tanya Saracho has created a world where class pressure and social turmoil threatens traditional families’ land and lifestyle in contemporary Mexico. Marcela Muñoz, Co-Artistic Director of Aguijón Theatre who directed last season’s enigmatic production of Electricidad is back directing at UIC Theatre.

For tickets, call: (312) 996-2939

Or Visit: theatreandmusic.uic.edu