The Biograph Theater

Our Performance Home at the Historic Biograph Theater

Built in 1912, the Biograph Theater in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood was originally a movie theater. Following renovations in 2004, it now presents live productions in its two intimate state-of-the-art playhouses: the 250-seat Zacek-McVay Mainstage and the 109-seat Richard Christensen Theater.

The Biograph gained early notoriety as the location where bank robber John Dillinger was leaving when he was shot down by FBI agents, after he watched a gangster movie there on July 22, 1934.

The theater is on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Chicago Landmark on March 28, 2001.

Photographed: Donterrio Johnson, Lydia Burke and Eustace J. Williams in Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies” (2020). Photo by Michael Courier.