The original Drury Lane Water Tower Place opened in 1976, but was closed in 1983 and became a movie theater.

[1] Drury Lane Theatre group founder Tony DeSantis later spent $9 million to transform another movie theater located nearby on 175 East Chestnut Street just off Michigan Avenue into a showplace for live performances in Chicago.

[2][3] The new Drury Lane Water Tower Place, opened May 18, 2004 with similar décor and mainstream musical and comedy line-ups of its sister theater in Oakbrook.

[4] The theater officially re-opened on September 24, 2010, with a short series of concert performances by Sutton Foster, followed by a production of Traces, a French Canadian urban acrobatics show.

David Stone, the producer of Wicked and Next to Normal, as well as Mark Platt were also involved with the show that went up in spring of 2011.