$5000 - ABUELA’S FOLLIES

by Kidany Camilo

Producer: Kidany Camilo

In a play where multiple endings are possible, a Puerto-Rican Matriarch trapped in a familiar purgatory must undergo a trial judged by a jury of the audience to determine her fate.

 

$5000 - ALEX IN WINDYLAND SUMMER TOUR

by Abby Thompson

Producer: Abby Thompson

Explores the foster care system through the eyes of the young people who experience it, co-created by youth residents of Chicago’s Lydia Home.

 

$5000 - LOVE, THE SINNERS

by Maggie Smith

Producer: Eliza Tryon

A group of queer teenagers rebel as their Catholic high school enforces a new series of anti-LGBTQ+ rules imposed by the city’s archdiocese.

 

$5000 - THERE’S A F*CKING GUN ON THE WALL (AKA CHEKOV’S GUN)

by Nathan Daniel Goldberg

Producer: Nathan Daniel Goldberg

A psychological-thriller inspired by works of Anton Chekhov, four characters battle a ticking clock and each other while their fates are decided by a series of votes made by a participating audience.

 

$5000 - YOU ARE HERE

by Ariel Atkins, Julian Atkins, Yasmin Polk, Amber Johnson, and Hobert Thompson

Producer: Ariel Atkins

Inspired by public access children’s media such as Sesame Street and PeeWee’s Playhouse, a group of characters navigate adult obstacles in a confusing and authoritarian society.

  

$4000 - BEGIN AGAIN

by Erin Courtney

Producer: Susan E Bowen

A modern-day reimagining of The Oresteia set in an art museum, exploring female rage and the justice system.

 

$3000 - A CENTURY OF SPARROWS

by Sierra Rosetta

Producer: Lo Williams

By a Chicago playwright, centering three generations of Native Ojibwe women and their resilience in the face of colonial violence and systemic oppression.

 

$3000 - LUISA IN REALITYLAND

Producer: Claribel Gross

An adaptation of a book of prose and poetry written by the producer’s grandmother, Salvadorean/Nicaraguan author Claribel Alegria, about a Latin American girlhood haunted by dictators, and violence but survived by imagination, family, and the belief that being alive is magic enough.

 

$3000 - THE ROSE IS OFF THE BLOOM

by Beau O'Reilly

Producer: Beau O'Reilly

In a new work by a longtime Chicago playwright, a French performance artist meets Charles Dickens, while Jerry Garcia makes his last Chicago stop.

 

$3000 - THE SOFT MONSTERS SHOW

by Krissy Vanderwarker

Producer: Krissy Vanderwarker

A genre-defying play using narrative, spectacle, movement, and puppetry to uplift the hidden magic in our world that goes unnoticed.

 

$2500 - THE FILIGREE TRILOGY

by Wendy Schmidt

Producer: Wendy Schmidt

A full-length play in three parts all connected by a sinister character named Filigree.

 

$2500 - THE PLAYGROUND

by Ryan Huemmer

Producer: Katherine Harvey and Kaitlyn Andrew

A site-specific circus show exploring the differences between strangers meeting in a park, told through dialogue, acrobatics, and circus arts. 

 

$2000 - ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE

by Alice Birch

Producer: Alex Mallory

A fugue play examining the inheritance of mental illness and trauma through three generations of women.

 

$2000 - BIG GIRL

by Kim Whitfield

Producer: Kim Whitfield

A biographical cabaret that recounts the most formative (and slightly absurd) memories of a Black queer woman aspiring to be a better human being.

 

$2000 - THE CAT SHOW

by Annie Share

Producer: Annie Share

A new play and autofiction portraying an adult child and her estranged mother working to sell their family home in a last ditch effort to reconnect as parent and child, inspired by the playwright’s childhood assisting her mother as a vendor at cat shows throughout the Midwest.

 

$2000 - DON’T ASK

by Hayley Procacci

Producer: Hayley Procacci

A play that follows the true story of one of the first lesbians to come out to the United States Military in the 1990's in order to fight the ban on gays in the military.

 

$2000 - Q2QSICAL! THE Q2Q MUSICAL!

by DC Cathro

Producer: DC Cathro

A musical comedy based on the Q2Q web comic, following a team of theatre

technicians from the first rehearsal to the closing of an original show.

 

$2000 - THE SPACE BETWEEN

by Jess Wright Buha

Producer: Jess Wright Buha

Four solo shows happening simultaneously in a multi-room space, exploring ritual, relationships, and healing.

 

$2000 - TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

by Grace Steckler

Producer: Grace Steckler

A one-person play following a nine-year-old girl who believes contact with aliens will reconnect her with her estranged mother.

 

 

$1000 - THE ORCHARD

by Rachel DuBose

Producer: Rachel DuBose

An immersive play workshop reading about how we reckon with history using the "lore" behind the Devil's Punchbowl in Natchez, MI, where thousands of formally enslaved African Americans died in an encampment where they were placed.

 

$1000 - PUPPETQUEERS

Producer: Lindsey Ball

A biannual evening of short-form adult puppet theater, made by queers, for queers, that goes beyond the binaries of puppetry as an art, featuring a mix of long-standing puppeteers and artists who may be experimenting with puppetry for the first time.

 

$1000 - ROPE

by Robert Hunter Bry and Henry Shepard

Producer: Robert Hunter Bry

A modern adaptation of the 1929 English play of the same title written by Patrick Hamilton, based on a real murder that occurred in Chicago in 1924, and served as inspiration for the 1948 Hitchcock film of the same name.

 

 

STAGED READINGS

 

$1000 - A KNIFE IN THE HAND OF KUBLAI KHAN

by Corey Bradberry

Producer: Corey Bradberry

Exploring how power is constructed through finance, narrative control, and myth-making as told through Marco Polo’s recount of Kublai Khan’s mountain palace of Xanadu.

 

$1000 - ADAM’S PARK

by Rom Barkhordar

Producer: Rom Barkhordar

An autobiographical history about a persian-american teen grieving the death of his father, while navigating rural America during rising anti-Iranian sentiment.

 

$1000 - CONVERSATIONS BY THE BEACH

by Mantra

Producer: Mantra

A dance play weaving Bharathnatyam, a South-Indian dance form, with a family dramedy that spans 20 years.

 

$1000 - COUNCIL OF FEMMES

by Will Wilhelm

Producer: Will Wilhelm

a dark comedy about the magic, power, and boundlessness of queer friendship

 

$1000 - CRISIS

by Jesse Young

Producer: Jesse Young

Major theatrical events unfolding simultaneously: the world premiere of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ at The Moscow Art Theatre, a lecture by Stella Adler, and an interview with a sentient closed captioning program, all woven together as a love letter to the act of creation.

 

$1000 - FRONT PORCH SOCIETY

by Melda Beaty

Producer: Melda Beaty

On the election of America's first Black president through the lives of older Black women as they seek redress for a tragic injustice forty years to the day on November 4, 1967.

 

$1000 - GOLD COAST

by KJ Cuitiño Bjorge

Producer: KJ Cuitiño Bjorge

The first of a ten-play series following seven women in the Chicagoland area through defining moments in their lives.

 

$1000 - MIRACLE!

by Ashley Neal

Producer: Ashley Neal

Following a new mother in her 40s, exploring the overwhelming pressures and isolation of new motherhood through a blend of realism and surrealism.

 

$1000 - SCREAM AND RUN AWAY!

by Eliot Colin

Producer: Eliot Colin

The story of a Black trans woman who is picked up by a traveling circus that slowly becomes her family, in a circus play about outcasts, chosen family, and the stories we tell each other.

 

$1000 - THE LIST

by Adoni Esho

Producer: Adoni Esho

Set in the early 1980s Uptown “slums” of Chicago, this staged reading follows two young immigrants, a Muslim Palestinian and a Christian Iraqi who fall in love.

 

$1000 - THE MANOSPHERE EXPERIENCE

by Pedro Arturo Jimenez and Evan Ozer

Producer: Pedro Arturo Jimenez

A new play about high school boys in a "Man Camp" lead by a controversial figure, exploring toxic masculinity and its impact on our current cultural landscape.

 

 

$1000 - THUNDERSTORM

by Cao Yu

Producer: Karissa Murrell Myers

Featuring movement and music of a classic Chinese kitchen-sink drama, making its Chicago premiere.