Court Theatre's 2011–2012 season: Angels, Iliad and Invisible Man

Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell will direct both parts of Tony Kushner's Angels in America next spring to cap a season that also includes a world-premiere adaptation of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the Chicago premiere of a one-man Iliad and Spunk, George C. Wolfe's 1990 adaptation of stories by Zora Neale Hurston.

The season opens with Spunk, Wolfe's version of three stories by Harlem Renaissance author Hurston, which debuted two decades ago at the Public Theater. No director has been announced for Court's production. In November, Newell will direct Timothy Edward Kane in An Iliad, the solo version of Homer that debuted last year at Seattle Rep. It's adapted by actor and former Chicagoan Denis O'Hare with Lisa Peterson.

Invisible Man, adapted by Oscar-nominated documentarian Oren Jacoby, premieres in January. It'll mark the Chicago directing debut of Christopher McElroen, a cofounder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. That's followed by Angels, which will take up two of Court's subscription slots, running March 30–June 3, 2012. Newell says he was asked to consider directing the Pulitzer-winning epic by Kushner himself, after the playwright saw Court's smashing productions of Caroline, or Change in 2008 and The Illusion in 2010.