Its mission is to produce stories that ask the question: "What does it mean to be an American?" With that broad mandate, the company generally focuses on serious American dramas (Mamet's American Buffalo, for instance, and works by Sam Shepherd and Thornton Wilder), but comical and even musical fare shows up on the schedule from time to time. Recent literary adaptations have included Catch-22 and Working, based on the book by veteran Chicago writer Studs Terkel.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Chicago 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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