AMELIE, JEKYLL & HYDE Set For Kokandy Productions 2025 Season
Check out the complete lineup.
By: Joshua Wright Oct. 07, 2024
Kokandy Productions announced today its 2025 season, including two fully-produced musicals and the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival.
Spend next summer in Paris (Montmartre, to be exact) with the Chicago premiere of Amélie, based on the 2001 film of the same name. Kokandy presents the charming tale of Amélie and the fantastical world of whimsy and romance that surrounds her. The entire Chopin basement, including the lobby, bar and cafe, will envelop audiences in Amélie’s journey.
Just in time for Halloween, Kokandy embraces gothic horror with a revival of Jekyll & Hyde – the first Chicago staging of the macabre musical in over 15 years. The epic and sweeping score takes the company to the Chopin Mainstage for the first time, creating a chilling chamber for this haunting tale.
Full productions in the 2025 season will be presented at The Chopin Theater, 1543 W Division St. in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Single tickets will go on sale Friday, April 1, 2025 at www.kokandyproductions.com.
After a successful return in 2024, Kokandy is also pleased to steward the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival (dates and venue TBD). CMTF spotlights musical writers, composers, producers and fans with a festival of concert readings of exciting and challenging new works. Throughout the year, the company will continue the popular Kokandy Book Club, an intimate salon series celebrating theatre, music and community presented at The Understudy, 5531 N. Clark St. in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood. Each meeting will focus on a well-known play or musical – investigating the plot, themes and relevant tangents through a mix of musical theatre and pop/rock performance.
Producing Artistic Director Derek Van Barham says, “In 2025, we’re looking to escape. A technicolor trip to France, a lamplit stroll through late-night London. No matter how far we go, we cannot escape ourselves. At first glance, Amélie’s romantic daydreams seem to have nothing in common with Dr. Henry Jekyll’s haunting hypotheses, and yet… both seek to explore what’s hiding inside. This is an eclectic season for dreamers and nightmare enthusiasts alike. And with the idiosyncratic intimacy of Amelie against Jekyll’s epic scope, we’re challenging ourselves as a company to be both smaller and bigger than we’ve been before. Good and evil, light and dark, upstairs and downstairs – can’t wait to play!”
Kokandy Productions’ 2025 Season includes:
Spring 2025 – Date/Venue TBA
Chicago Musical Theatre Festival
The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival (CMTF) features concert presentations of new musicals from Chicago and across the country. Originally produced by Underscore Theatre Company and now under the leadership of Kokandy Productions, the festival is a celebration of new work, designed to highlight emerging musical theatre creators.
July 17 - September 28, 2025
Amélie
Book by Craig Lucas
Music by Daniel Messé
Lyrics by Nathan Tysen & Daniel Messé
in the Chopin Downstairs Studio
Amélie is an extraordinary young woman who lives quietly in the world but loudly in her mind. She covertly improvises small but surprising acts of kindness that bring joy and mayhem. But when a chance at love comes her way, Amélie realizes that to find happiness she’ll have to risk everything and say what’s in her heart. Be inspired by this imaginative dreamer who finds her voice, discovers the power of connection, and sees possibility around every corner.
October 10 - December 21, 2025
Jekyll & Hyde
Conceived for the Stage by Frank Wildhorn & Steve Cuden
Book and Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse
Music by Frank Wildhorn
Based on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson
on the Chopin Theater Mainstage
An evocative tale of two men – one, a doctor, passionate and romantic; the other, a terrifying madman – and two women – one, beautiful and trusting; the other, beautiful and trusting only herself – both women in love with the same man and both unaware of his dark secret. A devoted man of science, Dr. Henry Jekyll is driven to find a chemical breakthrough that can solve some of mankind's most challenging medical dilemmas. Rebuffed by the powers that be, he decides to make himself the subject of his own experimental treatments, accidentally unleashing his inner demons along with the man that the world would come to know as Mr. Hyde.
About Kokandy Productions
Founded in 2010, Kokandy Productions seeks to leverage the heightened reality of musical theater to tell complex and challenging stories, with a focus on contributing to the development of Chicago-based musical theater artists, and raising the profile of Chicago's non-Equity musical theater community.
The company's artistic staff is comprised of Derek Van Barham (Producing Artistic Director), Scot T. Kokandy (Executive Producer), Adrian Abel Azevedo and Leda Hoffmann (Artistic Associates) and Jeff Meyer (Webmaster/Graphic Designer).
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