Theaters in Chicago

Concert Venue

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Info Home of Northern Illinois University and an hour west of Chicago, the Dekalb Convocation Center was built in 2002. The stadium has ties to the university, but it also books non-school events, including job fairs, trade shows, and concerts. Division I Northern Illinois University teams share the venue and games at the Dekalb ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Info Akoo Theatre at Rosemont, formerly Rosemont Theatre, is a 4,400-seat concert hall in Rosemont, IL. Performances at Akoo Theatre range from Broadway musicals to theater productions to world-class musical acts. Opened in 1995, Akoo Theatre is one of the Chicago area’s largest theaters. The venue offers a multi-level VIP room ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Info The Park West, a Lincoln Park music venue, opened as a vaudeville and movie theater in the 1920s. By the 1960s, it was an adult-movie and burlesque theater. It entered its current incarnation as a live music and special event venue in 1977. Concerts at the Park West have included many notable alternative and classic rock ... more

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Info Despite being housed in a nondescript cement building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, the Apollo Theater opens up into a polished and lush performance space. With a capacity of 450 people, the intimate theater has been presenting musicals, plays, and comedy acts since 1978. It has no relation to New York’s Apollo Theater. Some ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Info The Vic Theatre regularly wears two faces: a grungy rock venue and a raucous movie-and-booze theater. Located in Lakeview, the Vic Theatre started out as a vaudeville house in 1912 when it was known as The Victoria Theatre. These days, the Vic Theatre packs in up to 1,400 people for energetic, intimate performances by big ... more

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Info The corporate name is new; the theater is not. Dating from 1906 (then called the Majestic Theater), the Bank of America Theatre is home to large-scale Broadway shows. With 2,016 seats, the gilded theater was at one time the tallest building in the city. Today, it is clustered with several other large theaters in the Loop ... more

Performing Arts Center

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Info The western suburbs do not have a large density of colleges and universities, but Naperville’s North Central College brings cultural events to the area, hosted in the school’s Pfeiffer Hall. Built during the Jazz Age, the building is low-key and intimate but has the glamour of 1930s movie theaters. Its location ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Info As a former Roaring 20s music palace, the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet has the ornate décor and jazz-age vibe of the era. Founders of the theater commissioned the same sculptor who worked on downtown Chicago masterpieces like Soldier Field and the Board of Trade, so the building has the look of a work of art. With a ... more

Comedy Club / Theater

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Info Improv comedy has a big history in Chicago, and multiple venues, like the iO Theater, are devoted to the art form. Across the street from Wrigley Field and sharing a block with some of Wrigleyville’s most popular bars, the iO Theater is a smaller cousin to famous Second City farther south. The “iO” stands for Improv Olympic ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Info Home to the world-renowned Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Civic Opera House is a flashback to 1920s glamour and was in fact used as inspiration for the opera house in Citizen Kane. Built in 1929, the Art Deco building sits like a giant’s throne on the outskirts of the Loop. The Civic Opera House’s 3,563-seat theater makes ... more

Theater

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Party Earth Review When the 800-seat Music Box Theatre opened in 1929, it was considered the little sister to the much larger movie palaces of the day, but its intimate size belies a calendar packed with more than three hundred different movie showings a year. Restored in the 80s, this is not a place to catch the latest Zac Efron vehicle ... more

Concert Venue / Theater

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Party Earth Review No matter what anyone thinks of the evening’s band, few would argue that The Congress Theater isn’t a beautiful place to see a concert – not even the city council, which designated this former 1920s movie palace a Chicago landmark in 2002. The ornate exterior – seemingly cloned from some Italian palace – gives way to a ... more