Curtain Call Chicago - September 11, 2026

The Birth of the Pill is a world-premiere drama by Jessica Huang, based on Jonathan Eig’s book, that traces the ambitious and controversial development of the birth control pill. As activists, scientists, and philanthropists work to create a revolutionary form of reproductive freedom, the play also confronts the ethical cost of the clinical trials in Puerto Rico and centers the women whose experiences were often left out of the official history.

Joining in the conversation about the show are: Playwright Jessica Huant, Director Sandra Marquez, and actors Janet Ulrich Brooks (playing Margaret Sanger), Mary Beth Fisher (playing Katharine McCorrmick) and Mitchell J. Fain (playing both scientist Goody Pincus and author Jonathan Eig).

Curtain Call Chicago - September 21, 2026

Kowalski is Gregg Ostrin’s new play imagining the fateful 1947 Provincetown encounter between Tennessee Williams and a young Marlon Brando. As Williams searches for the actor who can bring Stanley Kowalski to life in A Streetcar Named Desire, the drama blends history and theatrical invention to explore ambition, desire, artistry, and the birth of an American classic. It stars Johnny Galecki as Williams and Jacob Moscovitz as Brando.

Curtain Call Chicago - September 28, 2026

Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog comes to Steppenwolf in a gripping new production directed by Kenny Leon. In a cramped room, estranged brothers Lincoln and Booth confront old wounds, unstable dreams and a dangerous shared history as rivalry, love and the lure of a high-stakes hustle push them toward a shattering reckoning. Featuring powerful performances by Glenn Davis and Namir Smallwood, the drama is a fiercely funny and devastating portrait of family, survival and the games people play to get ahead.

Curtain Call Chicago - August 31, 2026 

Sunday in the Park with George is a work by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s presented by Kokandy Productions and presented in the intimate downstairs space of the Chopin Theatre.

The musical is inspired by Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. In 1884 Paris, the exacting, emotionally remote painter George struggles to complete his ambitious canvas while his lover and model, Dot, longs for a fuller life and greater connection. Their relationship frays as George gives priority to his art.

A century later, George’s descendant—also an artist named George—faces a similar conflict between creative innovation and human intimacy. As he prepares a high-tech artwork inspired by Seurat’s painting, he confronts artistic doubt, family legacy, and the question of what artists owe to the people who love them. 

Curtain Call Chicago - September 29, 2026

I Agree With You is a 2025 relationship comedy written by and starring Ross Compton. When thirty something couple Hector and Penny cancel plans to spend a rare day alone at home, their familiar joking becomes a role-playing game that tests their relationship. Directed by Jake VanKersen and co-starring Stevie Shale, the film is a dramedy that explores what honest communication can look like when a couple has tried to avoid it. 

Curtain Call Chicago - September 25, 2026

The Last Word is Declan Grogan’s monthly IO Theater show where sharp comedy, spontaneous ideas, four unique beverages and the thrill of live performance converge. Catch it only on the last Friday of each month—because some things are worth saving for the final say.

Curtain Call Chicago - September 17, 2026

The Attic Things I’ve Seen While Lying on My Back is a dreamlike, emotionally resonant theatrical work by Shana Carroll that explores memory, imagination, grief, and the hidden objects—literal and emotional—we carry through our lives. With an evocative original score composed and directed by Colin Gagné, the piece transforms the attic into a richly theatrical landscape where childhood wonder, family history, and private loss mingle in haunting and tender ways.

Curtain Call Chicago - September 14, 2026

The Humanities at Victory Gardens Theater is a new play by Zayd Ayers Dohrn. The story follows the fallout at an elite American university after a controversial speaker is invited to lecture, as faculty and students collide over gender, race, sex, and political violence — turning campus culture wars into a personal and often volatile reckoning.

Directed by five-time Jeff Award winner Eddie Torres. 

Curtain Call Chicago - September 9, 2026 

Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend by Barry Joseph is a biography-meets-puzzle anthology that explores Stephen Sondheim’s lesser-known lifelong passion for designing and solving intricate games, arguing that puzzles were a core way he made sense of the world—“making order out of chaos,” as Sondheim himself put it. Drawing on more than eighty years of Sondheim’s activities, the book presents extremely rare, never-before-seen puzzles, treasure hunts, parlor games, board games, and crossword designs, alongside original interviews with celebrity friends and collaborators who played his games and analysis from puzzle designers and theater professionals. Beyond telling the story, it invites readers to try solving Sondheim-style puzzles and adapt his games for their own use, offering a fresh angle on his creative process for fans of his shows and useful anecdotes for interviews or features that go beyond standard musical-theater biographies.

Curtain Call Chicago - September 7, 2026

Vape! The Grease Parody is a Gen Z–inflected, 90-minute spoof of the 1978 film-musical Grease, currently running at Chicago’s Apollo Theater (2550 N. Lincoln Ave.) through January 3, 2027. Produced by Sketchworks Comedy with a mostly Chicago cast, the show reimagines Rydell High’s romances, rivalries, and hallway politics through a 2026 lens—swapping cigarettes for vapes, updating slang and social-media culture, and poking fun at the original’s iconic moments and innuendos.

Curtain Call Chicago - August 19, 2026

A conversation with Kate Luckinbill, granddaughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Kate discusses what life is like growing up with legendary grandparents and talks about two new books which seek to set the record straight about her famous grandparents.

First, Desi Arnaz: A Book is a reissue of Desi Arnaz’s candid autobiography, updated with new photos, a foreword by his granddaughter Kate Luckinbill, and an afterward by Lucie Arnaz. It offers a fresh look at the life and career of the Cuban-born entertainer who helped shape I Love Lucy and American television and what Desi had planned to do and write after the book came out, projects he was never able to complete.

And:

Lucy & Desi: The Love Letters is a collection of previously unseen letters between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz that reveals their romance during the World War II years in their own words, from their early courtship through the I Love Lucy years and beyond. Illustrated with rare family photos and reproductions of the original letters, it offers an intimate look at one of Hollywood’s most famous and complicated love stories. With an introduction by their daughter Lucie Arnaz.

Curtain Call Chicago - June 10, 2026

David Byrne’s Theater of the Mind is an intimate, immersive theatrical experience that blends neuroscience experiments with storytelling to explore how we perceive reality, form memories, and understand identity. Guided in small groups through a series of sensory rooms, audience members see, hear, taste, and physically move through a series of experiences set up thru story that reveal how unreliable their own senses can be. The show becomes a kind of live, mind-bending science experiment inside the theater.  Joining in the conversation are two actors who play David: James Earl Jones, II and Elizabeth Laidlaw.