Raven’s first season under new leadership taps four plays by women

The work of four female playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel, as well as Anna Jordan and Laura Eason, will comprise Raven Theatre’s 2018-2019 season, its first under the new leadership of artistic director Cody Estle.

Opening the season will be Nottage’s “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” (Oct. 4 – Nov. 18, 2018), a tale of “family, faith and revolution” that spins around an African-American family in 1950s Brooklyn. Tyrone Phillips will direct.

It will be followed by: “How I Learned to Drive” (Feb. 7 – March 24, 2019), Vogel’s eerily timely play, about perceptions of sexual harrassment, to be directed by Estle, and featuring Eliza Stoughton as Li’l Bit; the Chicago premiere of Jordan’s “Yen” (March 21 – May 5, 2019), about two feral brothers in London and the girl who enters their lives, to be directed by Elly Green; and the Chicago premiere of Laura Eason’s “The Undeniable Sound of Right Now” (May 2 – June 16, 2019), a play about change, set in a grungy Chicago bar in 1992 as electronic music threatens a rock and roll legacy, with BJ Jones, artistic director of Northlight Theatre, directing.

Raven Theatre is located at 6157 N. Clark St. Season subscription packages will go on sale Jan. 24. Visit www.raventheatre.com.