Mary Zimmerman, the director-author who won a 2002 Tony Award for her direction of Metamorphoses, will open her latest work, Galileo, Galilei, at Chicago's Goodman Theater, June 14.

Galileo, Galilei, with a libretto by Zimmerman, Philip Glass and Arnold Weinstein, and a score by Glass, plays to July 21. Following its Chicago run, the piece will become itinerant, as Zimmerman creations do. It will travel east to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Oct. 1-5, and then on to London's Barbican Theatre, Nov. 1-9.

Most Zimmerman works typically take on a monumental piece of literature or towering historical figure, and Galileo, Galilei is no exception. Billed as "an Opera in Twelve Scenes" the show promises to be a more physical and more performance-art-like venture than Brecht's well-known play on the same subject. Playwright and critic Eric Bentley has also dramatized the great scientist's eventful life.

Zimmerman's Metamorphoses has won the Lucille Lortel Award, the Drama League Award, and tied with The Goat for the 2002 Drama Desk's Outstanding Play prize. Zimmerman herself won a Obie Award for her direction. The play was nommed for three Tony Awards, including Best Play, Best Direction of a Play and Best Scenic Design.

Zimmerman's other works include the NYSF's Measure for Measure in Central Park, Arabian Nights and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Glass' most recent collaboration, with JoAnne Akalaitis, In the Penal Colony, played at Off-Broadway's CSC in 2001. Call the Goodman at (312) 443-3800 for information.

—By Robert Simonson