Backstory LIVE!
A special fundraising event inviting you behind the scenes with Jonathan Eig and Jessica Huang
Join for an exclusive luncheon and discussion celebrating TimeLine’s 30th Anniversary Season and our production The Birth of the Pill, a powerful world premiere about science, power, and the women who paid the price for progress.
Thursday, October 1
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
University Club of Chicago
76 East Monroe Street | Chicago
All net proceeds support the mission and programs of TimeLine Theatre
FEATURING:
Jonathan Eig is the author of the book The Birth of the Pill, which was published in 2014 by W. W. Norton. Eig’s biography of Martin Luther King, King: A Life, won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for biography. His biography of Muhammad Ali, Ali: A Life, won the PEN/ESPN Award and inspired a documentary by Ken Burns, for which Eig served as consulting producer. Other literary works include Get Capone, Opening Day, andThe Luckiest Man. He and his wife, Jennifer Tescher, are longtime subscribers to TimeLine Theatre Company. This is Eig’s first involvement in theatre since he played trumpet in the pit orchestra for Brigadoon at Spring Valley High School.
Jessica Huang is a playwright and librettist whose award-winning work includes Mother of Exiles (Berkeley Rep World Premiere, Venturous Award, Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award), The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (Bernice Stavis Award), Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (with music by Jacinth Greywoode), and 10 Things I Hate About You: The Musical (with Lena Dunham, score by Carly Rae Jepsen and Ethan Gruska). Her popular audio play Song of the Northwoods is available on Audible. Huang has commissions with Indiana Repertory Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club. She is the Indiana Repertory Theatre James Still Playwright in Residence, a Venturous Playwright Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, Hermitage Fellow, and four-time Playwrights’ Center fellow. She has been a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Civilians R&D Group and Page 73’s Interstate 73. She is a graduate of the Playwrights Program at Juilliard. jessica-huang.com.
Natalie Moore is an award-winning journalist, interdisciplinary writer and audio maker, best known for The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, which won the 2016 Chicago Review of Books Award for Nonfiction and was named a BuzzFeed Best Nonfiction Book. Her acclaimed creative work includes The Billboard, a Jeff Award-winning play, audio dramas produced with Make Believe Association, and playwriting residencies with Chicago Dramatists, Chicago State University, and other arts organizations. A 2021 USA Fellow for Writing, Moore has also been recognized for her journalism, including being named a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellow by the Pulitzer Center and receiving the inaugural Lydia Diamond Playwriting Award in 2023.
details as of 9/14/26
Have questions? Call Director of Donor Engagement Rosie Schultz at (773) 281-8463 x126