The Goodman Theatre today announced its 2023-2024 season, the first one helmed by newly appointed artistic director Susan V. Booth — the first woman to lead the 98-year-old theater.
The roster reveals an eclectic mix of topics, from wrestling to opera, and includes work by artists ranging from African American playwrights Pearl Cleage and August Wilson to novelist Margaret Atwood, actress Dana Delany, Goodman resident director Mary Zimmerman and Iranian American playwright Sanaz Toossi.
Booth — a former director of new play development at the Goodman who, for the past 21 years, was artistic director at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre — spent recent months catching up on the Chicago theater scene, one that has greatly evolved over two decades. What she has seen, she says, has buoyed her as she created the season.
“I’ve seen some really audacious, brave programming in theaters around town. And I’m looking at an audience that is hungry for that work and it just makes my heart glad,” Booth says, adding that her goal with the new season was “to put as many voices and points of view — both aesthetic and cultural — on stage as possible.”
First up is Cleage’s “The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years.” The comedy, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, follows six African American debutantes as they are introduced to a world of wealth and privilege in turbulent 1960s Alabama.
“This is a playwright who has done for Black actresses what August Wilson did for Black actors in terms of widely expanding the canon of meaty, smart, complicated works,” Booth says of Cleage, whose work (“Blues for an Alabama Sky”) last appeared on the Goodman stage in 1998.
The intriguing “Highway Patrol” is a many-handed effort created by a group of artists, including veteran actress Dana Delany, playwright Jen Silverman and director Mike Donahue. The play was born out of a real-life Twitter thread between Delany (she stars) and a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation.
What Booth loves about this world premiere is that there is nothing in theater to compare it to: “The notion of a play that is fully constructed from online communication was hugely appealing to me. It speaks to a really resonant moment about relationships and where they lie.”
Booth says another element of her season “wish list” was to include a play that “spoke to multiple generations, not a kids’ show, but something that had the capacity to reach young viewers as well as seasoned viewers.”
With that in mind, she reached out to Zimmerman, a writer-director known for her creative, unique vision, who adapts and directs “The Matchbox Magic Flute,” a new version of Mozart’s opera.
“It’s not straight-up opera. It looks at that glorious music obviously and that story, but renders it available to a contemporary theater audience,” Booth notes.
Booth will direct “The Penelopiad,” Margaret Atwood’s adaptation of her “funny, subversive” novella, a remix of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” which shifts the story to Odysseus’ long-suffering wife Penelope, whom he left for 20 years, and her 12 faithful maids.
Continuing the Goodman’s chronological run of Wilson’s American Century Cycle is “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” a story of spiritual and emotional resurrection directed by Chuck Smith. The play is the second in the cycle, and “shows what a social historian, what a master craftsman Wilson was,” Booth says.
The world premiere musical comedy “Female Troubles: A Period Piece,” written by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden (head writers for “Seinfeld” and “Veep”) with music by Curtis Moore and Amanda Green, is set in 19th century England as a pregnant, unmarried woman sets out on a raucous journey to seek the help of infamous midwife Madame Restell.
The Goodman also teams with the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance to present Christopher Llewyn Ramirez and Jeff Colangelo’s “Lucha Teotl,” an immersive piece that tells the cultural history of Lucha Libre wresting.
And in Sanaz Toossi’s Obie Award-winning comedy “English,” directed by Hamid Dehghani, four adult students in Karaj, Iran, are studying English in order to pass a proficiency test — the key to receiving a green card.
The season also includes the 46th annual staging of “A Christmas Carol” starring Larry Yando and New Stages Festival, a presentation of new plays.
For ticket packages, visit goodmantheatre.org/remix. Single tickets go on sale in July.
The 2023-2024 Goodman Theatre schedule:
- “The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years” (Sept. 16-Oct. 15)
- “A Christmas Carol” (Nov. 18-Dec. 31)
- “Highway Patrol” (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
- “The Penelopiad” (March 2-31)
- “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (April 13-May 19)
- “Female Troubles: A Period Piece” (June 25-Aug. 4)
In the Owen Theatre:
- “Lucha Teotl” (Sept. 29-Oct. 29)
- “The Matchbox Magic Flute” (Feb. 10-March 10)
- “English” (May 10-June 9)
- New Stages Festival (Dec.)
