Oak Park Festival Theatre was one of the first companies back to live performance this year after the COVID-19 shutdown with their production of The Tempest, staged in their longtime outdoor home at Austin Gardens. They weathered that storm, only to suffer a fire on November 23 at their offices in downtown Oak Park, located […]
Tag: Michael Patrick Thornton
Posted inArts & Culture
Doubt: A Parable explores the Catholic Church at a crisis point
The 2004 Pulitzer-winner is relevant once again.
Posted inArts & Culture
Pilgrims, The Water Children, and six more new stage shows to see (or avoid)
A world premiere at Gift Theatre and a play about abortion are among this week’s notable plays.
Posted inArts & Culture
After a life-changing transition, Will Davis sets out to transform a Chicago theater
American Theater Company’s fresh-faced artistic director credits his gender transition with a creative awakening. Now the 33-year-old looks to turn the venerable North Center playhouse into a place of “wild theatricality.”
Posted inArts & Culture
2016 in theater was wildly convulsive on- and offstage
Controversies over abuse, alleged druggings, and “whitewashing” roiled even as Shakespeare 400 Chicago soared.
Posted inArts & Culture
How Chicago theater artists are diversifying the city’s stages
Efforts are underway to make Chicago’s theater less uniformly white, thin, able-bodied, and gender-conforming.
Posted inArts & Culture
Richard III was always a monster. Now imagine him as RoboCop
The Gift Theatre and Michael Patrick Thornton use disability to illuminate the Bard’s sociopathic conniver.
Posted inArts & Culture
A gutsy new take on Shakespeare’s great Other
The Gift Theatre’s gutsy new take on Shakespeare’s Othello gives us a more Moorish Moor.
Posted inArts & Culture
Will Eno turns off the social filters
The Gift Theatre stages Will Eno’s short-play collection Oh, the Humanity!
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Still a beach bum, after all these years
A planned major rehab never happened, but at 60, Theater on the Lake has some new blood
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Now That’s a Comeback
Two strokes left Gift Theatre cofounder Michael Patrick Thornton paralyzed at the age of 24. Now he’s returning to the stage in a one-man show.