Court Theatre announced its 2026-27 subscription season on Thursday. The Hyde Park theater’s 72nd slate, the non-profit operation said, is an examination of “our shared pursuit of life and liberty,” themed around America’s 250th birthday.
The season begins much later than usual, in December, with the American premiere of Winsome Pinnock’s “Tituba,” set in colonial Salem against the backdrop of the infamous witch trials. Associate artistic director Gabrielle Randle-Bent will direct, with dramaturgy from Court’s newly arrived artistic director Avery Willis Hoffman. Hoffman said that the main auditorium at Court Theatre (5535 S. Ellis Ave.) will be undergoing technical renovations, hence both the delay and the staging of “Tituba” at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, occasionally the site of prior Court’s shows over the years.
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Beginning Jan. 8, 2027, Court resident artist Ron OJ Parson will direct a new production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (also on Broadway this spring in a separate production), bringing Parson’s stagings of Wilson’s entire American Century Cycle at Court to a conclusion. Parson will become one of the very few directors to have staged all 10 of the plays.
In the early spring, with a March 12, 2027, start, Court will stage Luis Alfaro’s “Mojada,” a reimagining of Euripides’ “Medea,” set in Pilsen. This production will be produced in partnership with Teatro Vista Productions and directed by Wendy Mateo and Denise Yvette Serna. “Mojada” had its world premiere at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater in 2013.
Court’s season concludes in May with “safronia,” the new opera about a family’s fight for justice across generations, created by the inaugural Chicago Poet Laureate avery r. young. The piece is being staged in a concert-style performance at Lyric Opera of Chicago this April; Lyric commissioned the piece, but it will just play for one weekend. In 2027, Court said, young and the director Timothy Douglas will bring a fully realized production to Court’s more intimate venue.
For more information, go to CourtTheatre.org.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic