IN PERFORMANCE: "The Homosexuals" ★★★ Through July 24 at the Richard Christiansen Theatre in the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.; Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes; Tickets: $28 at 773-871-3000 or www.aboutfacetheatre.com

Philip Dawkins' ambitious, substantial and deeply impressive new play, “The Homosexuals,” begins with a disaster: Catherine Zeta-Jones winning the Tony Award.

“For singing,” spits out Peter, one of the group of gay Chicagoans whom this play follows — or, more accurately, whose lives it rewinds through the first decade of the 21st century. He peers at the results of the 2010 Tonys in his copy of the Tribune. Peter (Scott Bradley) is an old-fashioned homosexual: he likes his news on paper. The young man breaking up with him, Evan (Patrick Andrews), is of a different breed altogether. He was in grade school during the height of the AIDS crisis. And although he is vaguely aware of iconic gay plays like “The Boys in the Band” and “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” he read them in a class promoting diversity. He did not live them. And he surely does not care about swishy musicals.

Precisely what that means for this young everyman is at the core of Dawkins' sweeping drama, one that begins at the end of the decade and progressively moves back in time, finally ending with another Tony Award house party just after the turn of the millennium. With a little more work, Dawkins will have a play that deserves some major subsequent productions after this About Face premiere at the Richard Christiansen Theatre. He clearly wants to update those earlier plays that charted the ways gay American men, scarred by discrimination, found family and community in each other.

Dawkins does so by turning that conceit on its head. “The Homosexuals” begins with togetherness but charts a progressive course towards isolation, as its central characters love and lose each other and Evan, part hero and part anti-hero, tries to figure out what it means to be gay in a decade when, as his friend Tam (Elizabeth Ledo) wryly observes, “there are no dirty words. Every term has been reclaimed and is now either empowering or ironic.”

Empowering. Ironic. Where does that leave a young man, arriving in Chicago from Iowa at the age of 20? What does it mean to be gay in a decade that contained the promise (and, for some, the disappointment) of the Obama presidency? Those questions are all under review, as is the question of whether those powerful gay communities, formed in crisis, are becoming increasing fractured. Whether that represents diversity or dissipation is the real question of this very fine new play.

American Theater Company and About Face Theatre will collaborate next season on the first major Chicago production of "Rent," the two theaters have jointly announced.

The Jonathan Larson musical will play next spring in the ATC space at 1909 W. Byron St., under the joint direction of artistic directors PJ Paparelli and Bonnie Metzger.

In the fall, American Theater Company also will stage the Chicago premiere of "The Amish Project," a piece for one actress by Jessica Dickey about the 2006 school shooting in a one-room Amish schoolhouse. An environmental production of Patrick Meyer's mountain drama "K2" will be staged at ATC in the winter (with some audience spots reserved for those who wish to lie flat on the floor), followed by a triple bill of Tennessee Williams one-acts, collectively titled "Escape" and staged in an interdisciplinary fashion, with choreography by Paula Frasz.

About Face, meanwhile, will produce "That Kid Thing" by Sarah Gubbins in a fall co-production with Chicago Dramatists. In the winter, About Face will stage "Run, Mourner, Run" an adaptation by Tarell Alvin McCraney (the acclaimed author of "The Brother/Sister Plays") of a short story by Randall Kenan set in the Deep South.

The About Face Theatre has announced its 2010-11 season, which looks rather healthier than this year's slate.

The three-show season features "Float" by Patricia Kane, a play about the bonds of six Midwestern women who are building a parade float together. Kane is the author of "Pulp," a previous hit for About Face.

Sally Oswald's "Pony," a piece about a transgendered man who moves to a rural outpost, follows. The play is a "response" to Georg Buchner's "Woyzeck."

The About Face season ends with "The Homosexuals," a contemporary, Chicago-set play by Philip Dawkins that looks at the interwoven lives of six gay men.

About Face specializes in work involving gender and sexual identity.

THEATER REVIEW: "Sweet Tea" ★★½ Through May 29 at Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Ave.; Running Time: 2 hours; Tickets: $25 at 773-296-6024 or www.aboutfacetheatre.com

“Diabetes in a glass” is how one of the characters describes the beverage that serves as the title of E. Patrick Johnson’s solo show, “Sweet Tea.”

But although the men with whom we visit in this tribute to the black, gay men of the South are charming indeed, they hardly have a saccharine view of life. The thesis of this oral history, created through interviews, based on Johnson’s book of the same name and produced here by Chicago’s About Face Theatre with help from Columbia College Chicago, is that the triangular distinction of being black, gay and a southerner makes for a life at once individualistic, community-based and suffused with spirit. “Church didn’t play a part in my upbringing,” one of Johnson’s subjects declares. “It was my upbringing.”

By including subjects of a variety of ages and from southern states with quite different traditions, Johnson’s suite of interviews offers a rich picture of how gay, black Southerners negotiated their lives amid a culture that both embraced and challenged them. The piece doesn’t come off, though, as a tale of strife (although there surely is strife and loss therein), so much as a collective picture of ordinary people getting along with where and whom they find themselves to be. As we all do.

THEATER REVIEW: "The Flowers" ★ Through Nov. 7 at Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes; Tickets: $20 at 866-811-4111 or www.aboutfacetheatre.com 

Several Chicago theaters are run by couples. That’s part of their personal charm, and theater is a personal business. But as those who work therein will sometimes hint, such couples sometimes let their relationships bleed into their art.

That’s true of many small business, of course, but it’s also the intriguing premise of Adam Bock’s “The Flowers,” a new play that purports to be an affectionate look at the times and travails of a little Chicago theater run by a gay pair who are trying to hold themselves and their funky theater company together. One expects a wry and sweet drama about art, struggle and community — something like a storefront version of the wonderful satirical TV show “Slings and Arrows,” perhaps. But the piece, produced by About Face Theatre, turns out to be as disappointing as many of the shows The Flowers (a titular theater troupe run by the couple) produces.

Rick Dildine, managing director of the About Face Theatre, is leaving his post for a similar job at Shakespeare St. Louis, About Face artistic director Bonnie Metzgar said Monday.

About Face has had a rough year, facing down a financial crisis. But Metzgar also said that the theater's emergency "Face the Future" campaign has been successful, earning some $200,000 for the company and erasing some significant past debts.

About Face's 14th season begins in late September with the XYZ Festival, a new showcase for work in development.

THEATER REVIEW: "Stupid Kids" ★★ Through March 8 at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St.; Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes; Tickets: $20 at 866-411-4111.

John G. Russell’s play “Stupid Kids” is a snapshot of high school life in the 1980s. It has realistic elements—the four teenage characters are frenetic creatures fueled by hormones, passions and junk food. And it has romantic re-calibrations—the maybe-gay nerds are the cool, smart, empathetic kids, and the hunks and the babes are there mostly to function as the semiconscious objects of their lust.

The hugely talented Russell (who died in 1994) was hardly alone in his re-ordering of the actual cafeteria hierarchy. History gets written by the victors. Jocks and cheerleaders atrophy. And it’s the nerds who go on to write most of the plays. And write about them.

As co-directed by Bonnie Metzgar and Megan Carney, About Face Theatre’s new production of this spirited slice o’ locker life is very different from Shade Murray’s memorable Chicago premiere by Roadworks Productions in 1999. For starters, there’s a whole new outer frame.

Chicago's About Face Theatre has a new managing director. Like the new artistic director, he's coming from Brown University. Rick Dildine (left), whose About Face appointment was announced Wednesday, has been both the producer of Brown's new-play festivals and playwriting coordinator at the university. 

Bonnie Metzgar, About Face's recently appointed artistic director, taught playwriting at Brown along with Paula Vogel, who has also left the Providence, R.I. campus. (Read my recent post about Metzgar's plans for About Face here.)

Heather Schmucker, the theater's interim executive director for the past year, is leaving her post. But she is joining About Face's board of directors.

Under new artistic director Bonnie Metzgar, Chicago’s About Face Theatre will be quite a different operation. Social consciousness has risen to the fore. “I think we can do important, inclusive theater,” said the 43-year-old Chicago newcomer in a recent interview. “And also have advocacy at the heart of what we do.”

According to Metzgar, who left a faculty position at Brown University to take up the artistic director mantle at About Face, the board of the gay-oriented theater was hungry to move in that direction.

About Face Theatre is expected to announce Thursday that Bonnie Metzgar will be the new artistic director of the company. And the Chicago theater scene will have snagged another new recruit of national stature, especially in the field of new plays.

Metzgar is leaving her post as a professor and director of the graduate playwriting program at Brown University, where she also was artistic director of Brown’s New Plays Festival for the past three years with Paula Vogel (who also recently left Brown). From 2004 to 2007, Metzgar served as associate artistic director of Curious Theatre Company in Denver.  She also served as associate producer of the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival from 1995 to 2003 and was the founder of the eclectic venue known as Joe’s Pub. Metzgar also was the co-creator and producer of the national 365 Festival based on the year-long play cycle "365 Days/365 Plays," written by Suzan-Lori Parks.

By any standards, Metzgar is a major coup for About Face Theatre, which specializes in works with gay and lesbian themes, but also produces a wide variety of other theatrical fare in venues across the city. Metzgar replaces Eric Rosen, who is now artistic director of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre.