New Play Development Workshop 7

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October 28, 2014

Our NPDW is an annual workshop where local playwrights can submit projects in need of development.  We selected the most exciting pieces and provide them with 4-6 weeks of closed-door workshop sessions in September and October.   

Then we open our doors to audiences for a public event on October 28th showcasing these projects, featuring selected scenes from the new works followed by a post-show discussion with playwrights.
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We are proud that this year's workshop is a part of Chicago Artists Month!

announcing this year's selections:


a measure of normalcy
by lucas baisch

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An array of lost souls straggle inside a quickly emptying Midwestern mini-mall. Sixteen-year-old Casey Calloway works the food court, tending to her burrito stand. As Ari, Casey’s cousin, runs a shifty business out of their grandmother’s basement, Gus, the new-hire, slowly unveils the secrets of this stagnant community. A play fit with balloon animals, mediocre mall food, cheap raps, and hallucinogenic gecko feces.


Lucas Baisch is from San Francisco, California. Lucas’ plays have been read at Chicago Dramatists, the DeYoung Museum, SF Playground, and DePaul’s annual Wrights of Spring.  Lucas’ play The Scavengers was directed by former Artistic Director of About Face Theatre Bonnie Metzgar and premiered in May 2014 (Depaul University). Lucas holds a BFA in Playwriting from the Theatre School at DePaul University and is currently a Literary and Public Programs intern at Victory Gardens Theatre.

game theory
by laura nessler

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Roommates John and Todd have different strategies to deal with the omnipresent question "is this it?" after they graduate from college. Todd takes a job selling plastics; John spends his days with Super Mario and friends. But when Todd take a step to remove John from his pixelated life, he accidentally introduces him to his coworker, Sam, a man with his own reasons to prefer a pixelated life as well.  

Laura  Nessler is a Chicago playwright originally from Texas and graduated from the University of Virginia.  Upon moving to Chicago in 2010, Laura participated in American Theater Company's Chicago Chronicles (a collaborative docudrama about Logan Square) and their Bridge Program (for which she wrote the play Cell Phone Phantasia for a high school ensemble in Berwyn, IL). Laura has had two plays featured in City Lit's Art of Adaptation Festival; her adaptation of Pachelbel's Cannon was the winning adaption in 2014. She has also had short plays workshopped or produced by Fury Theater, the Women's Theatre Alliance, Knife & Fork, Prologue Theatre and Stockyards Theatre Project. Most recently, Laura collaborated with Oracle Productions to create Sweetwater,  a devised radio drama that toured hospitals and nursing homes as part of the company's Radio Movement. She is a proud Artistic Associate with 20% Theatre, where her full-length play Outside Agitators is premiering this fall. 

wisconsin play
by josh nordmark

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A desperate cop and a fleeing lawmaker. A ambitious state senator and a media circus. Lots of coffee and pie. A story of politics turned on it's head where the personal and the political are too quickly interchangeable.


Josh Nordmark graduated from Illinois State University in 2007. He has studied writing at Second City and Chicago Dramatists. His first full length play, Savage Land (2012) was produced by Nothing SpecialProductions after being selected by InFusion Theatre and Polarity Ensemble for development workshops. Josh was the head writer for I Made America (2012), a transmedia web series about the founding fathers also in modern day Chicago. Josh also wrote and performed a parody of Paula Deen for Worst Ever Christmas Letters last year.

other people's happiness
BY adam seidel

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While on a weekend trip to the north woods family cabin, Sara tells John that after thirty years of marriage, she’s decided to leave him for a twenty something graduate student named Willias. This revelation causes John to stay at the cabin indefinitely, pondering his past, present and future while getting sporadic visits from his children, Fran and Joel, who are now grown ups dealing with their own personal crises. Other People's Happiness is a play about blind devotion, failed expectations,  the redefining of family and enduring nature of love.


Adam Seidel is a company member with Collaboraction, where he co-devised Crime Scene: A Chicago Anthology, Crime Scene: Let Hope Rise and Crime Scene: Let Hope Rise 2014 and co-wrote Forgotten Future: The Education Project.  His one-act,Harold After, premiered at the 2013 Chicago Fringe Festival where it won the Audience Favorite Award. His full-length plays include Catching the Butcher and The Devilman, and his 10-minute plays have been produced around the country.  
Please join us:

The Den Theatre
1333 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60622

Tuesday October 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm

Tickets are FREE, but there are only 50 seats available so please reserve yours in advance using the RSVP form to the right.

UPDATE!  Tickets are now SOLD OUT, but we will add the next 10 reservations to our waiting list.  We'll email you the day of with a status update on your seats.

    rsvp form: