Announcing UIC Theatre’s 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–Nov 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 Berkeley Rep and subsequently marked Sara Ruhl’s Broadway debut in 2009. Faculty member and Jeff Award-winning playwright Lydia Diamond directs.

 

FENCES
By August Wilson
Directed by Derrick Sanders
Feb 21–March 1, 2020

In the powerful, stunning dramatic work that won August Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize, Troy Maxson has gone through life in a country where to be proud and black was to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new liberation in the 1960s. It’s a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son, he understands less and less.

Faculty member and Jeff Award-winning director Derrick Sanders, who was mentored by August Wilson, directs.

 

EL NOGALAR
By Tanya Saracho
Directed by Marcela Munoz
Apr 17–Apr 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 Munoz, Co-Artistic Director of Aguijon Theatre who directed last season’s enigmatic production of Electricidad, is back directing at UIC Theatre.