**We understand not everyone is comfortable being in a crowd without masks yet, so City Lit has designated 2 performances where masks are required. Sunday, May 5, 2024 and Sunday, June 2, 2024 are the designated performances for Murder in the Cathedral. Masks are encouraged but no longer required for all other performances.
Now On Sale
The first full production in Chicago since the early 1950s (though there have been concert readings from time to time) of Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot, author of Cats and a series of letters to Groucho Marx, among other works. The play dramatizes the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of knights loyal to Henry II in 1170. Eliot wrote it on commission to be performed in the sanctuary at Canterbury Cathedral, the room where Becket was murdered; his depiction of the killing draws from the eye-witness account of Edward Grim, a monk who was wounded trying to protect the Archbishop. This production will be staged in the sanctuary of Edgewater Presbyterian Church, the building in which City Lit resides.
Season 44 Subscriptions Now on Sale
1 Regular Subscription
$99
(Valid for all performances)
2 Regular Subscriptions
$198
(Valid for all performances)
1 Preview Subscription
$77
(Valid for preview performances only)
2 Preview Subscriptions
$154
(Valid for preview performances only)
THE HOUSE OF IDEAS
World Premiere
by Mark Pracht
Directed by Outgoing Artistic Director Terry McCabe
August 23, 2024 - October 6, 2024
(Previews Aug. 23 - Aug. 31)
It was in the 1960s that Marvel Comics began creating dozens of memorable characters, one after another over a period of years, and built a single cohesive world for them to inhabit. In comic books, this was revolutionary. But the two men at the center of this renaissance struggle with the idea of credit now that they’ve made it something worth struggling over. The House of Ideas examines the rise of Marvel and the fraught relationship between the Lennon and McCartney of comic books, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Part Three of The Four-Color Trilogy, about the men and women who created a body of literature Americans both embraced and loathed.
SEVEN GUITARS
30th Anniversary Production
by August Wilson
Directed by Manny Buckley
October 18, 2024 - December 1, 2024
(Previews Oct. 18 - Oct. 26)
The Chicago storefront premiere of this searing August Wilson drama about six friends in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1948 mourning the death of their friend Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a rising blues star trapped by his circumstances and cut down in his prime. One of Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” of ten plays depicting the African American experience in each of the 20th Century’s decades.
GLASSHEART
Chicago Premiere
by Reina Hardy
Directed by Incoming Artistic Director Brian Pastor
January 10. 2025 - February 23, 2025
(Previews Jan. 10 - Jan. 18)
Chicago premiere of a new play by Chicago-based playwright Reina Hardy. A modern-day reimagining of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. The Beast has moved into a low-rent district in Chicago with his last loyal friend, a lamp named Only. They meet a neighborly witch and a young woman who might, somehow, still break the curse.
R.U.R. (ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS)
World Premiere Adaptation
by Karel Capek
freely adapted by Bo List
Directed by Incoming Artistic Director Brian Pastor
May 2, 2025 - June 15, 2025
(Previews May 2 - May 10)
In 1920, Karel Čapek’s early science fiction classic R.U.R. coined the term “robot” and looked ahead to the wonders and dangers of artificial intelligence decades before it was cool to worry about such things. “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (“R.U.R.” for short) is a mysterious island factory that manufactures artificial human beings, run by the eccentric scientist Harry Rossum. When Helena Glory arrives to advocate for the rights of these machines, a series of events is set into motion that sees Harry and Helena married against the backdrop of a global robot uprising.
Connect With City Lit:
Facebook:
Find us at 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue. Located on the Second floor of the Edgewater Presbyterian Church two blocks east of the Bryn Mawr Red Line Station.