CHF Chicago Humanities Festival

We all know that Chicago is an international city. From its diverse neighborhoods to the wealth of world-class cultural programming, it’s an ideal home for Stages, Sights, & Sounds, a global performance festival for families and theatergoers of any age. Our festival showcases fresh, original work from Europe and Canada that you won’t see anywhere else. This year’s edition is our fourteenth and runs May 7–19, 2013 at venues in downtown Chicago.

This year’s Stages, Sights & Sounds festival takes on fairy tales, bringing six companies from around the world to Chicago to present classic and re-imagined versions that will delight children and adults alike.

Here's this year's line-up:

• Sleeping Beauty Dreams uses humorous storytelling and whimsical puppetry to recast the famous princess as an overprotected daughter looking to break free of her castle walls.
• h.g. is part installation, part interactive theater, and pure adrenaline. In this extraordinary re-imagining of “Hansel and Gretel,” each audience member travels through the installation alone to experience his or her own version of the tale.
• Under the Stars is a puppet theater retelling of Hansel and Gretel, where the brother-sister relationship takes center stage.
• The original fairy tale, Cloud Man, from Scotland’s Ailie Cohen Productions, follows Cloudia, a cloud expert in search of the elusive Cloud Man, whose home is high in the sky.
• Murder on the Midwest Express , Chicago company Theatre Un•Speak•Able’s latest physical comedy gem, draws from another well-loved literary genre, the whodunit, to tell a high-stakes tale on the high-speed rails.
• Paige in Full , Paige Hernandez’s unique coming of age story is a 21st-century not-so-fairy-tale about Everygirl’s search for acceptance, meaning, and her one true love.

We are thrilled to present these companies and performances to Chicago’s culturally engaged audiences. All tickets are on sale now!

See you at the festival!

 Read the CHF blog about Stages, Sights & Sounds by Mary Kate Barley-Jenkins, CHF Managing Director, Programming and Production.

 Read the CHF blog about Fairy Tales by Matti Bunzl, CHF Artistic Director.

Get the Educator's Guide to the 2013 Stages, Sights, and Sounds Festival. This 12-page, printable guide has everything educators need—from behind the scenes features to discussion questions and activities.