Most theater companies their size aren’t even ready to announce their fall shows yet, as I’m learning while trying to plan our upcoming Fall Preview issue. But with an assist from Steppenwolf, three fine young companies—Sideshow Theatre Company, Strange Tree Group and UrbanTheater Company—are announcing their February openings. The three are Steppenwolf’s picks for the second annual Garage Rep, to run February 16–April 24, 2011. As Steppenwolf’s Polly Carl notes in a press release, and I can attest, these three companies have strong individual aesthetics and strong ties to their audiences; Garage Rep’s aim is to get those aesthetics and audiences in conversation.

Sideshow will present the Chicago premiere of Elizabeth Meriwether’s Heddatron, a riff on Hedda Gabler that director Jonathan L. Green promises will feature functioning robots. Strange Tree will premiere Emily Schwartz’s The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen, a tripartite take on “England’s most inept cellar murderer,” who sounds an awful lot like one of Schwartz’s faux-Victorian creations but was actually a real guy. UrbanTheater has the Midwest premiere of José Rivera’s Sonnets for an Old Century, a monologue play set in “a waiting room for the afterlife.” Sounds like an enticing slate from these worthy picks.