Chicago—Remy Bumppo Theatre Company returns to the stage for its 2022-2023 season with three plays that celebrate the resilience of the human spirit, our need for creative self-expression, and the never-ending desire for emotional connection. Examining the unexpected relationships that are born in life-altering circumstances, these bold, provocative works will capture your imagination with electrifying, language-driven, funny, unique, heart-wrenching stories.
Routes
By Rachel De-lahay,
Directed by Mikael Burke
Featuring Core Ensemble Member Terry Bell
October 12 – November 20, 2022
An American Premiere!
Olufemi hopes to return home to his family. Bashir wants to remain in the only home he knows. Kola yearns to find home in a place that’s never felt like one. Rachel De-lahay’s shattering, urgent new play looks through the eyes of immigrants, refugees, and children in conflict with the law as they fight to get home through an impossibly complex system designed to keep them out.
Anna in the Tropics
By Nilo Cruz
Directed by Laura Alcalá Baker
Featuring Core Ensemble Member Charín Alvarez
February 8 – March 19, 2023
The first major revival in Chicago in 20 years!
In a Cuban American cigar factory just outside Ybor City in 1929, a charismatic lector reads Anna Karenina aloud to pass the hours. As Anna’s passions are enunciated, the workers’ hidden desires bubble to the surface, becoming a powderkeg that must eventually explode in the Florida heat. Nilo Cruz’s passionate classic shines an unrelenting light on the search for identity in the American landscape.
God’s Spies
By Bill Cain
Directed by Artistic Director Marti Lyons
Featuring Core Ensemble Member Linda Gillum
April 5 – May 14, 2023
A World Premiere!
London, 1603. A famous playwright is beset by self-doubt after writing the world’s greatest play, Hamlet. The plague grips the city, and the playwright is forced into quarantine with an idealistic young lawyer and a shrewd sex-worker. As the city burns just outside their door, they turn to creativity in order to survive, and a new masterpiece is born from the ashes. Bill Cain’s God’s Spies is a funny and heart-wrenching love-letter to Shakespeare and the value of art during times of struggle.
For more information, visit www.remybumppo.org/shows.