Productions & Events featuring Anish Jethmalani

TimeLine presents the Chicago premiere production of the 2022 Tony Award winner for Best Play!

Told in three parts over one evening, The Lehman Trilogy is the quintessential story of western capitalism, rendered through the lens of a single immigrant family. On a cold September morning in 1844, a young Jewish man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is soon joined by his two brothers, and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish—Lehman Brothers—spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, triggering the largest financial crisis in history. Weaving together nearly two centuries of family history, this theatrical event charts the humble beginnings, outrageous successes, and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees.

Throughout its production history, The Lehman Trilogy has been met with extraordinary international acclaim. The Guardian proclaimed the original production “a kaleidoscopic social and political metaphor” and “an intimate epic about the shifting definition of the American Dream.” The Chicago Tribune praised it as “a masterwork” and The New York Times as “a vivid tale of profit and pain.” Vanity Fair raved that it is “true blockbuster theatre that will hold you captive until the final curtain call,” with Time Out New York saying “it leaves you dazzled.” And the Wall Street Journal declared that The Lehman Trilogy “surpasses all praise.”

The Lehman Trilogy is supported in part by Richard and Diane Weinberg

Single tickets to The Lehman Trilogy are only available through Broadway In Chicago. Please visit their website to purchase.

A digital lottery for a limited number of $25 seats will be held for every performance of The Lehman Trilogy. Seat locations and the number of tickets awarded by the lottery are always subject to availability. Click here for details and to enter.

CONTENT ADVISORY: To learn more about the specific content and themes of this production, please visit our content advisory page.

Join us via Zoom video conference for this virtual panel discussion featuring cast members Mitchell Fain, Anish Jethmalani, and Joey Slotnick, alongside co-director Nick Bowling, chatting about their experience bringing The Lehman Trilogy to the stage.

This event has already occurred, but you can now watch a recording of the discussion on demand, embedded above and available on TimeLine’s YouTube channel!

Based on the true story of Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, who formed the first political consulting firm in U.S. history, Campaigns, Inc. is a hysterical and jaw-dropping inside look at the underbelly of politics through the lens of two of the undeniable founders of “fake news.”

IT IS 1934, and famous novelist Upton Sinclair is all but guaranteed to become the first Democratic governor of the state of California—until a young, unknown pair of consultants from the shadows of the challenger’s campaign attempt to take him down. As Frank Merriam and Sinclair battle it out in the spotlight—seeking endorsements from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and FDR—Baxter and Whitaker work behind-the-scenes to methodically construct one of the most spectacular, unbelievable, and star-studded smear campaigns ever.

This world premiere play was developed through TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective, launched in 2013 to support Chicago-based playwrights in residence and create new work centered on TimeLine’s mission. Campaigns, Inc. is the third play developed through the Collective to receive a full production, following Brett Neveu’s To Catch a Fish (2018) and Tyla Abercrumbie’s Relentless (TimeLine and Goodman Theatre, 2022). Campaigns, Inc. received its first public reading as part of our inaugural First Draft Playwrights Collective Festival in 2018.

Although TimeLine’s production of Campaigns, Inc. has been postponed, we can still start the conversation!

Set in 1934, Campaigns, Inc. follows The Jungle novelist Upton Sinclair as he is challenged in his bid to be the first Democratic governor of California, exposing a timely true story about the power that persuasion, deceit, and perception hold in the U.S. electoral system.

This live virtual event will feature playwright Will Allan, dramaturg Maren Robinson, and special guest speaker Jessica Lee (Snopes.com) in a panel discussion exploring a notable early example of “fake news” and how we got from there to today’s political climate. Introduced by director Nick Bowling and moderated by TimeLine Company Member Anish Jethmalani, the event will also feature scenes from the play performed by cast members Charles Andrew Gardner, Terry Hamilton, Larry Baldacci, and Tyler Meredith.

This FREE & one-night-only event will be presented live on YouTube.

If you want to let us know you plan to watch, you can still register via the “Buy Tickets” link below. But there are no tickets required to watch the livestream. Just settle in via your preferred viewing platform before 7:30pm (CDT), and enjoy!

Watch the Livestream

“A riveting political thriller.”
— Associated Press

Don’t miss TimeLine’s Chicago premiere of the 2017 Tony Award® winner for Best Play—a remarkable story about the unlikely friendships, quiet heroics, and sheer determination that pushed two foes to reach something neither thought truly possible—peace.

When the Israeli prime minister and the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization shook hands on the White House lawn in 1993, the world had no idea what it took to orchestrate that momentous occasion. Behind the scenes, a Norwegian diplomat and her social scientist husband hatched an intricate, top secret, and sometimes comical scheme to gather an unexpected assortment of players at an idyllic estate just outside Oslo. Far from any international glare, mortal enemies were able to face each other not as adversaries, but as fellow human beings.

J.T. Roger’s’ Oslo is a humorous, surprising, and inspiring true story about the people inside politics, and the incredible progress that is possible when we focus on what makes us human—together.

“Leave behind the stranglehold of convention and loosen your corset, you will breathe much better.”

This intimate and humorous story of awakening, equality, and the need for connection was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award nominee for Best Play. It is the 1880s and Thomas Edison’s invention of the electric light has begun to change the fabric of daily life. Inspired by Edison’s discovery, scientist and inventor Dr. Givings experiments with a piece of machinery to treat the increasingly common affliction of female hysteria. When he starts to see a new patient regularly, his wife’s curiosity with the invention and what occurs “in the next room” grows, leading to discoveries of her own. Don’t miss this entertaining night of self-discovery which shows that human connection is not simply a means to an end, but a vital part of life itself.

TimeLine presents a new and rare staging of this exquisite, internationally acclaimed play about love, math, and how the past and future connect. In 1913, a clerk in rural India named Srinivasa Ramanujan sends a letter to famed mathematician G.H. Hardy, filled with astonishing mathematical theorems. In the present, a math professor and a businessman fall in love. Told in a mesmerizing whirlwind of vignettes spanning history and time, A Disappearing Number is a love letter to numbers, blending the beauty of everyday relationships with the mysticism of the cosmos.

Winner of the 2007 Critics’ Circle Theatre, Evening Standard, and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play.

On the eve of the United States’ invasion of Baghdad in 2003, an Iraqi museum curator plots to save treasured antiquities from destruction—including the statue of ancient mother goddess Inana. Fleeing to London with his young, mysterious bride, he makes a life-altering deal to ensure the statue’s preservation. Against this background of international and personal intrigue, the couple’s poignant and beautiful love story opens a window of hope and healing.

This spy thriller—named one of the Top 10 plays of 2011 by The New York Times — goes deep inside the secret United States intrigue that powered the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s. A CIA operative struggles against conditions on the ground and politics in the halls of Washington to stop the Soviet Army’s destruction of Afghanistan. As alliances shift and the outcome of the Cold War appears to hang in the balance, he and an Afghan warlord find that the only one they can trust is each other. This bold new play unmasks the actions of men behind one of recent history’s greatest events — the repercussions of which still shape our lives.