BoHo Theatre is thrilled to announce plans for its upcoming 2016 season. Building on its rich, 12-year history, BoHo continues to bring an eclectic mix of musicals, dramas, and classic plays to Chicago stages focusing on emotional human relationships. The company is dedicated to being an incubator for up-and-coming Chicago talent by creating safe, supportive artistic environments for our artists to experiment and grow. With these goals in mind, BoHo’s 2016 season will feature the innovative song cycle
Fugitive Songs by Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen, a groundbreaking new adaption of Anton Chekhov’s
Uncle Vanya by playwright Annie Baker, and the hit Broadway rock musical
Next To Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt.
The Season In Depth
FUGITIVE SONGS
Music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen
February 11 – March 13, 2016 at the Heartland Studio
Fugitive Songs is an innovative song cycle focusing on everyday people on the run: a disgruntled Subway sandwich employee, a jilted ex-cheerleader, a pair of Patty Hearst fanatics, a stoner forced to rob a convenience store against his will, and many others. The writing team of Miller and Tysen blend traditional folk music with contemporary pop and gospel to create a moving portrait of restlessness in America. While many of BoHo’s shows have focused on the reasons people come together, this production instead looks at why people choose to run away from the relationships in their lives.
“The journey of running away can teach us about who we are,” says Artistic Director Peter Marston Sullivan. “Too often, we’re not running from another person or a situation, we’re running from ourselves and the hard choices we need to make. To me, it’s when we realize why we’re running and stop that we find true freedom.” Following on the success of BoHo’s previous intimate musicals
Myths & Hymns and
Ordinary Days, Fugitive Songs will be staged at the company’s Heartland Studio space in Rogers Park and will open during Chicago Theatre Week.
UNCLE VANYA
By Anton Chekhov
in a new adaptation by Annie Baker,
working with a literal translation by Margarita Shalina and the original Russian text
May 25 – June 26, 2016 at the Heartland Studio
When the ailing Professor Serebryakov retires to the country with his new, beautiful, younger wife Yelena after a lifetime of posh metropolitan living, it throws his entire estate into turmoil. The estate originally belonged to Serebryakov’s first wife, and her mother, daughter, and brother still live there. Soon passions are flaring, with several of the gentlemen declaring their love for Yelena and Professor Serebryakov announcing his intention to sell off the estate. For as much as the family has lamented the stagnation of their lives, the introduction of change is even more frightening to them.
This intimate, immersive new adaptation of Chekhov's classic from critically-acclaimed playwright Annie Baker (
Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation, The Flick), brings colloquial language to this beloved story of human relationships and yearning. Written with the “goal of creating a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears during the play’s first productions in the provinces in 1898,” Ms. Baker's
Uncle Vanya introduces 21st century audiences to Chekhov's enduring wit, insight, and emotional depth. BoHo is excited to bring its trademark focus on character and relationships to this new work, focusing on the inner desires and turmoil that lives underneath the surface of our everyday lives.
NEXT TO NORMAL
Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Music by Tom Kitt
Fall 2016 (dates TBD) at Theater Wit
The Goodmans seem to be an normal, average suburban American family. Dan is an architect; Diana rushes to pack lunches and pour cereal; their daughter and son are bright, wise-cracking teens. And yet their lives are anything but normal. Diana has been struggling with bipolar disorder and hallucinations for 16 years, and the strain of keeping this locked up within the family threatens to tear them apart. The harder the family tries to be “normal”—including medication and a variety of therapies—the farther they move from being true to themselves.
“What is so powerful about this show is not only the exploration of what mental illness does to one person, but also what it does to everyone around them,” says Sullivan. “The struggle to maintain identity and retain relationships in the midst of mental illness is what makes
Next to Normal so fascinating… and so emotional.” Having taken Broadway by storm (Next To Normal won three 2009 Tony Awards including Best Musical Score and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize), BoHo is eager to bring its trademark intimacy and focus on characters to this affecting and timely story.
Season Memberships On Sale Now
BoHo Memberships are unique subscription packages that allow for flexibility in choosing productions and dates, as well as reserved seating and invitations to exclusive events. Membership packages for BoHo’s 2016 season are
on sale now at www.BoHoTheatre.com or (866) 811-4111.
2015 Season Concludes This Fall with Dogfight
BoHo’s 2015 Season isn’t quite done yet! The 11th Season will come to a close with
Dogfight, with performances beginning September 5 at Theater Wit. Tickets and more information are available at www.BoHoTheatre.com
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BoHo Theatre’s mission is to create bold theatre that challenges convention through innovative storytelling and unites artist and audience in the examination of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love through the lens of human relationships. Its vision is to create a shared community of artists and patrons in which all members are moved through art to make thoughtful, well-examined, caring relationships the highest priority in their lives.
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BoHo is a storefront theatre. We do amazing productions given our size and budget, but we are still a relatively small fish in the pond of Chicago theatre. And sometimes that means having to get out of the way for larger fish. At the end of 2015, we were approached by a much larger theatre in Chicago that wanted to produce Uncle Vanya in their upcoming season. Given the choice between us and a large theatre, the licensing company asked that we relinquish the rights. It’s just business, nothing personal. At the same time, this theatre (who we won’t name because we want them to announce their season in their own time) was extremely gracious and supportive about the incident, a testament to how much of a family Chicago theatre is, from the largest union theatre to the smallest storefront. We wish them well on their production and can’t wait to see it ourselves.
We were then left in a position to quickly fill a hole in our season. After substantial debate amongst our company, we chose Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. This play is a beautiful, heartbreaking work that is a playground for designers and directors. And at its core, true to our mission, it is a story about relationships. Eurydice is in love with her musician husband Orpheus, but when she dies on their wedding day, she meets her father in the Underworld, who still loves her and dotes on her. She is torn between staying with her father and returning to the world of the living with her husband—an impossible choice. It is poetic and absurd and hilarious and speaks to very real emotions. It is truly a BoHo (and bohemian) show, and we feel it is a story that our community needs to experience.
