CHICAGO READER
by Kerry Reid
January 30,2026
...Chicago theater is in the midst of a building boom. I checked in with several companies that are moving ahead with plans to build new homes. Some, like Steep Theatre, just broke ground recently. Steep’s new home at 1044 W. Berwyn will convert a former Christian Science Reading Room into a 70-seat black box with an expansive lobby and room for community engagement. Others are still on the drafting board or under construction, while at least one—Collaboraction—is ready to cut the ribbon this month.
Northlight returns home
The oldest continuously operating theater covered here, Northlight, began in Evanston in 1974 as an outgrowth of the Northwestern master’s thesis of Gregory Kandel, in which he came up with a plan for a new Equity theater. Kandel, together with Chicago legends Mike Nussbaum and Frank Galati, formed what was then called the Evanston Theatre Company in the decommissioned Kingsley Elementary School. Over the years, the company changed its name (to North Light Repertory, and then to its current moniker) and location, moving first to the now-demolished Coronet Theater in Evanston and eventually ending up at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie in 1994.
Anyone who has spent time with Northlight’s artistic director, BJ Jones, knows that getting back to Evanston has been a longtime goal for him. Together with executive director Timothy Evans, the board, and a whole lot of donors, that dream has come true. The company’s new home on Church Street, built on the site of a former Thai restaurant, puts them back where, in Jones’s view, they’ve always belonged. Evans notes that they’ve raised $29.6 million of the estimated $32.2 million costs for the property and building, with the hope that they can raise the rest and be mortgage-free when they move in.