World Premiere

September 2 – October 4, 2026

A powerful world premiere about science, power, and the women who paid the price for progress. 

In the mid20th century, a radical dream begins to take shape: a simple pill that would give women full control over their reproductive futures. Championing this groundbreaking idea are feminist activist Margaret Sanger, scientist Gregory Pincus, gynecologist John Rock, and philanthropist Katharine McCormick—visionaries working under intense secrecy amid legal, scientific, and religious roadblocks. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, clinical trials place the burden of experimentation on women like Ramona Delgado, whose lives and bodies become entangled in the quest for scientific advancement. 

Commissioned and developed by TimeLine and based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Eig (King: A Life), this world premiere explores questions about consent, sacrifice, and the complicated cost of social change.

The commission and development of The Birth of the Pill was supported in part by the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation.

Runs approximately 1 hour, 40 minutes

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The Normal Heart

Oct 26, 2013 - Dec 29, 2013

Originally premiered Off-Broadway in 1985, TimeLine’s production is the first Chicago staging of this landmark play that “blasts you like an open, overstoked furnace” (The New York Times) since its Tony-Award winning Broadway production in 2011. Set at the height of the public and private indifference to the AIDS plague in the early 1980s, this searing drama will feature acclaimed actor/director David Cromer in his return to the Chicago stage as a passionate activist leading the fight to awaken the world to the crisis. Along the way he, and the community he leads into the battle, must face the deeply held fears that led so many to remain silent for too long.