The Goodman Theatre announced Wednesday that its 2026-27 season will include two shows that had smash Broadway runs: “American Idiot,” the musical created by the punk band Green Day, and “John Proctor Is the Villain.”
The season begins in September and continues through August 2027. The season kicks off Sept. 5 with the monthlong world premiere of “The Attic: Things I’ve Seen While Lying on My Back” — a circus arts show by 7 Fingers, a Montreal-based company founded by seven artists who came up through Cirque du Soleil
“The show tells very human stories while doing things you look at and say ‘That’s not actually possible,'” said Goodman Artistic Director Susan V. Booth.
“American Idiot,” which centers on three disaffected teens, will have a five-week run beginning in of 2027.
It became a stage hit in the 2000s when it “kind of shot out of a cannon,” said Booth, who reflected on the selection process for this season’s shows.
“We were all looking for ways to talk about the American moment we’re in … plays and musicals that resonate, that slam up against it in a way that opens people up and makes them talk,” she said. “And with ‘American Idiot’ I kept waiting for the moment when the lyrics would feel dated, and they don’t. If anything, they’ve gotten more urgent. It’s Green Day at its absolute best, just a rager about what makes young people feel disenfranchised and what they do with that feeling, and we’re in the thick of that right now.”
The Tony award-winning musical was co-written by Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and features the band’s music.
“John Proctor Is the Villain” will make its Chicago debut and run from Jan. 23 to Feb. 21.
Written by American playwright Kimberly Belflower during the height of the #MeToo movement, the play centers on a group of teen girls in a conservative Appalachian town who believe something horrible has happened and rush to judge a person without much due diligence.
The play riffs off Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” — a 1953 play set during the 1692 Salem witch trials that serves as an allegory for the McCarthy-era Red Scare in the 1950s, exploring themes of mass hysteria, social persecution, and the dangers of false accusations.
“‘The Crucible’ is one of those plays that pops up every time we’re dealing with restrictions on speech or notions of fascism,” Booth said. “It comes around every time our society feels like we’re not responsibly embracing the rights we have.”
“This play is about the cost of keeping quiet and speaking too loudly too quickly, and it just strikes a chord. We’re all in the moment of ‘I need to act, need to do something’ and trying to figure out the right thing is to do,” Booth said.
Sadie Sink, the “Stranger Things” actress who starred in the recent Broadway production of the play, will not be in the Goodman production.
Nearly all casting decisions for the upcoming season are yet to be made.
One exception is the casting of actor Tim Hopper to play Scrooge in the 49th annual production of “The Christmas Carol,” which will run from Nov. 13 to Dec. 31.
Actor Christopher Donahue played it the past two seasons. Larry Yando played it for 15 seasons before him.
“When the opportunity comes to fill that role, you just want to get it absolutely right, and Tim Hopper is a longtime Steppenwolf member and there’s a grit and honesty to him, and he will take on the role as if its a brand new play,” said Booth, who took over as artistic director in 2022 Goodman after Robert Falls held the position for 35 years.