Chicago Shakespeare Theater will present the North American premiere of Brokeback Mountain, a stage play adapted from Annie Proulx's novella and its 2005 film version. The work will run May 28鈥揓une 28, 2026 in the company's Jentes Family Courtyard Theater.
The work, adapted by Ashley Robinson, made its world premiere in London's West End in 2023, with Broadway alums Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges starring as two cowboys in 1963 who strike up an unlikely romance while working together in isolation on Brokeback Mountain in a still very homophobic world.
Casting for the Chicago bow is to be announced. Jonathan Butterell will again direct, with Dan Gillespie Sells (Everybody's Talking About Jamie) providing the play's original country western songs, performed live on stage.
鈥�Brokeback Mountain has been recreated in several different forms, each with its own distinctive moods and impact," says Proulx in a statement. "Ashley鈥檚 script is fresh and deeply moving, opening sight lines not visible in the original nor successive treatments. The story has always projected a sense of the difficult fated solitudes that echo in Wyoming鈥檚 tawny landscapes. The joinery of script, actors, director, theatre, [and] audiences becomes a complex watershed of dozens of mountain streams finally merging into a river of sensibility.鈥�
The run is part of the company's newly announced 2025-2026 season, which will also give a world premiere to Lauren Gunderson's new play about lesbian sports icon Billie Jean King, Billie Jean, running this year July 10鈥揂ugust 10 in The Yard with Marc Bruni at the helm; and a reimagining of the 1978 Broadway Fats Waller revue Ain't Misbehavin', performing September 3鈥�28. The latter will be co-directed by the show's original creator-director Richard Maltby, Jr. and Tony-winning actor Andr茅 De Shields, who was in the work's original Broadway cast.
鈥淭he creation of Ain鈥檛 Misbehavin鈥�, often referred to as the greatest musical revue of all time, was marked by so many accidents, coincidences, and magical surprises that, even while it was happening it felt to us creating it that the show was somehow blessed," says Maltby in a statement. "What was intended to be pure entertainment turned out鈥攂ecause it was based on Fats Waller's life, art, and gargantuan personality鈥攖o suddenly have acquired a deeper significance that transcended a mere revue, and conjured up the story, the humanity, and the entire zeitgeist of the Harlem Renaissance. Now, nearly 50 years later, Andr茅 De Shields and I are grateful to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater for the opportunity to release the magic to happen again as we bring a brilliant new cast into the creative process and reimagine the show for audiences today.鈥�
"We artists/activists, who embrace the discipline of theatre as a way to life, understand that the journey is taken in search of the eternal," adds De Shields. "Our souls are nourished and our senses informed by the unique communities we either encounter or create as we seek. When, in June of 1978, Ain't Misbehavin' opened on Broadway鈥攚inning the Tony Award for Best Musical鈥攊t was confirmation of the journey I had begun nearly a decade earlier in Chicago during the summer of 1969. I return to Chicago to celebrate. Lesson: theatre as a way of life is finite; theatre as a way to life is in-finite."
The season also includes Circus Abyssinia's Ethiopian Dreams, performing July 10-August 3; the return of Shakes in the City: A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed at sites throughout Chicago July 19-August 17; a world premiere "add-rap-tation" of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar from the Q Brothers Collective titled Rome Sweet Rome, performing September 23-October 19; the North American premiere of Levi Holloway (Grey House)'s Paranormal Activity: A New Story Live on Stage October 15-November 2; a new staging of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing November 16-December 21; the launch of the U.S. tour of Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamnet February 10-March 8, 2026; The Merry Wives of Windsor April 2-May 3, 2026; and Indian Ink Theatre's Mrs. Krishnan's Party April 7-26, 2026.
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