Chopin In Winter
Chopin Theatre Productions
Chopin Main Stage
Sep 27 - Oct 18
Fri-Sat 7pm. Sun 3pm (1hr 15mins)
"an imaginative work of art" – Angela Lin, Broadway world
Reader Recommended – "Stuart Dybek's short story receives a warm and poignant staging at Chopin Theatre" – Kerry Reid Chicago Reader
✭✭✭"A rich meeting of Dybek's Chicago storytelling and Chopin's music" – Nancy Bishop, Third Coast Review
"even more poignant on the stage..a generous gift that transports us to another time and place" – Don Evans, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
"quiet, hypnotic direction of Dexter Bullard..warm and engaging Yasen Peyankov..beautiful piano solos of Jana Pavlovska" – Richard Green, Talkin' Broadway
$30-$40 ($25, 9/27 preview)
info@ChopinTheatre.com
Free parking courtesy Holy Trinity Church, 1 block East of Chopin
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Sept 27 - Oct 18
"Chopin at the Chopin Theatre is only appropriate, and Chopin Theatre's newest theatrical production brings that vision to life. Directed by Dexter Bullard based on Stuart Dybek's short story, Chopin in Winter features Yasen Peyankov delivering a captivating monologue to the backdrop of Chopin performed by pianist Jana Pavlovska.
The story is set in a post-war Polish neighborhood in Chicago. Told from the first-person memory of the narrator, Yasen Peyankov portrays the young boy transfixed by the piano music coming from Marcy, the pregnant daughter of his landlady who lives upstairs. His grandfather Dzia-Dzia spends most of his time soaking his feet in the kitchen, where Chopin floats through the walls and the two connect through sparse conversation to this piano backdrop that fades over time.
October is Polish American Heritage Month, and Chopin in Winter is a beautiful tribute to one of Poland's most celebrated composers while depicting the post-WWII experience of immigrant families through a particularly poignant and specific memory. Under Bullard's creative direction, the production features Yasen Peyankov reading "on book" as an artistic decision.
Just as pianists can choose to follow the score rather than memorize a piece, so Bullard chooses to let Peyankov interpret the lines fresh off the page as he paints the picture of the immigrant family experience through the eyes of a child and the lasting impact of music — and the subsequent silence — through Dybek's lyrical prose. By the end of the show, the script is strewn across the simple stage as the descriptions of the working-class Chicago neighborhood fly off the page as Peyankov paces the barren apartment set and takes us on a trip down memory lane.
From the first notes of Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor that chillingly meld with Peyankov's words to the rapid flurry of technique in Ballade in G-Minor, Op. 23, No. 1 transformed with the spirit of boogie-woogie, Pavlovska's poetic piano performance exudes emotion and warmth, completely changing the atmosphere of the one-man show using Chopin's greatest pieces and even newly re-discovered songs. Pavlovska artfully weaves the range of Chopin's compositions into the narrative, bringing Dybek's words to life through the magic of music.
The production is intimate, rooted solely in Peyankov's voice and Pavlovska's touch. While some pieces offer a lively tempo that changes the rhythm of the performance, the show is generally slow, contemplative, and descriptive, relying on the meditative narrative to evoke the memories of poverty, exile, and survival. This show might not be everyone's speed — especially for those looking for plot-driven dialogue or flashy theatrical production — but it's an imaginative work of art for those with an acquired taste of deep storytelling combined with some of the most beautiful piano compositions from the Romantic era.
Chopin in Winter plays at the Chopin Theatre MainStage (1543 W. Division St.) through October 18, 2026. Tickets are $40 adults and $30 students and seniors. - Photo credit: Charles Osgood
READER RECOMMENDED – Chopin in Winter remembers a vanished Chicago
Stuart Dybek's short story receives a warm and poignant staging at the Chopin Theatre. – Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader 9/30/26
"It might feel too on the nose to have a piece called Chopin in Winter onstage at the Chopin Theatre. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better venue for Stuart Dybek's short story than the mainstage at the longtime Wicker Park theater—unless you went with an actual environmental staging in an old Chicago apartment building.
The cavernous space at the Chopin features swathes of white fabric hanging down like ghosts at the rear, with the apartment rooms suggested by old furniture—a single bed, a dining room table, a writing desk—lit by dim but warm lamps (lighting design by Adam Jezl-Sikorski) that create the atmosphere of a memory play haunted by the dead and disappeared souls in Dybek's tale.
Directed by Dexter Bullard, it's not exactly an adaptation of Dybek's story, which first appeared in his 1990 collection, The Coast of Chicago. (Twenty years ago, Walkabout Theater Company and Lookingglass collaborated on a stage version of that collection that drew heavily on "Chopin in Winter.") Instead, Steppenwolf ensemble member Yasen Peyankov reads the entire story from typed sheets of paper over the 75 minutes of the performance. He's accompanied by Jana Pavlovska on a grand piano upstage left, delivering soulful renditions of Chopin's nocturnes, preludes, and waltzes, in the process becoming Marcy, the daughter of the narrator's landlady, Mrs. Kubiac.
As Bullard explains in a director's note, "The actor is intentionally ‘on book' interpreting the story live from the page. Even as the pianist follows the score, so here does the actor—very concretely they remain artists weaving the text and notation into the present." Peyankov's lightly accented English (he's from Bulgaria originally) adds to the sense that we are hearing stories that ride the line between a grandfather's stories of the Prussian wars of Chopin's time and more recent hardships from the old world and the possibilities for the children of immigrants.
One of those children is Marcy, the first in her family to finish high school. She has returned from college in New York, which she was attending on a music scholarship. She's pregnant and not telling anyone who the father is. She spends her evenings playing the piano, to the delight of the narrator, who is a child when the story begins and finds listening to Marcy preferable to struggling with his spelling and penmanship homework.
He lives with his mother and maternal grandfather, called "Dzia-Dzia," in an apartment building on 18th Street in Pilsen (where Dybek also grew up). The boy's father was killed in World War II, and absent fathers are a recurring theme in the story. According to Dzia-Dzia's son, Roman, "he had deserted them so often it was worse than growing up without a father." Marcy's father is also gone, kicked out by her mother after she'd endured one too many beatings.
Dybek's story also captures the ghosts of a Chicago that is long gone. A neighbor's son who is an aspiring musician decks himself out with fancy togs from Smoky Joe's, the men's clothing store on Maxwell Street—only for his mother with her dying breath to describe him using a racial epithet. The conclaves of Germans, Poles, and Czech immigrants that made up Pilsen and Little Village have moved on, as they have in Wicker Park".
✭✭✭ Review: Chopin in Winter at Chopin Theatre—A Stuart Dybek Story Comes to Life Accompanied by Chopin's Music – Nancy S Bishop, Third Coast Review 9/30/26
"You might say it was a staged reading, but it was so much more. Yes, the actor was "on book," reading and talking to us, as he tells the story of "Chopin in Winter" by Stuart Dybek. The play is Chopin in Winter, appropriately staged at the Chopin Theatre during Polish Heritage Month, and directed by Dexter Bullard. Dybek is an award-winning Chicago author, known for his short stories and poetry with their vivid Chicago settings.
Yasen Peyankov is the narrator; he's Michael from the story, first a small boy and then growing older as a young teen. Michael the storyteller is accompanied by the exquisite piano performance of Jana Pavlovska as Marcy, who sits at her grand piano near the rear of the stage and plays softly, boldly, profoundly, throughout the story. Sometimes she plays a little boogie-woogie but mostly it's Chopin—15 Chopin gems—etudes, preludes, nocturnes, waltzes.
The boy Michael hears Marcy playing upstairs as he does homework and practices his penmanship in his fourth floor apartment. Often his elderly relative Dzia-Dzia (pronounced Ja-Ja) is sitting nearby, soaking his swollen and calloused feet in steamy pink water, listening to Marcy play and commenting about Michael's homework and poor penmanship. Dzia-Dzia is an expert on Chopin and soon Michael begins to learn how to recognize the works and to distinguish a waltz from a nocturne from a prelude. Dzia-Dzia isn't in the room as Michael tells the story but we begin to feel that he is really there, a somber white-haired presence, wearing two suits, one over the other.
Michael learns a little about Marcy's life as her mother, Mrs. Kubiac, comes down to have tea with his mother and laments the fate of her daughter, who is unmarried and pregnant. Young Michael sits under the table playing with his toy soldiers, and listens, fascinated, and becomes even more charmed by Marcy and her music.
As time goes on, Marcy plays less and less. But by the end of the story, Michael "kept catching wisps of it in the air shaft." And finally, he hears silence. "Not an ordinary silence of absence and emptiness, but a pure silence beyond daydream and memory, a silence as intense as the music it replaced..."
Peyankov is a compelling storyteller as he walks and talks and reads the story from manuscript pages. He moves around the stage, which includes a desk, the family dining room, and Michael's bedroom. Lighting design is by Adam Jezl-Sikorski with costumes by Rachel Sypniewski. Jenniffer Thusing is stage manager. Producers for Chopin Theatre are Lela and Zygmunt Dyrkacz.
My plus-one was sitting next to me with her copy of Dybek's The Coast of Chicago open as she followed the "Chopin in Winter" story. Later I asked her if the narrator had skipped over anything. No, she said, he read every word".
Review: Chopin in Winter at Chopin Theatre – Don Evans, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, 10/2/26
"Stuart Dybek's "Chopin in Winter" stands as one of our finest Chicago stories. It's an emotional coming-of-age story that begs to be read over and over to relish the nuances. It's a story that stirs conflicted feelings, of hope, despair, regret, sadness, and pride. It's a story of immigrants in a gateway neighborhood. It's a story of post-war deprivation. It's a story of art, of visceral reaction to the beauty and potency it encompasses.
Thrilling as the story is on the page, it's even more poignant on the stage. Under the direction of Dexter Bullard, actor Yasen Peyankov brings clarity and character to the narration while Jana Pavlovska injects life into the music. Dybek's prose consciously adapts a musical underscore and rhythm, inviting readers to hear to the brilliant, emotional chords in that lonely, frigid apartment building. Bullard's choice to stage the story as simply as possible allows the words and music to breath, to pop, to inspire. Peyankov and Pavlovska do the rest, bringing to bear their considerable talents in service of the story. As a child, some of us experienced the comfort and thrill of being read a story. In this performance, we're given that same kind of generous gift, one that transports us to another time and place, and makes us excited to hear how it ends...even as we never want it to".
Review: Chopin in Winter at Chopin Theatre – Richard T. Green, Talkin' Broadway, 10/3/26
"If you visit this site often enough, you probably already know that Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur co-wrote The Front Page, a madcap comedy about yellow journalism that opened on Broadway in 1928. But did you know that both men had been newspapermen in Chicago, and that Mr. Hecht also wrote a collection of very short true stories, "1,001 Afternoons in Chicago"?
Both men wrote for The Chicago Daily News in the 1920s, and many of Hecht's column entries later became squibs in his book. They're often spare and maddening glimpses into the lives of new immigrants, often Polish-Americans who ended up in the newspaper through violence or tragedy, made stranger still by a lasting sense of dislocation.
The new play, Chopin in Winter by Stuart Dybek, is much gentler, but draws on that same kind of desperate immigrant's hope. It's a one-man show about a boy and his Polish-American family in Chicago in the 1940s, based on a short story Mr. Dybek wrote in 1984. And now the 75-minute play gets its world premiere under the quiet, hypnotic direction of Dexter Bullard, who also designed the very nice set for this show at the 118 year-old Chopin Theatre.
The family on stage ekes out a new life on the South Side while an unmarried mother-to-be (Marcy) plays Chopin upstairs. Her lonely recitals cast a complex spell on young Michael, told through the memories of the grown Michael, played by the warm and engaging Yasen Peyankov. He leads us through it with all the elegance of a New Yorker magazine essay, along with the beautiful piano solos of Jana Pavlovska, coinciding with Polish Heritage Month.
Things were changing, slowly, for Americans after World War II. And in that pivot point, Michael does his homework at night in the Pilsen neighborhood, south of the Loop. And his grandfather quizzes him on the brilliant Polish composer, in tandem with the dreamy and brooding music flowing down from upstairs. Their dark Chicago winters are tinged with steam, and loss, and a contrary will to survive.
But it's a play without fathers, and Marcy upstairs runs off at one point, compounding the show's lineage of loss. Mr. Peyankov (as the grownup Michael) half-reads from a script, which is harder than you think under too-bright or too-dark stage lighting. And he tells about half the story straight to us, with easy reassurance. The combination of naturalistic reading and acting lends the story a fable-like quality, and a half-dozen simple characters turn iconic in this fresh new memory piece.
Good things abruptly come to an end, and good people run away from the forbidding rules of men. Dzia-Dzia, the grandfather, has stories of incredible brushes with death. And survival itself, even in a tenement, becomes its own badge of honor. The boy's mother likewise must go on with her sorrow, and the landlady (Marcy's mother) has her own strange quest in the opening scenes. A personal story about their family, played out very publicly, could have been one of those same strange little newspaper articles by Mr. Hecht or Mr. MacArthur.
It may be impossible to get to the bottom of Frédéric Chopin's own genius, heard here in several pieces, including two longer piano solos played by the award-winning Ms. Pavlovska: the Nocturne in C-Minor op. 48, no. 1, which has been called Chopin's most important nocturne; and the Nocturne in D-flat Major, op. 27, no. 2, one of his most popular. Transfixing moments of classical music give way to soft passionate beauty-and the occasional fluttering quality of it seems perfect for the return of autumn.
The very nice stage lighting is by Adam Jezl-Sikorski with costumes by Rachel M. Sypniewski. And on the set designed by the director, it's often difficult to tell whether the shadows are pouring down, or the light is streaming up.
Chopin in Winter runs through October 18, 2026, at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 West Division Street, Chicago, IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.chopintheatre.com.
Cast:
Michael: Yasen Peyankov*
Musical Accompanist:
Jana Pavlovska
Production Staff:
Director. Dexter Bullard
Stage Manager: Jennifer Thusing*
Scenic Designer: Dexter Bullard
Lighting Designer: Adam Jezl-Sikorski
Costume Designer: Rachel M. Sypniewski
* Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association
Author
Stuart Dybek
Director
Dexter Bullard
Performers
Yasen Peyankov*
Jana Pavlovska
*The Actor or Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
Production
Adam Jezl-Sikorski (Light Designer)
Rachel Sypniewski (Costume Designer)
Jenniffer J. Thusing* ( Stage Manager)
*The Actor or Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
Tags: Theater, New Europe, 2026
