What to do in Chicago the week of Aug. 3

Biblically speaking, the Fall was not so great, but it did open humanity's eyes. For the upcoming fall, meaning the season of culture in Chicago rather than the expulsion from paradise, The Big Ticket aims to open eyes to a few highlights from each of several arts and culture categories, starting this week with large theaters. Like a great serial, the fall preview will unfold over several installments, spread out over the next month or so.

Even after a more than three-year run in Chicago from 2016 to early 2020, "Hamilton" is hungry (and young and scrappy) for more, bringing back Lin-Manuel Miranda's diverse-cast hip-hop bio-musical about the guy on the $10 bill. Tickets on sale for three months as of now. Nederlander Theatre. Sept. 13-Dec. 3.

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The lengthy-titled comedy abbreviated to "The Nacirema Society," about a group of Black debutantes during the civil-rights era, anchors a multitheater celebration of playwright Pearl Cleage ("Blues for an Alabama Sky"). Goodman Theatre. Sept. 16-Oct. 15.

Ex-artistic director Barbara Gaines may have left the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, but creative Bard interpretations have not. This production resituates "Twelfth Night" in the Caribbean. Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Oct. 25-Nov. 26.

A production in the company of several other high-profile revivals of Stephen Sondheim shows, the touring "Company" gender-swaps the main character, an unmarried among married friends, by changing Bobby to Bobbie. Memorable songs include "Being Alive," "Ladies Who Lunch" and the underrated "Another Hundred People." Cadillac Palace Theatre. Oct. 31-Nov. 12.

This column does its darnedest to identify the street festivals where the musical acts aren't just yet another reshuffling of the same six cover bands that played last weekend the next neighborhood over, but this festival takes its bookings even farther afield than those other bright spots. Billing itself as "Chicago's only classical-music street festival," Thirsty Ears books some of the area's most interesting and skilled chamber ensembles — Black Oak Ensemble, 5th Wave Collective, Crossing Borders Music — to play in an urbane setting, with street seats for audience members and the speakers not too loud. Saturday night's finale is a miniature version of Sound of Silent, the live-film-score signature event of the festival's presenter, Access Contemporary Music. Wilson Avenue between Ravenswood and Hermitage avenues. Aug. 5-6.

The somewhat oblique title of this Chicago Symphony Orchestra program at Ravinia refers to two pieces bearing the numeral 3 in their names. Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 is the one known as "Eroica," a signpost in the music-historical turn from Classicism to Romanticism. Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, the showy, almost absurdly virtuosic piece central to the movie "Shine," will be played by 19-year-old sensation Yunchan Lim, who won the Van Cliburn piano competition last year, its youngest winner ever. The third piece on the program, not to be overlooked, is local composer Augusta Read Thomas' "Sun Dance," a memorial to her colleague Oliver Knussen. Ravinia. 7:30 p.m., Aug. 5.

As most theaters rev up toward their season openers in September or October, few shows open in August. Steep Theatre, always ready to zig when others zag, this week unpens "The Writer," a U.S. premiere of a 2018 play by British playwright Ella Hickson that was Time Out London's top play of that year. The story unwinds around intertwined stories of a writer and her boyfriend, with meta elements about what the writer is writing, all overlaid with questions about feminism, authority and the purpose of the theater. One review of the premiere compared Hickson's work to that of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, heady company for a play at any time of year, doubly so in the slow summer. Steep Theatre at The Edge Theater. Aug. 5-Sept. 16.

• Chased off by Lollapalooza, the Grant Park Orchestra's indoor runout to the Harris Theater locally premieres CSO composer in residence Jessie Montgomery's "L.E.S. Characters," about the people of her native neighborhood, Manhattan's Lower East Side. Eric Jacobsen also conducts a pet piece of Riccardo Muti, Ottorino Respighi's "Pines of Rome." Harris Theater. Aug. 4-5.

• When James Conlon was music director of Ravinia, he often put on concert versions of operas, especially those of Mozart. Ravinia's current chief conductor, Marin Alsop, joins the order of Ravinia concert-opera conductors with two performances of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," starring locally linked Janai Brugger and Matthew Polenzani as Pamina and Tamino, along with the reigning Queen of the Night, Kathryn Lewek. Ravinia. Aug. 4-6.

• CatVideoFest, an annual touring show that is exactly what it sounds like, scampers into town. Music Box Theatre. Aug. 5-8.

• The Nature Museum's annual insect funfest and light trademark infringement Bugapalooza spins its web with insect pinning, netting bugs on the prairie outside and a slightly skeevy petting zoo. Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. 1 p.m., Aug. 6.

• The Grant Park Orchestra plays a Spanish-tinged program including Ástor Piazzolla and selections from Bizet's "Carmen" alongside aerialists from Troupe Vertigo. Millennium Park. 6:30 p.m., Aug. 9.

• The Symphonic Dances of Sergei Rachmaninoff headline a Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus program at Ravinia, a piece that you can get another high-quality outdoor crack at the Grant Park Music Festival's closing weekend Aug. 18 and 19. Ravinia. 8 p.m., Aug. 9.

• The two-hander "The Light" illuminates a couple's secrets on the day of their marriage proposal. Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre. Aug. 5-20.

• The touring stage version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," adapted by Aaron Sorkin of snappy-dialogue fame, makes a return visit, after having scouted a receptive audience in May 2022. CIBC Theatre. Aug. 8-13.

The Chicago Humanities Festival doesn't plan to announce its full fall schedule until mid-September, but a few programs have already gone on sale: novelist Zadie Smith ("White Teeth"); author and activist Naomi Klein; comedian Keegan-Michael Key with his wife and professional collaborator, Elle; and Bobby Berk of "Queer Eye." Various locations. Sept. 19-Oct. 21.

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Welcome to The Big Ticket, our weekly arts and culture roundup designed to help you figure out what to do in and around Chicago.

Welcome to The Big Ticket, our weekly arts and culture roundup designed to help you figure out what to do in and around Chicago.

Welcome to The Big Ticket, our weekly arts and culture roundup designed to help you figure out what to do in and around Chicago.