Avenue Q reportedly getting spring 2012 production in Chicago

Avenue Q will hit a Chicago street next spring, says Bailiwick Chicago artistic director Kevin Mayes. After an extended campaign to secure the rights for the first Chicago production of the 2004 Tony winner for Best Musical, Mayes says he and Tom Mullen will produce the show in association with Bailiwick. No further details are available at this time. The musical by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty, a comic, adult-oriented spin on Sesame Street–style kids' programming, has twice been seen here in touring productions.

Bailiwick Chicago previously announced it plans to produce the Chicago premiere of the rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson in spring 2012; details of that production remain unknown. The company is also collaborating with the New Colony on a new musical called Rise of the Numberless. This fall Bailiwick pulled out of The North/South Plays, a coproduction with Teatro Luna that the two companies had been developing since November 2010, after they had the rug pulled out from under them by the owners of the suddenly defunct Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, where Bailiwick had been in residence. Teatro Luna refocused the project, now titled Crossed (How Going South Flipped Our Script); it's set to play the Viaduct Theater November 22–December 18.