Ford Center Tickets

(Oriental Theatre)

The Ford Center for the Performing Arts (or Oriental Theatre) will turn 80 years old in 2006 and it’s a minor miracle that the historic venue is still around. Since opening in 1926, the Oriental Theatre, which not surprisingly features an Asian décor, has featured such stars as Judy Garland, the Three Stooges, Duke Ellington and George Burns. But after being transformed into a movie house, the theater went downhill in the 1970s despite being placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1978. After sitting dormant for years, it was being eyed for a new shopping mall and movie theater project in the 1990s until Chicago mayor Richard Daley helped facilitate a restoration effort. By 1998, the Oriental Theatre took on the new name of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts and is now one of the four venues featuring performances by Broadway in Chicago along with the LaSalle Bank Theatre (formerly the Shubert Theatre), Auditorium Theatre and the Cadillac Palace Theatre. Get your Broadway in Chicago tickets and Ford Center for the Performing Arts tickets from Gotickets.

The Ford Center for the Performing Arts is currently playing the smash Broadway hit Wicked, the Untold Story of the Witches of Oz. This is one of the hottest tickets in New York and it’s just as hard to get in to see Wicked in Chicago. If you want the best Wicked tickets, Oriental Theatre tickets and Chicago Broadway show tickets, Gotickets is the only place you need to look.