eMusic Wire - It's About Time: Ghostlight marks return to full productions post-pandemic with its 8th season

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Season 8 brings new leadership to the storefront theatre company as two new co-artistic directors take the reins for a season focused on time

CHICAGO - eMusicWire -- Ghostlight Ensemble announces its Season 8 lineup, marking the company's return to a full production season with two mainstage shows, as well as a Nightlight play for young audiences, staged readings and ongoing collaborations with Chicago area museums.

The company also announces a change in leadership with Ensemble Member and Chicago actor Justin Broom promoted to co-artistic director, along with Ensemble Member Holly Robison. Broom has been with Ghostlight since 2019 and Robison, who was acting as an interim co-artistic director, is a founding member of the company and previously served as artistic director from 2016 to 2019.

The new management team led the selection process for the upcoming season, which celebrates a symphony of creativity that resonates across cultures and time, reminding us art is a universal language that binds us all.

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Ghostlight will begin its season with Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones, a drama about censorship, book banning and Civil Rights set within the framework of 1950s racial tensions. Robison will direct.

Inspired by true events, Alabama Story is a drama about a segregationist senator and the state librarian who clash over the content of a children's book about bunny rabbits against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. Political foes, childhood friends and one feisty children's author inhabit a Deep South of the imagination that brims with humor, heartbreak and hope.

Alabama Story will take place Sept. 27-29 and Oct. 4-6, 2024, at After-Words Bookstore (23 E. Illinois St.) and Oct. 11-13 and Oct. 18-20, 2024, at Haymarket Books at Haymarket House (800 W Buena Ave.).

In December, the company expands its partnership with the Richard H. Driehaus Museum to present Holiday Spirits: A Collection of Victorian Yuletide Ghost Stories, a multi-story and multi-storied immersive, site-specific adaptation of classic Victorian ghost stories at the museum.

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In February, the Nightlight series returns with a full-length production for young audiences, Invaders of Mathmatica, written by Ensemble Member Nick Conrad. The original play is a celebration of the arts that argues true riches come from collaboration, not isolation.

And Ghostlight will close out the season in spring 2025 with the world premiere of Drink the Past Dry written by Ensemble Member Maria Burnham. The site-specific piece is set and takes place at a nondescript neighborhood bar in the middle of Chicago that looks like every other bar in every other neighborhood. But this bar has a secret. It can take you anywhere in time. All you have to do is take a drink.

More details at GhostlightEnsemble.com (https://www.ghostlightensemble.com/).