A trio of Chicago premieres set for Shattered Globe’s 2017-2018 season

Three Chicago premieres are on the lineup for Shattered Globe Theatre’s 2017-2018 season.

First up will be Pulitzer Prize nominee James Still’s “The Heavens are Hung in Black” (Sept. 7 – Oct. 21), to be directed by Louis Contey, described in today’s announcement as “an epic theatrical rendering of Abraham Lincoln’s struggle as a man of conscience, and a father still mourning the death of his young son, to lead a divided country.” Set during the months leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s signing of The Emancipation Proclamation, and infused with text pulled from Lincoln’s many letters and speeches, the show will feature Lawrence Grimm as Lincoln and Linda Reiter (who made such an impression as Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” this past season) as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Next up will be “Five Mile Lake” (Jan. 11 – Feb. 24, 2018), with Cody Estle directing this Chicago premiere by Rachel Bonds in which five former high school friends from a small Pennsylvania town, now approaching their thirties, “try to seize the moment and take a step toward adulthood.”

And finally, there will be Will Snider’s “How to Use a Knife” (April 26 – June 9, 2018), directed by Sandy Shinner, Shattered Globe’s producing artistic director. The play is about a once-renowned chef who runs a Wall Street restaurant where he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a reserved Ugandan dishwasher while trying to manage an unruly kitchen staff that includes two Guatemalan line cooks and a pot-smoking white busboy, while also dealing with “a jerk of a boss.”

All three plays will be presented at Shattered Globe’s resident home, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont. Tickets for the first show will go on sale on Aug. 1. Visit www.shatteredglobe.org.