The Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance‘s 2024-25 Mainstage Season at the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College continues with Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, by Lynn Nottage. The 2004 play features an all-student cast and a production team composed of faculty, staff, and students, all under the direction of Columbia College alum Aaron Reese-Boseman ‘12, a graduate of the Columbia College Theatre Program’s Theatre Directing program and now a faculty member at the school. The production runs November 20 through December 7 (with no performances Thanksgiving week) in the Getz Theatre Center’s Sheldon Patinkin Theatre, located at 72 E. 11th St. in Chicago’s South Loop. Student discount tickets are available. For tickets and more information for this LIVE, IN-PERSON production – including a program listing of the show’s cast, crew, and creative team – click here.

Aaron Reese Boseman (Photo: Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)

Fabulation is a social satire about an ambitious African American woman, Undine Barnes Calles, whose husband disappears after embezzling all of her money. “Fabulation has a deep, personal past for me,” says director Aaron Reese-Boseman in a program note. “I was first introduced to Lynn Nottage’s work during my time here at Columbia College Chicago as a student. I was the only Black director in my class, and I had the desire to extend myself beyond what may have been expected of me to direct as a Black man in America. . . . I was questioning my identity as a director and Black artist. . . . I expressed my feelings to my dramaturgy professor, the incomparable Kimberly Senior. A hip, bad-ass white woman who informed me that I had the license to do as I please and then some! Ironically and cleverly, she put me on to Fabulation, a satirical story of a Black person having an identity crisis. . . . Fabulation tells the story of a haughty Black woman who leaves her identity by fabricating a new one. It makes one ponder about how people, specifically Black people, navigate the world. Do we assimilate? Do we code switch? Do we lead down a path that makes us unrecognizable? Do we lead with our authenticity? Do we realize that we are multi-faceted and powerful beyond what the world has given us? Will we be okay if we do just that?”