Tickets for the Krannert Center’s 2017 – 2018 season go on sale tomorrow, July 8, starting at 10am. Taking advantage of this amazing resource is on our Illinois English/CW bucket list for good reason.
Student tickets are $10. Sometimes they’re less, but never more. That’s for EVERY performance, including international headlining performers like Tiempo Libre, Madeleine Peyroux, violinist Joshua Bell, TAO, and the Festival of South African Arts.
There’s lots coming up for the literary-at-heart! Shakespeare, of course (Twelfth Night, this year), but also Rules of the Game (Pirandello’s absurdist play, reimagined by a team including the musician Pharrell Williams, a dancer, and a visual artist), Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins (Lin-Manuel Miranda was not the first to come up with witty political musical theater!), and Imago Theater (pushing the boundaries of storytelling with puppets, for grownups).
And of course, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (even if you live in Chicago, you will never see them as easily or as inexpensively), the Moscow Festival Ballet, the Takacs Quartet…and that’s just scratching the surface.
Our advice? Look over the schedule (if you’re in CU, you can pick up a hard copy in the Krannert lobby), pick out two or three performances you want to commit to, get your tickets online this summer, and mark the events in your calendar NOW, with a reminder a day or two before. Worst case scenario? If you realize the day before that you have an unavoidable conflict, you can usually exchange the tickets for credit towards a different event. (See details on refunds and other ticketing matters here.)
Overwhelmed by choice? We suggest a variation of our approach to signing up for clubs on Quad Day. Pick one thing from each category:
- an event that that connects to your interests in some way (a play if you’re a theater buff, a musical performance involving the instrument you played in high school or a composer you’ve heard before, a visiting performer from a country that interests you),
- an event that will expand your cultural experience in some way that you desire (never been to an opera or seen live ballet? want to know classical music better? trying to cultivate an ear for jazz? GO!), and
- an event that sounds completely new and unfamiliar.
Then, when the semester is underway and you’re settled into the stressful ebb and flow of college life, you’ll have something to shake you out of your routines and give your brain a break. You will think, “Oh, I can’t possibly…why did I do this…no…I have so much to do…” but then you will go, and you will be glad you did.