Chicago Theatre Week Returns With 75 Shows Citywide. Here’s How To Get Discounted Tickets

CHICAGO — The 14th annual Chicago Theatre Week returns next month, allowing neighbors to see more than 75 participating shows at discounted rates.

Chicago Theatre Week runs Feb. 5-15. Tickets went on sale Monday and are already selling fast, organizers said.

The main goal of the event is to make theater accessible to everyone, said Marissa Lynn Jones, executive director of the League of Chicago Theatres, a nonprofit that organizes Chicago Theatre Week and serves over 200 Chicago-area theaters.

“We’re one of the largest theater cities in the world, so it’s a great opportunity for people who normally can’t afford to go [to the theater] to have accessible rates and be able to have that experience with their loved ones,” Jones told Block Club.

Tickets to participating shows are available at discounted prices of $15 and $30, with some going for less than that. Browse the 78 shows and buy tickets here.

Shattered Globe Theatre’s “Morning, Noon, and Night” will be at Theater Wit for this year’s Chicago Theatre Week. Credit: Abboye Lawrence

Highlights include a one-night-only performance of “Renée Fleming in Recital: Voice of Nature,” featuring the Grammy Award-winning superstar for her return to the Lyric Opera House. Tickets start at $30 here.

Also at the Lyric, tickets are going fast for “Salome,” Sir David McVicar’s production set in 1930s fascist Italy, which returns to the venue for the first time in 20 years. It features Elena Stikhina in the titular femme fatale’s role, alongside Brandon Jovanovich and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. Tickets start at $30 here.

Other productions at major Chicago theaters include “Holiday” at the Goodman — in which one professional actor downs five shots of whiskey and attempts to put on a Shakespearean show alongside four sober performers — and “The Dance of Death” at Steppenwolf, in which “a twisted love triangle waltzes off the edge of a cliff.” Both shows are currently sold out.

Chicagoans can also check out a variety of new works and shows by storefront theaters and smaller companies, like “Black Cypress Bayou” by Definition Theatre in Hyde Park. The Chicago premiere follows Vernita Manifold and her daughters after the richest man in East Texas turns up dead, with his severed head delivered to Manifold’s back porch. Tickets are $15 here.

Don’t Quit Productions at The Second City.

Collaboraction, a Chicago social justice theater company, is also bringing back “Trial in the Delta: the Murder of Emmett Till,” a production that reenacts the actual court proceedings from the murder trial of two members of Till’s lynch mob. Tickets are $15-$30 here.

Aguijón Theater Company, which amplifies Latin theater artists in Chicago, is putting on a production of “La Muerte y la Doncella,” a psychological thriller in which a country tries to rebuild itself after years of dictatorship. It tells the story of a woman named Paulina, who encounters a man she believes was her torturer in the past, and “questions how possible it is to forgive without forgetting.” Tickets are $15 here.

There are also family- and kid-friendly shows, like Lifeline Theatre’s “Kitty and the Beanstalk,” and productions with the Harris Theater for Dance and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Jones said.

Chicago Theatre Week spans genres and neighborhoods, from the North and South sides to the suburbs. There’s something for everyone in this year’s lineup, Jones said.

She also encourages neighbors to explore new neighborhoods during Chicago Theatre Week.

“I would encourage people to go to a neighborhood that they haven’t been to before. By all means, enjoy our Downtown shows, but make sure that you’re also visiting the storefront spaces that Chicago is really known for and get out and support your local restaurants and stores,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity for a full experience, to build a whole day around it with family or friends.”

People can browse Chicago Theatre Week shows and buy tickets here. They can also play Chicago Theatre Week bingo, a crossover with Chicago Restaurant Week that offers five people a chance to win tickets to a show and a gift card to a restaurant.

Shows are also being added daily, so Jones encourages neighbors to check the website regularly.

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