THEATRE Y celebrates 20 years!
Theatre Y wants to participate in people’s lives in ways that matter, here and now.
Rather than telling stories about a community,
we seek to participate in our community’s story.
Theatre Y serves to manifest imagined realities,
claiming global citizenship to better understand our shared humanity.
EXTENDED to April 12th!
”I implore your attendance to one of the most moving theatrical performances I have ever seen to one of the only free theaters in the world…Melissa Lorraine and Héctor Álvarez have struck something better than gold…Left everyone in the room feeling present, revolutionary, and riotous…Your discomfort is political…Steven Stoll’s Masterful set is the star of this production, revealing layers of our onion brains as audience members more than we could have ever expected. You will not see a more important play this season. Required reading.”
- Ella Boyd Wong, Freelance Critic
“Every element fits into place with unnerving precision…an intense, gripping, and deeply disconcerting theatrical experience. This production demands engagement…[it] does not beg so much as insist on being acknowledged.”
- C.J. Fernandes, Full Review Stage and Cinema
READER RECOMMENDED - “This panoptical spin on theater in the round speaks to the precision that Lorraine and Álvarez bring to the piece, which thankfully never feels self-serious or grave. Rather, the production anarchically wrestles with the delicacy needed to make theater about refugees and the global north’s refusal to help them…should serve as a stark reminder of what we lose when we reject our inherent empathy.”
- Rob Silverman Ascher, Full review Chicago Reader
“This play is brilliantly directed, staged, and acted. I highly recommend that you see it and tell people about it. This is an important play done by a theater with an important mission. One of the quotes used by Theatre Y is from Friedrich Nietzsche: "One should open one's eyes and take a new look at cruelty." That distills the purpose and meaning of Charges (The Supplicants).”
- Kathy D. Hey, Third Coast Review
Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges (The Supplicants) is a cry for the displaced. Theatre Y transforms the act of seeking a home into a surrealist tightrope walk teetering between gallows humor and tragedy. Originally written to address the global refugee crisis, co-directors Melissa Lorraine and Héctor Álvarez mine Jelinek’s text for truths about a world of closed borders and violent deportations.
February 26-APRIL 12th, 2026
Thursday- Saturday 7 pm & Sundays 5 pm
Location: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623
FREE and open to the public. PLEASE RSVP - LIMITED SEATING!
IF WE ARE SOLD OUT, WE’LL HAVE A WAITLIST AT THE DOOR!
(No performances on Passover 4/2 or Easter 4/5)
All performances are FREE to the public thanks to members
who donate as little as $5/month ($60/year).
We welcome DONATIONS and MEMBERS!
“In Flight” — An Exhibition by Marvin Tate
At Theatre Y
In Flight, a dynamic exhibition of old and new works by multidisciplinary artist Marvin Tate, curated by the artist himself, at Theatre Y.
In Flight invites audiences into a layered and expansive body of work that travers’s memory, movement, ancestry, sound, text, and visual expression.
Known for his boundary-crossing practice, Tate brings together pieces from across his creative journey alongside new works that reflect his continued evolution as an artist.
The exhibition serves as both reflection and propulsion — honoring where he has been while gesturing toward where he is going. This intimate soft opening offers guests an early opportunity to experience the exhibition in a welcoming, exploratory atmosphere. Visitors will encounter a thoughtful curation shaped directly by Tate’s artistic vision, creating a space where past and present converge in conversation. In Flight is a meditation on motion — spiritual, emotional, and creative — and an invitation to witness the ongoing arc of an artist committed to truth-telling, experimentation, and liberation through art.
Location: Theatre Y
3610 W. Cermak Rd.
Open Saturdays from 4pm-7pm
2024 non-equity jeff nominations:
best sound design: Kimberly Sutton, rhinoceros - theatre y
If you are not yet a member, you can become one today and support free, public theater in our community (the average membership is $20/mo, but as little as $5/month guarantees you a seat to each Theatre Y performance and opens our doors to those who can’t afford a ticket)!
Reach out to info@theatre-y.com to learn about our
Theatre Y Youth Apprenticeships
Private Screenings by Request
PICTURED: JAIME SNOW, DARRELL FAIR AND CHARLES HILL / PHOTO BY: KARL SODERSTROM
Theatre Y is a community of humans fully committed to reimagining the ritual of theater as a tool of liberation, a revolutionary practice, and a path to understanding our shared humanity. To that end, since 2018, Theatre Y Co-Founding Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine – together with a team of filmmakers, actors, activists from DePaul and PNAP, and 25 men sentenced to die in prison –– have been engaged in movement therapy for trauma rehabilitation while co-creating original works of art.
Hear Melissa share more about her “Y”:
CINEMATOGRAPHER: JUSTIN JONES / EDITOR: SHAYLA GAMMON
We would love for you to meet the 25 amazing human beings who have become our beloved brothers, but these men are currently serving life sentences without any possibility of parole. (Learn more about parole in Illinois.) Perhaps you’ve seen their pictures on the Inside Ensemble wall at the theater or read about the Incarcerated Mass on our website. Tragically, when Stateville was closed by court order this September, our friends were scattered and sent to prisons all over Illinois, shattering our community. Please contact info@theatre-y.com to host a screening!
PICTURED LEFT TO RIGHT: BENNY RIOS, DECEDRICK WALKER, TYRONE BREWER JR., AND MICHAEL SULLIVAN / PHOTO BY KARL SODERSTROM
Past Events
2024 non-equity jeff Recipients:
best performer in a leading role (play) - Bide akande, Rhinoceros - theatre y
best scenic design: Marvin Tate, rhinoceros - theatre y
Artists rotate hosting 'The Monday Night Buzz'-or ‘The Friday Night Swerve’ - A FREE showcase of musicians, artists and critical thinkers, towards richer, braver, more intimate human connections; A salon-type atmosphere where artists, thinkers, teachers, healers, lovers, family & friends gather weekly to radiate, exchange ideas, celebrate & uplift each other.
Theatre Y’s Program Inside of Stateville Correctional Facility
We affirm the theater as a ritual and catalyst of public dialogue,
and make our performances accessible to all.
Theatre Y operates under a model that is similar to NPR’s Public Access Membership.
Theatre Y Members donate monthly to support our work
which is offered free to the public.
The average membership is $20/mo,
but as little as $5/month guarantees you a seat to each Theatre Y performance
and opens our doors to those who can’t afford a ticket.
Photos by Karl Soderstrom
