Angels in America:
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika

March 30 - June 3

“The Great Work Begins.” The year is 1985: Ronald Reagan has just been reelected to a second term, and the deadly AIDS epidemic is at its height in New York City. Tony Kushner’s two-part epic historical drama captures the lives of the HIV-positive Prior; Louis, his lover who abandons him; Joe, a closeted gay Mormon; his Valium-addicted wife Harper; Roy Cohn, a notorious lawyer from the McCarthy hearings, dying of AIDS; Belize, his African-American nurse; Hannah, Joe’s mother from Utah; and the Angel, a terrifyingly beautiful herald of the apocalypse. As these characters discover, confront, and seduce each other during a time of death, hypocrisy, and tumultuous change, Kushner summons a restless pastiche of the historical and the supernatural, the theological and the political—all told with surging theatricality by a company of eight actors. Having directed Kushner’s Caroline, or Change and The Illusion, Court’s Artistic Director Charles Newell will direct Millennium Approaches and a newly-revised Perestroika in repertory performance, giving Court audiences the unique opportunity to experience Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning magnum opus in its magnificent entirety.

The Invisible Man
 January 12 through February 19

“I am an invisible man.” In this world premiere stage production, the first authorized by The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust, a landmark American novel comes to life. Ralph Ellison’s classic story of a young African American’s search for his identity blazes with luminous theatricality and truth. Adapted by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, Invisible Man marks the first Chicago appearance by award-winning New York City director Christopher McElroen, a co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Invisible Man is a produced in association with Christopher McElroen Productions.