THEATER
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Sept. 10, 2024-Feb. 1, 2025
This fall, J.K. Rowling’s spellbinding Broadway sensation comes to Chicago for its initial stop on its first-ever North American tour. Filled with astonishing theatrical magic, this record-breaking, Tony Award-winning hit has been hailed as “one of the most defining pop culture events of the decade” (Forbes) .
James M. Nederlander Theatre – 24 W. Randolph St., (312) 977-1700

Noises Off
Sept. 12-Oct. 27
A revival of Michael Frayn’s classic comedy, Noises Off — which is directed by Tony Award-winning ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, The Motherf**ker with the Hat) — will open the famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s 49th season. Noises Off is considered by many to be the funniest farce ever written.
Steppenwolf Downstairs Theater – 1650 N. Halsted St., (312) 335-1650

Primary Trust
Oct. 5-Nov. 3
This stage play, written by American playwright Eboni Booth, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2024 following its Off-Broadway premiere last year. The production now arrives in Chicago with producer Malkia Stampley (The October Storm) making her Goodman Theatre directing debut with this “tender, delicately detailed portrait” (New York Times) about new beginnings.
Goodman Theatre’s Owen Theatre – 170 N. Dearborn St., (312) 443-3800

Some Like It Hot
Oct. 22-Nov. 3
Like the iconic 1959 Billy Wilder film upon which it is based, Some Like It Hot is a thrill ride filled with song and dance combined with a bucket load of laughs. Described by Deadline as “a tap-dancing, razzle-dazzling embrace of everything you love about musical theater,” Some Like It Hot promises to be one of the hottest tickets in Chicago this fall.
Cadillac Palace Theatre – 151 W. Randolph St., (312) 977-1700

Leroy & Lucy
Oct. 24-Dec. 15
This world premiere production from playwright, storyteller and 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award winner Ngozi Anyanwu (Last of the Love Letters) promises a blues-filled journey into the lives of two lost souls who meet at a crossroads in the dead of night and -— together with a yearning guitar — share their secrets and desires against a backdrop
of Delta Blues.  
Steppenwolf Theater – 1650 N. Halsted St., (312) 335-1650

The Neil Diamond Musical - A Beautiful Noise
Nov. 12-Nov. 24
In the vein of Jersey Boys and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, A Beautiful Noise is the uplifting, untold story of how a kid from Brooklyn became a chartbusting, show-stopping, award-winning American icon. Featuring a catalog of classics like “America,” “Forever in Blue Jeans” and “Sweet Caroline,” A Beautiful Noise is an inspired and revelatory musical memoir.
Cadillac Palace Theatre – 151 W. Randolph St., (312) 977-1700

Mean Girls
Nov. 26-Dec. 1
Tina Fey’s seriously funny, award-winning musical Mean Girls returns to Chicago this fall, promising more of the same hilarity that wowed Broadway. Mean Girls has won raves from critics, among them New York magazine, which cheered that the production “delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” 
Auditorium Theatre – 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, (312) 341-2300
 

EXHIBITIONS
Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons
Aug. 3, 2024-Feb. 2, 2025
Andrea Carlson is the 26th artist to participate in Chicago Works, a solo exhibition series at the Museum of Contemporary Art that features artists shaping contemporary art in Chicago and beyond. Across painting, video and sculpture, Carlson’s work considers how history, relationships and power shape landscapes. The works in this exhibition reflect on how land carries memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance. 
Turner Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago –
220 E. Chicago Ave., (312) 280-2660

Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me
Oct. 12, 2024-Jan. 12, 2025
Throughout her short life, Paula Modersohn-Becker created more than 700 paintings, roughly 1,400 drawings and eleven prints — many of them frank portrayals of childhood and images of the lived bodily experience of motherhood, pregnancy and old age. This exhibition –—organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and Neue Galerie New York, and curated by Jay A. Clarke — was inspired by one of Modersohn-Becker’s letters, which showed one who was deeply invested in artistic and personal expression as well as self-determination. “I Am Me,” she wrote. “And hope to become that more and more.”
Art Institute of Chicago – 111 S. Michigan Ave., (312) 443-3600