Productions & Events featuring Juliet Hart

A comedic showdown between truth and fact set in the world of non-fiction publishing.

JIM FINGAL IS AN EAGER YOUNG INTERN at a high-profile magazine hoping to impress his demanding editor-in-chief, Emily Penrose. When assigned the job of fact-checking legendary writer John D’Agata’s essay about the city of Las Vegas, Jim discovers a huge problem: many of the essay’s details were made up. As the publication deadline looms, a battle between truth and fact ensues in a gripping and fast-paced comedic showdown.

Drawing from true events surrounding real-life Jim Fingal’s fact-checking of the John D’Agata essay “What Happens There,” The Lifespan of a Fact has been praised as “a smart and engaging exploration of the nature of truth and the role of the media in society,” (Chicago Tribune) and “a tightly written and expertly crafted play that keeps the audience riveted from start to finish” (The New York Times).

The book on which the play is based, The Lifespan of a Fact, received critical attention from national media including NPR, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. It was subsequently named a “Top 10 Most Crucial Book” by the editors of Slate, a “Best Book of the Year” by The Huffington Post, and an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review. 

The stage adaptation opened on Broadway in 2018, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale, and Cherry Jones.

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

This hit production, which recalls the adventure and romance of Julia and Paul Child’s journey of discovery to Paris during the 1950s, is now offered for a limited time via online video streaming.

MORE ABOUT REMOTE VIEWING

From the French bistro where Julia Child fell in love with food, to the kitchen table where she recreated everything learned during cooking class, to a room where Paul was grilled by U.S. agents about alleged Communist contact, To Master the Art is the story of a larger-than-life culinary icon and her remarkable husband as they struggle to find themselves as Americans abroad.

Commissioned by TimeLine in 2008, To Master the Art received its world premiere at TimeLine in 2010, selling out its 8-week run within days and receiving more than 20 rave reviews and five Jeff Award nominations, including New Work and Production. The production was remounted in 2013 at the Broadway Playhouse via the Chicago Commercial Collective, Broadway In Chicago, and producers Brian Loevner and Aurélia F. Cohen. The video that will stream during this remote viewing run was filmed during the 2013 production.

During its two previous Chicago runs, To Master the Art was acclaimed as “an excellent, intimate, foodie-friendly staging, resonant with atmosphere and the kind of classic, cozy, autumnal kitchen ambiance that makes one want to swear off takeout food from this moment forth” by the Chicago Tribune, and “a total delight—funny, touching, charming and as enjoyable as an exquisite meal enjoyed together with good company” by Talkin’ Broadway. And Woditsch’s performance as Julia Child was declared “magnificent” and “a piece of acting not to be missed” (Chicago Tribune) and “so absolutely perfect … that we left the theater discussing the possibility that she is actually a better Julia Child than [Meryl] Streep” (Newcity).

“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.

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.

Richard Nelson’s celebrated series of four Apple Family Plays—first commissioned by The Public Theatre in New York where they premiered on the day they are set—explores politics, change, and family dynamics. TimeLine presents the Chicago debut of two of these remarkable works (the first and third in the series) on an alternating schedule.

Set in the American town of Rhinebeck, New York, That Hopey Changey Thing takes place as the polls close on the 2010 mid-term elections, and Sorry is set on the morning of the presidential election in 2012. Both explore how a family sorts through personal and political feelings of loss and confusion in the shadow of history as it is being made.

TimeLine’s 2012-13 season opener is an elegant waltz between past and present, fact and speculation, a mother and daughter, and art and life. One of classical music’s enduring riddles is why Ludwig van Beethoven devoted four years of his diminishing life writing 33 variations of a mediocre waltz. Two hundred years later, a modern-day music scholar is driven to solve the mystery even as her own health and relationship with her daughter crumbles.

The result is an extraordinary new American play — accompanied throughout by a live pianist playing the variations themselves — about passion, parenthood, and the moments of beauty that can transform a life.