TUTA Theatre Chicago has announced the lineup and partial casting for TUTALab 2018; a performance incubator series aimed at developing new visions of classic and lesser-known texts.

Seating to this free production is extremely limited, with donations welcome ($10 suggested). All performances take place at TUTA Theatre, 4670 N. Manor Ave, and will feature a post-show reception and discussion with the artists.

TUTALab 2018 Lineup (from the press release): 

HEDDA: SOUND & SPACE (An Ibsen Experiment)
based on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Directed by TUTA Artistic Director Jacqueline Stone
Wednesday, July 25 and Friday, July 27, 8:00 pm
Featuring Heather Chrisler, Lauren Demerath, Letitia Guillaud, Ian Knox, Aziza Macklin, and Felix Mayes

In a time of rapidly shifting social and sexual paradigms, no work rings with more unflinching insight than that of the great Norwegian writer. Ibsen rose to prominence in large part through his refusal to follow the rules; writing plays for thinkers, for citizens, for people willing to question the moral compass of the universe.

In TUTA’s Ibsen Experiment, Artistic Director Jacqueline Stone mines a wide collection of translations and adaptations of Hedda Gabler. Using TUTA’s unique approach of ensemble, music, and design, HEDDA: SIGHTS & SOUNDS is an experiment that brings Ibsen into conversation with our own era of secrets, corruption, and the fight for freedom without compromise.

Don Juan Returns From The War
by Ödön von Horváth
Translated and Directed by Brad Gunter
Thursday, August 16th, and Friday, August 24, 8:00 pm

Written during the run-up to the second great war, Don Juan Returns from the War looks back to the aftermath of WWI, as the slightly-past-his-prime Lothario returns to a Germany populated entirely by women. Professing to have abandoned his seductive lifestyle, Don Juan seeks out the one girl he regrets abandoning, only to struggle with his old ways. This new translation explores the conflict between the roles we imagine of ourselves and those society casts us in, as well as the all-too-familiar tendency to repeat destructive patterns when offered the chance to create a new world.

Les Enfants du Paradis
Adapted for the stage by Dudley Hinton & Sebastian Armesto
Directed by Darren Hill
Monday, December 10, 7:30 pm

A theatrical adaptation of this jewel of early post-war French Cinema, Les Enfants paints a lush and lively portrait of the theatre in 1820’s Paris. Garance, a beautiful courtesan, is courted by four men who love her in their own ways; a mime, a criminal, an actor, and an aristocrat. In a swirl of passions, betrayals, and teeming crowds, the four lovers play out a mix of truth and fictions on Paris’ infamous “Boulevard of Crimes”.

To RSVP for TUTALab 2018 visit the Facebook events page at facebook.com.