Productions & Events featuring Sara Thornton

“We all got sadness. But I like to turn mine into fire, baby. What you do with yours?”

A dynamic and jazz-infused drama about what’s at stake when building a better future. In Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949, a gifted trumpeter and troubled owner of the Paradise jazz nightclub is contemplating a buyout offer for the city’s urban renewal plan. As the inhabitants of the famed but faltering jazz club ponder their options and dream of a better life, they must decide whether to fight to save what’s theirs or risk it all for a chance at redemption.

This latest from Dominique Morisseau’s widely acclaimed cycle of plays about Detroit once again proves why she’s one of America’s most urgent playwrights.

PLEASE NOTE: Peanuts will be consumed onstage during the show, and the production includes scenes of violence, multiple gunshots and strong language, as well as the use of e-cigarettes and haze.

In June 1989, as the Chinese government cracked down on a pro-democracy rally in Tiananmen Square, the iconic image of one man standing alone in front of a military tank captivated the world. Twenty years later, a photojournalist searches for the truth about that mysterious “Tank Man” in an epic, global adventure that explores the complex relationship between twin superpowers China and the United States.

This classic play is about the legacy of the past and the price of life’s choices. In a New York brownstone marked for demolition, two estranged brothers meet to sort through and sell their late father’s belongings—a pile of relics and old furniture buried by a lifetime’s worth of family baggage. What follows is a poignant, intimate, and often heart-wrenching look at the ways we are liberated or trapped by those we love.

Based on the best-selling novel and set in post-war Brooklyn, MY NAME IS ASHER LEV follows the journey of a young Jewish painter torn between his Hasidic upbringing and his desperate need to fulfill his artistic promise. When his genius threatens to destroy his relationship with his parents, young Asher realizes he must make difficult choices between his passion and his faith. This stirring adaptation of a modern classic presents a heartbreaking and triumphant vision of what it means to be an artist at any cost—against the will of family, community and tradition.

MY NAME IS ASHER LEV received its world premiere in January 2009 at the
Arden Theatre in Philadelphia and recently closed a heralded 10-month run Off- Broadway in New York City, receiving the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best New Off-Broadway play. TimeLine’s production is the play’s Chicago premiere.