Marti Lyons can’t single out just one thread that connects the plays she’s drawn to. Instead, she offers up a double helix. “I have a personal fascination with both human suffering and human resiliency, and I think that they often go hand in hand,” says the 33-year-old director. “One of the reasons I love the theater is it can be like a laboratory that investigates human nature.”

Lyons’s next experiment is The Niceties, a two-character drama by Eleanor Burgess, at Writers Theatre. The play takes the form of tense conversations between a white history professor (played by Mary Beth Fisher) and a black student (Ayanna Bria Bakari), who asserts in a term paper that the American Revolution owes its success to slavery. The structure parallels that of Oleanna, David Mamet’s 1992 broadside against political correctness on campus. But unlike Mamet, who put his thumb on the scale for the white male establishment, Burgess doesn’t take sides. “It’s a debate play,” Lyons says. “Both of them are right and both of them are wrong, and the playwright doesn’t decide for us who to align with.”

Those gray areas of human nature tend to define Lyons’s recent efforts, such as Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, which opened at Victory Gardens in April — it’s both a musical celebration and a reckoning with the dark places our survival instincts can take us. “I do love working on the classics,” Lyons says. “But the opportunity to collaborate with these writers who are the voices of our generation, that’s really exhilarating.”

Five More Things to See

1 X Marks Sideshow Theatre’s Spot

Sept. 22–Oct. 27
British playwright Alistair McDowall has a way with the unexpected, such as dropping supernatural elements into otherwise grubby crime stories. Sideshow Theatre Company, a troupe with its own affinity for the abnormal, is a strong match to stage the U.S. premiere at Victory Gardens of McDowall’s X, a thriller set in a research outpost on Pluto.

2 Isango Holds Out Hope

Oct. 4–13
Last seen in 2014 with an Africanized staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Cape Town’s Isango Ensemble returns to Chicago Shakespeare Theater with an equally acclaimed musical adaptation of the 2014 book A Man of Good Hope, the true-life chronicle of a young Somali refugee’s yearslong journey to South Africa.

3 Porchlight Is Ready for Its Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

Oct. 11–Nov. 24
The musical theater troupe has been on a hot streak since taking up residence at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts two seasons ago. Its new challenge: tackling the big-screen bombast of Sunset Boulevard, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of the Billy Wilder film.

4 Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Steppenwolf Soundtrack

Nov. 7–Jan. 5
This South African choral group, known stateside for its collaborations with Paul Simon, also has a long-standing relationship with Steppenwolf (it first performed for the company in 1992). Ladysmith returns to underscore Eric Simonson’s new Lindiwe, a love story starring South African actress Nondumiso Tembe.

5 Two Adventurous Theater Companies, One Smart Sex Comedy

Nov. 13–Dec. 14
The New Colony and Broken Nose Theatre combine forces to premiere Liam Fitzgerald’s Peg, a comedic portrait of a couple reevaluating their relationship while trying something new in the bedroom. Actors Stephanie Shum and Gage Wallace, a compelling combo, promise to give a real thrust to the proceedings. — K.V.