Pictured: Rashada Dawan

Firebrand Theatre has announced the lineup for its second season, featuring two fully-produced musicals, including a Chicago premiere.

The season starts in the fall when Firebrand partners with TimeLine Theatre Company for a revival of the Tony Award-nominated Best Musical CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, featuring music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, and direction by Lili-Anne Brown. Rashada Dawan stars in the title role as Caroline.

The season concludes in spring 2019 with the Chicago premiere of QUEEN OF THE MIST, featuring book, music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa, and direction by Elizabeth Margolius.

Firebrand’s season will be presented at its resident home, The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. For more information visit firebrandtheatre.org.

Firebrand Theatre’s 2018-19 Season (from the press release):

September 2018
CAROLINE, OR CHANGE – Presented in partnership with TimeLine Theatre Company
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book and Lyrics by Tony Kushner
Directed by Lili-Anne Brown
Featuring Rashada Dawan as Caroline

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is set in Lake Charles, Louisiana: the end of 1963. America is changing. Caroline Thibodeaux is a mother of four and a maid, working for the southern Jewish Gellman family. Caroline struggles with changes monumental and mundane, and her relationship with the young, grieving boy who lives in the house she cleans. Riveting, moving and awe-inspiring, CAROLINE, OR CHANGE features a virtuosic score by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Violet) and a breathtaking book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America), the music ranges from Motown to Klezmer, the storytelling from political to magical.

May 2019
QUEEN OF THE MIST
Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa
Directed by Elizabeth Margolius

QUEEN OF THE MIST is based on the astounding and outrageously true story of Anna Edson Taylor, who in 1901 set out to be the first woman to shoot Niagara Falls in a barrel of her own design. Navigating both the treacherous Falls and a fickle public with a ravenous appetite for sensationalism, this unconventional heroine vies for her legacy in a world clamoring with swindling managers, assassins, revolutionaries, moralizing family, anarchists, and activists. With a soaring score that incorporates turn of the century themes with LaChiusa’s signature complexity and insight, QUEEN OF THE MIST is the story of a single great fall, and how one woman risked death so that she could live.