Today City Lit Board President Daniel Robinson announced that Brian Pastor (they/them), City Lit’s current Resident Director and for nine years its Managing Director, will succeed City Lit’s Producer and Artistic Director Terry McCabe, who will retire on June 30, 2024, following the conclusion of City Lit’s recently announced 43rd season. Pastor will take the new title of Executive Artistic Director.
“Brian has a long and highly successful history with City Lit,” said Robinson, “and as sorry as we are to see Terry go, we look forward to a productive and happy association with Brian.”
Brian Pastor. Photo courtesy of City Lit Theater.
Pastor was first hired at City Lit in February 2005 as Business Manager, one week after McCabe was hired as Artistic Director. In 2006 Pastor was promoted to managing director, a position in which they served through June 2015. In 2019 they became City Lit’s Resident Director, and it was Pastor’s production of their own adaptation of Robert Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis memoir Thirteen Days that was forced to close during previews in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic; it reopened in September 2021 to critical acclaim. They also directed City Lit’s productions of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in 2022, Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man in 2018, and Archibald MacLeish’s J. B. in 2017. With McCabe, they co-adapted Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson for City Lit’s 2008 season. This coming season, Brian will direct City Lit’s world premiere adaptation of Davis Grubb’s gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter, adapted by Shawna Tucker.
As an actor, Pastor has been seen at City Lit in over a dozen productions, including Hauptmann, The Body Snatchers, their own co-adaptation (with Stephen Murray) of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and The Play’s the Thing, in which they acted alongside McCabe’s predecessor, the late Page Hearn.
“I am incredibly honored to follow in the footsteps of my longtime mentors Page Hearn and Terry McCabe,” Pastor said. “City Lit wouldn’t exist without them. I am grateful for the faith in me shown by Daniel Robinson and the Board, and I look forward to building on the rich foundation laid by my predecessors. For me, City Lit has always felt like home.”
A Founder and long-time Artistic Director of Chicago’s Promethean Theatre Ensemble, Pastor is excited to return to producing stories of vital interest to modern audiences. “As a trans/nonbinary artist, I am committed to telling stories of inclusion, utilizing the rich diversity of the theatrical community to put fresh perspectives to well-known stories. Rest assured, City Lit will continue to be a place to awaken your senses and explore the literary imagination. I’m excited to revisit favorite characters, reimagine timeless classics, and introduce everyone to new worlds, both fantastically different and surprisingly familiar.”
BIO
Brian Pastor (they/them) is a trans/non-binary producer, director, actor, and playwright in Chicago. Brian previously spent ten and a half years on staff at City Lit, including nine as Managing Director. Since 2019, Brian has served as City Lit’s Resident Director, where they directed last season’s The Playboy of the Western World. Previously, Brian directed George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man Archibald MacLeish’s J.B., and their own acclaimed adaptation of Robert Kennedy’s Thirteen Days for City Lit. Brian is a founder and Emeritus Artistic Director of Chicago’s Promethean Theatre Ensemble, where they directed The Lion in Winter, The Winter’s Tale, and Gross Indecency: the Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (all Broadway World Award Nominated- Best Director), as well as Henry V and The Dark Side of the Bard. Brian also directed the world premiere of The Black Knight by Angeli Primlani, the inaugural show for Lifeboat Productions. As an actor, Brian has worked with Strawdog, Raven, WildClaw, Promethean, Accomplice, and City Lit, among others. Brian is the former Executive Director of Sideshow Theatre and the former Executive Director of Raven Theatre. They also served as a board and company member of The Mime Company and as a founding company member of Chicago dell’Arte. Additionally, Brian is a published fiction writer and playwright whose work has been performed on three continents.
CITY LIT THEATRE COMPANY SEASON 43
August 25 - October 8, 2023:
The Innocence of Seduction by Mark Pracht The second play in his “Four-Color Trilogy” set during the early years of the comic book industry. It examines the 1950s Congressional investigation into the link between comics and juvenile delinquency, and the effect of the investigation on three persons: William Gaines, originator of horror comics; Matt Baker, Black closeted gay artist of romance comics; and Janice Valleau, creator of a pioneering woman detective comic. World premiere. Pracht will direct.
October 20 - December 3, 2023:
The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb, adapted by Shawna Tucker. Henry “Preacher” Powell has LOVE tattooed on his right knuckles and HATE on his left, and preys on widows in Depression-era West Virginia. He zeroes in on Willa Harper and her two children, John and Pearl, who he is convinced know where there is a hidden ten thousand dollars. City Lit’s resident director, Brian Pastor, directs. World premiere.
March 8 -April 21, 2024:
Two Hours in a Bar: Waiting for Tina Meyer and Text Me. A double bill of one-acts—the first by Kristine Thatcher with material by Larry Shue: a pair of best-friend actors sit in a bar because one is expecting to be met by a woman he doesn't know who sent him a note backstage earlier that evening. Chicago stage premiere. The second, with music, lyrics, and book by Kingsley Day, is a 21st Century musical look at the problem of meeting each other: two people come to their neighborhood bar to try to make connections--on their phones. World premiere. Both directed by Terry McCabe.
May 3 - June 16, 2024:
Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot in its first full production in Chicago since the 1950s. The play dramatizes the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of knights loyal to Henry II in 1170. Eliot wrote it to be performed in the sanctuary at Canterbury Cathedral, the room where Becket was murdered; his depiction of the killing draws from the eye-witness account of Edward Grim, a monk who was wounded trying to protect Becket. City Lit’s production will be staged in the sanctuary of Edgewater Presbyterian Church, the building in which City Lit resides. Terry McCabe directs.
Subscriptions to Season 43 can be bought at www.citylit.org or by calling 773-293-3682.
ABOUT CITY LIT THEATER COMPANY:
City Lit is the eighth oldest theatre company in Chicago, behind only Goodman, Court, Northlight, Oak Park Festival, Black Ensemble, Steppenwolf, and Pegasus theatres. It was founded in 1979 with $210 pooled by Arnold Aprill, David Dillon, and Lorell Wyatt. For its current season, its 42nd, it operates with a budget slightly over $260,000. It was the first theatre in the nation devoted to stage adaptations of literary material. There were so few theatres in Chicago at the time of its founding that at City Lit’s launch event, the founders were able to read a congratulatory letter they had received from Tennessee Williams. For four decades and counting, City Lit has explored fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs, songs, essays and drama in performance.
A theatre that specializes in literary work communicates a commitment to certain civilizing influences—tradition imaginatively explored, a life of the mind, trust in an audience’s intelligence—that not every cultural outlet shares. City Lit is located in the historic Edgewater Presbyterian Church building at 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue. Its work is supported in part by the MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Ivanhoe Theater Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council Agency and is sponsored in part by A.R.T. League. An Illinois not-for-profit corporation and a 501(c)(3) federal tax-exempt organization, City Lit keeps ticket prices below the actual cost of producing plays and depends on the support of those who share its belief in the beauty and power of the spoken written word.