Productions & Events featuring Mechelle Moe

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.

Named one of the “100 plays of the century” by the Royal National Theatre, Githa Sowerby’s rarely produced family drama is a smart and absorbing twist on a woman’s “place” in a male dominated society.

In the industrial north of England in 1912, the patriarch of the Rutherford family has spent decades building a respected glass works company to pass on to his children, without any say from them. Caught between passion, purpose, and expectation, John, Richard, and Janet struggle to break free from an oppressive and narrow-minded father dead set on writing their stories himself. Less entangled by these family expectations and with ambitions to give her son the life he deserves, John’s young wife Mary is determined to upend the cycle, whatever it takes.

Playing on the conventions of the period with wit and creative edge, Rutherford and Son is a play ahead of its time, asking us to question if our “place” in life should be anything but what we ourselves determine it to be.

The estimated run time is 2 hours and 10 minutes, including one intermission.

A hopeful and moving story of loss, love, and the power of faith.

At the dawn of the millennium in a darkened church in northern Uganda, the daughter of American missionaries and a local teenage girl prepare to exchange vows in a secret, makeshift wedding ceremony. But when the brutality of the war zone around them encroaches on their fragile union, the two are faced with a reality they cannot escape. Confronting the religious and cultural roots of intolerance, Cardboard Piano explores violence and its aftermath, as well as the human capacity for hatred, forgiveness, and love.

Cardboard Piano premiered as a part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2016. The Louisville Courier-Journal called it “haunting,” writing that “this promising playwright’s story suggests a power in facing the damage done and picking up the pieces to inform each step forward.”

Cardboard Piano includes incidents of stage violence, gunshots, water-based theatrical haze, and flashing lights. If you would like more information, please call the Box Office.

Boy explores the beauty of finding love, the complexity of gender identity, and the consequences of the choices we make for those we love. In the 1960s, a surgical accident causes a well-intentioned doctor to convince the parents of twin boys to raise one as a girl. Although Adam transitions back to a male identity at age 14, the repercussions of his parents’ choice continue to reverberate as those involved struggle to connect with each other and themselves, stuck between hope for the future and uncertainty about the past.

The story follows Adam as a young adult in the 1980s finding love for the first time, with glimpses of his childhood that provide a window into what it’s like to grow up in an identity that doesn’t fit.

TimeLine brings Chicago its first view of this “insightful, gut-wrenching, and beautiful play” that is “dazzlingly, deliciously alive from start to finish” (Talkin’ Broadway), and that “has both the white hot issue of gender identity and the simple fact that it’s very, very good in its favor” (Huffington Post).

“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.

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.

In this landmark comedy set inside the crowded pressroom at Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building during the 1920s, a group of reporters cover a controversial execution and expose the rampant corruption, scandal and hi-jinx associated with Windy City politics and journalism. TimeLine is thrilled to revive a quintessential Chicago classic and to highlight for audiences the wealth of local history embedded in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s hilarious and semi-autobiographical script.