A theatre/dance production based on Sufjan Stevens‘s beloved 2005 album Illinois premiered at Bard’s Fisher Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in June of 2023. It will make its NYC premiere in March of 2024, when it begins a run at Park Avenue Armory from March 2-23. Sufjan collaborator Justin Peck will again direct and choreograph, with music direction and supervision from Nathan Koci, music arrangements and orchestration by Timo Andres, scenic design by Adam Rigg, lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker, sound design by Garth MacAleavey, costume design by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, props design by Andrew Diaz, and masks by Julian Crouch. Tickets are on sale now.
The show features a new arrangement of Illinois for a live band and three voices by Timo Andres, with Sufjan’s music and lyrics, and Peck wrote the story with playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. You can see pictures from the Fisher Center run below.
Sufjan released a fantastic new album, Javelin, in October, which he dedicated to his late partner, Evans Richardson.