About this Event
Hourglass is a full-length original musical set entirely in Chicago. It follows a newly married couple (Amber, a postpartum nurse, and Ryan, a legal aid attorney), through years of private infertility—including IVF, pregnancy, and miscarriage—and the marital unraveling that suffering in silence eventually causes.
The irony at the show’s core: Amber spends every shift caring for new mothers and their babies at the very hospital where she hoped to someday deliver her own. While Ryan seeks to find his meaning and purpose by caring for underserved children across Chicago, Amber pleads for his attention to be directed toward their own future. The fertility clinic scenes—anchored by Dr. Thompson, a physician of radical honesty and near-zero social filter—provide the show’s sharpest comedy against a deeply real backdrop.The title song, "Hourglass," is a lullaby Amber’s late mother sang to her as a child; it serves as the emotional spine of the entire show.The cast of 11 includes the postpartum and infertility clinic nurses and staff, a best-friend couple who have zero trouble conceiving babies, Amber’s father, Jerry, who is losing his memory to dementia, and Amber's late mother who we meet in a day-dream-sequence.
Event venue & nearby stays
Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture, 2936 North Southport Avenue, Chicago, United States
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