Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time.

Already well ensconced by 1911 in the literary circles of Chicago, husband-and-wife artistic partners Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg[3] socialized with the Irish Players of the Abbey Theatre, led by Lady Gregory, when they toured the Midwest in that year.

[4] Inspired, they set out to create a theater company on that model, introducing European writers of the age whose work was not much produced in the United States, such as Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Synge, Wilde, and Yeats.

Of the theater's repertoire, contemporary critic and founder of Theatre Arts Magazine, Sheldon Cheney, wrote, "The list bespeaks nothing if not breadth of view and courage.

"[9] Van Volkenburg pioneered "modern" puppetry in America, creating a puppet theater for the company that aspired to high artistic values, using new techniques she developed.

[10] Browne summed up the mission of the company in this way: It is a repertory and experimental art theatre producing classical and modern plays, both tragedy and comedy, at popular prices.

[11]Among the notable productions of the Chicago Little theater were The Stronger and Creditors by August Strindberg, On Baile's Strand and The Shadowy Water by William Butler Yeats and Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler.

The Chicago Little Theatre's stage in the Fine Arts Building, in a room never having been designed to hold a theater, had very little wing space and had large pillars to contend with.

"[20] The full, combined effect of simplicity, forced perspective and variable lighting were evident in that production: The Trojan Women had one scene throughout: a massive stone wall lost to view beyond the line of the proscenium arch, formed the background.