Porchlight Music Theatre, an Equity-affiliated, nonprofit Chicago company founded in 1994, will stage its full upcoming 2026-27 season at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theatre, a historic venue in Lincoln Park that has been mostly dark since the pandemic.
Porchlight’s plans for the Biograph include the February 2027 Chicago premiere of the Broadway musical “Dead Outlaw” (music by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, with a book by Itamar Moses), a new fall staging of “Little Shop of Horrors” and both its fall “New Faces” concert and a second concert slated for next spring, this time focused on musical numbers about Chicago.
Aside from the 230-seat mainstage, the company will also use the Richard Christiansen Theatre, the Biograph’s studio space, for the first full production of “Shake It Away: The Ann Miller Story.” The solo musical play written and performed by Kayla Boye, previously seen at several fringe festivals, is slated to be performed with a live band for the first time in the spring of next year.
“Working at the Biograph will allow us to produce all of our shows in one venue instead of all over town,” said Porchlight artistic director Michael Weber, noting that Porchlight has been working everywhere from the Studebaker Theatre (where it will stage a concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” next weekend) to the Rhapsody Theatre to the House of Blues. He also emphasized that the capacity of the Biograph mainstage is close to that of the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, where Porchlight has worked most often, but where a long-lived commitment to dance has limited the company’s ability to secure prime dates for its shows or build in potential extensions for its hits.
“We will invest in being in the Biograph,” Weber said, noting that this was a one-season deal at this point but also potentially a long-term residency. “We are going to discover whether we are a good fit for the venue and whether the venue is a good fit for us.”
Victory Gardens, the nonprofit company that owns the Biograph, has mostly retreated from production after a dispute with some of its prior staffers and resident artists that played out on social media. It has regrouped with a new interim artistic director, Eddie Torres, and is also expected to produce at the Biograph next season, albeit on a smaller scale.
“Porchlight’s dedication to forging meaningful connections between artists and audiences mirrors our own, and we are proud to serve as a home for their extraordinary work,” Torres said.
The new deal with Porchlight likely will be especially well received by the restaurants and other businesses on Lincoln Avenue, many of which suffered as the Biograph became less busy, notwithstanding the Chicago International Puppet Festival, which drew capacity crowds to the venerable venue over several nights last January.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
