Founded in 1988 by graduates of Northwestern University, Lookingglass Theatre Company is a nationwide leader in the creation and presentation of new, cutting-edge theatrical works and in sharing its ensemble-based theatrical techniques with Chicago-area students and teachers through Education and Community Programs. Guided by an artistic vision centered on the core values of collaboration, transformation, and invention, Lookingglass seeks to capture audiences’ imaginations leaving them changed, charged, and empowered. Recipient of the 2011 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, Lookingglass has built national reputation for artistic excellence and ensemble-based theatrical innovation. Notable world premieres include Mary Zimmerman’s Tony Award-winning Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, and The Odyssey, David Schwimmer’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Studs Terkel’s Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession, and David Catlin’s circus tribute to Lewis Carroll, Lookingglass’ work has been produced in more than a dozen US cities.
MISSION & CORE VALUES
Inspired by Alice’s journey beyond the looking glass, we create theatre that awakens the imagination and transforms both artist and audience. Through a collaborative, physical, and improvisational process, we push the limits of performance to make theatre exhilarating, inspirational, and accessible to all.
Since our self-produced collegiate staging of Alice in Wonderland, Lookingglass has believed the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We value collective vision, shared experience, and the teamwork and leadership that support them. Every performance is a collaboration between artists, story, and audience—and collaboration guides how we make theatre.
Transformation is certainly at the core of all theatre and particularly vital to Lookingglass. Lookingglass uses visual metaphor, gesture, and daring theatricality to create transcendent staging. Fiction and non-fiction are converted into stage pieces. Actors are often required to play multiple characters outside their traditional range. Even the newly-built theatre reflects the core value of transformation – the infinitely flexible facility changes in configuration to best suit each new production. Transformation is reflected in the Lookingglass Mission Statement…to change, charge and empower.
Lookingglass seeks to redefine the limits of theatrical experience. The Ensemble uses multi-disciplined arts training and an ambition for innovation to invent new ways to develop and tell stories.
OUR HOME THE WATER TOWER WATER WORKS
OUR HOME
THE WATER TOWER
WATER WORKS
OUR HOME THE WATER TOWER WATER WORKS
Since 2003, we have called the historic Water Tower Water Works home, a living landmark at the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Inside this extraordinary space, imagination flows alongside innovation. Our main stage can be transformed for every production, with audience and set shifting in scale and shape to serve each story. The theatre seats up to 240 guests, including a balcony that invites new perspectives. A second, flexible studio space hosts classes, rehearsals, intimate performances, and community events.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Lookingglass Theatre Company plies its craft and paints its dreams in what is now called Chicago, the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations. Other tribes-such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sauk, Meskwaki, and Fox-also call this area home. Indigenous people continue to live in the region, and practice their heritage and traditions, including care for the land and waterways. For more information and other resources please visit chinations.org
And to learn more about where you live and Indigenous Sovereignty please visit native-land.ca
