Performing in a rented college auditorium in the gritty North Side neighborhood of Uptown, Pegasus Players specializes in the kind of intellectually demanding fare that bigger mainstream theaters are afraid to risk. The group prides itself on picking shows that highlight social issues, such as the recent premiere Heat Wave, a dramatization of the tragic summer of 1995, when extreme weather led to the death of more than 700 Chicagoans, most of them elderly and poor.

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

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