Northwestern University’s School of Communication has expanded its footprint in Chicago with a state-of-the-arts facility designed to support a unique combination of performance, instruction and collaboration. Named for Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz (’24), a generous patron of the arts, the new facility will allow Northwestern to expand its MFA programs and serve as a hub for collaboration between the school’s theatre, radio/TV/film programs and the Chicago arts scene.
Dedicated and fully operational as of September 2021, the first collaboration in the space will be the Oct. 23-24 co-presentation of “Native Guard” by Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. A collaboration between the Wirtz Center, Poetry Foundation and Black Arts Consortium, the event signals the advent of future academic and professional arts partnerships to come.