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By all rights, Chicago should have seen a production of A Strange Loop by now. The musical won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2020, then snagged the Tony for best musical two years later, yet it never got an official North American tour. When Chicago theater director Mikael Burke saw the show in D.C. in 2021, he “came back on fire,” he says, determined to eventually do his own version. That time is now: Two companies Burke often works with — About Face Theatre and Raven Theatre — are coproducing the Chicago premiere, with Burke at the helm.
As the title suggests, this is an ouroboros of a show: “It’s about a fat Black gay man writing a musical about a fat Black gay man writing a musical,” Burke explains. The creator, Michael R. Jackson, insists the story is self-referential, not autobiographical. As it happens, Burke also has much in common with the protagonist: Black, queer, raised religious. Burke grew up in Nashville, singing in the church choir, but his sexuality eventually clashed with his parents’ conservative views. (They’ve since reconciled, which is also echoed in the show’s story line.) Now 39 and living in Lake View, he arrived in Chicago in 2015 to study directing. Since graduating from DePaul, he’s won two Jeff Awards.
Burke has ideas about why Loop, despite the critical acclaim, didn’t become a smash: “You will laugh your butt off and probably shed a tear, but it’s a hard sell. It’s about trauma and how difficult it is to love yourself.” It’s also raunchy, which makes producers nervous. No surprise, then, that two of Chicago’s smaller yet storied companies are the ones taking the risk.
The show’s meta concept meshes with Burke’s directorial style. “I call what I do ‘feelism’ instead of ‘realism.’ You’re not going to come to my play and see a fourth-wall living-room-type thing. My work is more out of the box. But I am going to give you an experience that, at its heart, communicates to you in a real, grounded way.”
A Strange Loop runs October 8 to November 8 at Raven Theatre.
Web Behrens is the contributing Go editor for Chicago magazine.
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