About Porchlight Music Theatre

Entering its 30th year, Porchlight Music Theatre (PMT) is Chicago’s only professional nonprofit equity theater company solely dedicated to celebrating musical theater. Porchlight delights more than 30,000 patrons annually through diverse and engaging programming including Mainstage productions of reimagined classics, recent Broadway hits and new musical finds; the Porchlight Revisits series of rarely seen musicals in limited run with enhanced dramaturgy; the Porchlight in Concert symphonic staged reading series; and the free Broadway in your Backyard neighborhood-park summer concert series set in Chicago Public Parks throughout the city. Porchlight also provides educational programs for students of all ages through classes and camps, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Youth Centers and other community partnerships. PMT annually awards dozens of full scholarships and provides hundreds of free tickets to ensure accessibility and real engagement with this unique American art form.

The company’s many honors include 178 Joseph Jefferson Award (Jeff) nominations and 49 Jeff awards, as well as 44 Black Theatre Alliance (BTA) nominations and 15 BTA awards. Porchlight graduated to the Large Theatre tier of the Equity Jeff Awards in 2019 and has been honored with seven awards in this tier to date including Best Ensemble for Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies (2019) and Best Production-Revue for Blues in the Night (2022). Over three decades, Porchlight has presented more than 70 Mainstage works with 15 Chicago premieres and five world premieres. (See our 2022/2023 Annual Report)