8 Best Performing Arts in Chicago, Illinois

Redmoon Theater

Pilsen Fodor's choice

Telling imaginative, almost magical stories is Redmoon Theater's specialty. The company's “spectacles” take a number of forms but can best be described as madcap theater with a twist—imagine a mix of live music, puppetry, pageantry, and visual art. Some are staged outdoors, others inside a converted Pilsen warehouse called Spectacle Hall.

Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University

South Loop

Designed by notable architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, the 4,300-seat, Romanesque Revival–style Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University opened in 1899 as an opera house and later became a National Historic Landmark. Known for its perfect acoustics and excellent sight lines, the ornate theater features marble mosaics, dramatic gilded ceiling arches, and intricate murals. (Also of note: This was one of the first public buildings to have electric lighting and air-conditioning.)

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Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place

Near North Side

Formerly known as Drury Lane, the 550-seat theater in Water Tower Place was taken over in 2010 by the Broadway in Chicago group, which modernized the space and reopened it as the Broadway Playhouse. Its inaugural season included a new production of hometown scribe Studs Terkel's Working.

Collaboraction

Wicker Park

Actors, artists, and musicians share the stage in Collaboraction's experimental free-for-alls. In recent seasons, the company has refocused its mission on social justice, with original performances taking on issues specific to Chicago communities.

Court Theatre

Hyde Park
This professional theater on the campus of the University of Chicago has a mission of producing "classic theater," but it's expanded the definition of that term well beyond Shakespeare and the Greeks. You'll find those here—and done exceptionally well—but Court also produces stunning reinventions of musicals, works by August Wilson and Pearl Cleage that have helped it tap into Hyde Park's largely black population, and the occasional new play dealing in classical themes.

Royal George Theatre

Lincoln Park

The Royal George is actually a complex of three theaters: a spacious main stage, a smaller studio theater, and a cabaret space. Popular plays and long-running musical comedies are the draw here.