Steppenwolf Theatre Unveils LookOut Spring 2025 Season

LookOut, Steppenwolf Theatre’s performance series that presents the work of local artists and companies across genre and form, has revealed its Spring 2025 Season, showcasing the eclectic work of Chicago's dynamic community of dancers, choreographers and performance artists. Highlights from the lineup of nine unique engagements include: Knockout, a dynamic and daringly athletic duet from Kara Brody and Erin Kilmurray; a reverent new work venerating Queer history and representation from Darling Squire; and The Uncanny Attic, a cult-favorite celebration of the work of gothic illustrator Edward Gorey.

Additionally, the LookOut Series is thrilled to announce the return of its curatorial residency program. Celebrated drag artist and self-proclaimed “Bollywood Barbie” Abhijeet will curate two drag programs investigating the culture of idol-worship in Bollywood films, featuring an ensemble of bold South Asian drag artists.

This annual curatorial residency program offers an opportunity for a Chicago performance practitioner to curate a series of shows over a two-week span. Previous curatorial residents include Amanda Maraist, Kara Brody and Helen Lee.

LookOut Series Associate Producer Lauren Steinberg comments, “This spring we’re doubling down on our support of movement makers by presenting a wide breadth of artists that move in all different directions within the form. As a part of that, we found ourselves wanting to explore a new avenue for our curatorial residency this year. Ahbijeet has been a leader in the effort of creating iconic drag shows in alternative spaces to expand the artform's reach. That is why we are so excited to be partnering with them to bring DREAM DEVIS, a one-of-a-kind theatrical drag spectacle as a culmination to the season.”

The full LookOut 2025 Spring Season (in chronological order):

Lucky Plush Productions presents

Knockout

By Erin Kilmurray + Kara Brody
Dates: Friday, January 24, Saturday, January 25, Friday, January 31 and Saturday, February 1 at 8 pm; Monday, January 27 and Sunday, February 2 at 7 pm
Ticket Price: $30
Description: A fierce duet between two women, Knockout is a self-possessed, ever-morphing cinematic dance that jump cuts through a thrill-ride of fight sequences, toothful camp, intimacies, power dynamics and relationships, and that asks what happens in the disorienting moment between point of contact and before we hit the floor?

3-for-1 Psychic Special

Featuring Ginger Krebs, Ian Hatcher and Coppice
Dates: Friday, February 14 and Saturday, February 15 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $20
Description: What does the future hold? At least one answer to this question can be found in this set of performative transmissions from this world and beyond. In 3-for1, Ginger Krebs will mesmerize and apologize her way through a backdoor portal to power, Ian Hatcher will offer coaching on gainful employment in the age of AI and Coppice will conduct a "grounding” soundscape.

The Uncanny Attic: Chapters A-D

A Beautifully Gruesome Production
Dates: Thursday, February 20, Friday, February 21 and Saturday, February 22 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $30 – $40
Description: The Uncanny Attic is an absurdist dark comedy told through puppetry, clowning, dance, live music, stop motion animation and an unhealthy dose of death. Inspired by the artwork and literary nonsense of Edward Gorey, it’s a world where catastrophic events happen with utter regularity and its inhabitants–particularly children–are an endangered species.

Theytriarch

By Darling Squire
Dates: Friday, February 28 and Saturday, March 1 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $15
Description: Theytriarch is a historical fiction that explores the lives of queer people and their various roles in society over the centuries. Part community ritual and sermon, Theytriarch uses movement, music and poetry to celebrate two-spirits, 3rd gender, transgender and non-binary peoples.

Grit

By Maggie Vannucci
In collaboration with Laura Baumeister, Rahila Coats, Kate Laughlin, Hannah Marcus and Courtney Mackedanz
Dates: Thursday, March 6, Friday, March 7 and Saturday, March 8 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $15 – $25
Description: Grit is a live dance work interrogating the underbelly of achievement through explorations of the isolating cost of competitive natures amongst four female performers. By blurring the lines between exhaustive pleasure and exhaustive pressure, the four performers move through tension-filled repetition, playful provocation and amorphous structures to suggest an emergent collective.

little fears

By Ashwaty Chennat
In collaboration with Tuli Bera, PM Tummala, Jacky Kelsey and Abhijeet
Dates: Friday, March 14 and Saturday March 15 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $15 – $25
Description: little fears explores our relationships with everyday objects and in turn, the things we can glean about ourselves through them. Drawing from South Asian music, dance traditions, pantomime and puppetry and set in a living room, little fears is a healthy dose of media consumption with a few scoops of goo and a small serving of identity crisis.

Wondrous Strange presents

Briefly Breathless
By Jeremy Ohringer
Dates: Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $20
Description: Inspired by the experience of those who swim in Lake Michigan year-round, Briefly Breathless is an experimental dance theater piece staged in and around a giant sheet of plastic. Through rigorous movement experiments and an ensemble dance vocabulary, Briefly Breathless examines the culture of cold plunges and asks us to embrace discomfort, to face our fears and to search for our inner resilience.

PRAISE MOTHER SQUAD presents

VOIR DIRE

Dates: to be announced
Ticket Price: $10 – $30
Description: Presented as a culmination of stories developed by the SQUAD, VOIR DIRE explores the presence and absence of choice from bodily autonomy by embracing unapologetic movement sequences in the Black majorette style while inviting collaborators to work through their own stylings of playful improvisation and deliberate commentary.

Curatorial Residency

DREAM DEVIS

Curated by Abhijeet
In collaboration with Leha as The Salamander, Masala Sapphire, Gulabi Sapphire, Shruthi Kannan & DJ RIYA RIYA.
Act One: Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 at 8 pm
Act Two: Saturday, April 12 at 8 pm and Sunday, April 13 at 7 pm
Ticket Price: $25
Description: Who are the women we idolize and what is our relationship to them? DREAM DEVIS is a queer celebration of the feminine archetype in Indian cinema and an exploration of worshipping and being worshiped. This two-act multimedia series is a love letter to the dream devis of the silver screen: ingenues, mothers, vamps, courtesans, superhuman shapeshifters, and beyond told through drag, dance, music and film.

 

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