Where emerging artists become professionals and audiences are invited into the creative process.
Across two campuses, Evanston and Chicago, the Wirtz Centers form a single creative ecosystem where students, faculty, guest artists, and community partners come together to experiment, collaborate, discover, and perform. Working across disciplines – blending theatre, dance, design, and scholarship – artists create bold, original work that reflects the complexity of the world around us.
A Place to Gather, Question, and Imagine
The next generation of storytellers, on stage now.
Together, the Evanston and Chicago Wirtz Centers reflect Northwestern University’s academic mission while extending it outward, bridging disciplines, audiences, and communities.
Rooted in Northwestern’s School of Communication, our work is guided by a spirit of serious play, a belief that creative risk-taking, intellectual rigor, and hands-on experimentation are essential to meaningful storytelling.
We bring disciplines into conversation, bridging performance with research, media with movement, and tradition with innovation. The result is work that not only reflects the world, but actively interrogates and reshapes it.
Our commitment is to present stories that reflect the complexity of the world, encouraging us to explore differences, discover connections, and better understand ourselves through others’ perspectives. Audiences are invited to see what’s next, before the rest of the world does.
Each year, the Wirtz Centers produce more than 45 productions spanning theatre, musical theatre, and dance. Students collaborate across roles and disciplines—actors working alongside designers, dramaturgs, sound artists, and scholars, to develop work that is as intellectually rigorous as it is creatively ambitious.
Projects often begin in the classroom and evolve through rehearsal, design labs, and workshop processes. This iterative model reflects the School of Communication’s interdisciplinary approach to making and meaning.
From reimagined classics to newly commissioned works, our repertoire reflects a commitment to craft, experimentation, and storytelling that speaks to the world we live in now.
Evanston: The Artistic Flagship
Rigor, rehearsal, and the formation of artists.
At Northwestern’s Evanston campus, the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts is where students build their artistic foundation. This is where serious play takes root, where ideas are tested, risks are encouraged, and creative identities are formed. Students engage deeply in the process, developing not just technical skill but the confidence and curiosity that define a creative career.
Productions are staged across a constellation of venues, from the 451-seat Ethel M. Barber Theater to intimate black-box spaces, allowing artists to explore work at multiple scales. This is a place of rigor and possibility, where artists hone their skills, build their craft, and develop the confidence that forms the foundation of a professional life.
Chicago: The Creative Nexus
Where new work enters the city
At the Wirtz Center for the Performing and Media Arts on Northwestern’s Chicago campus, creative voices enter the city and serious play extends into the public sphere.
Designed as a hub for new work and artistic exchange, Wirtz Center Chicago is where disciplines collide and evolve. Theatre-makers work alongside filmmakers, media artists, and scholars, creating projects that push beyond traditional forms and into new modes of storytelling.
Each year, Wirtz Center Chicago presents a performance series featuring works in progress, Chicago premieres, and innovative projects by nationally and internationally recognized artists. The center serves as a resource for Chicago’s creative community, offering affordable space and support for artists and arts organizations developing new work.
Wirtz Center Chicago is home to the Department of Theatre and Dance’s MFA in Acting program and hosts public-facing events from across the School of Communication, including projects from Radio/Television/Film, the Black Arts Consortium, the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab, and the American Music Theatre Project.
Wirtz Center Chicago is not just connected to the city; it is an active cultural partner within it.
Theatre belongs to everyone – at every age
First encounters with live theatre, true access that sparks imagination
Inviting audiences into the artistic conversation
The Wirtz Centers believe that access to the performing arts is essential and should begin early and extend across a lifetime. Audiences are not just spectators, they are participants in a process shaped by inquiry, experimentation, and discovery.
Through a partnership with Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and Northwestern’s Neighborhood and Community Relations team, every third-grade student in the district is invited to campus to experience live theatre, often for the very first time.
The Wirtz Centers also maintain a deep and ongoing relationship with Evanston’s senior community. In partnership with the Levy Senior Center Foundation, our Dramaturgy Series offers free lectures, season previews, and contextual conversations about our productions. In addition, the Wirtz Centers provide Evanston seniors with free tickets to select performances, ensuring access to cultural participation or lifelong learning.
For adult learners seeking more immersive engagement, we collaborate with Northwestern’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) to create in-depth theatrical experiences on both the Evanston and Chicago campuses. Multi-session programs invite participants behind the scenes to rehearsals, design presentations, artist conversations, backstage tours, and opening night performances, transforming audiences into informed, engaged patrons in the theatrical process.
Our partnerships reflect a shared belief: theatre is something to be experienced at every age and stage of life.
A Legacy that Invests in the Future
Invest in the artists of tomorrow, today!
The Wirtz Centers are supported by a generous endowment from Chicago Blackhawks Chair William Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz and his wife, Marilyn Queen Wirtz, and are named in honor of Rocky’s grandmother, a 1924 graduate of Northwestern University. Their enduring commitment helps ensure that future generations of artists have the space, resources, and mentorship to create work that matters.
Be a part of this legacy and donate today.