Displaying items by tag: Jackalope Theatre Company

Jackalope Theatre Company, presenting the 17th Annual Newspaper Festival, August 20 - 24, is proud to announce the world premiere of Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts by Calamity West, written by Calamity West and directed by Jonathan Berry, November 11 - December 19, 2026, at Jackalope Theatre in the Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N Broadway St. The total running time, including one intermission, is two hours and 30 minutes. Preview performances are Wednesday, Nov. 11, Friday, Nov. 13 and Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. The performance schedule is Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. with no Friday, Nov. 27 or Saturday, Nov. 28 performances. Tickets are $20 - $45 with student and Edgewater resident discounts available. Subscription and single tickets are now available at JackalopeTheatre.org or call/text the box office at 773.340.2543.

Calamity West is conjuring a fantasia: It’s 1986 New York and Tony is a playwright who isn’t writing. As he and his closest collaborators search for meaning in an increasingly fractured America, figures from history begin appearing with agendas of their own. Engines and Instruments of Flight is a play about the magic of making theatre in a world that refuses to stand still.

The cast of Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts by Calamity West includes Raphael Diaz (he/him, Henry); Julian Hester (he/him, William); Niko Kourtis (he/him, Tony); Andrew Burden Swanson (he/him, Calvin); Johnard Washington (he/him, Gene) and Mary Williamson (she/her, Eleanor).  

The creative team for Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts by Calamity West includes Calamity West (she/her, playwright); Jonathan Berry (he/him, director); Salman Lee (he/him, assistant director); Tianxuan Chen (she/her, scenic and lighting designer); Delena Bradley (she/her, costume designer); Steve Labedz (they/them, sound designer); Courtney Abbott (they/she, intimacy coordinator); Madie Doppelt (she/her, script advisor); E Tylkowski (they/them, production manager); Tseela Sokolin-Maimon (she/her, stage manager); Mayah Jaimes (they/them, assistant stage manager) and AJ Links, CSA (she/her, casting director).

ABOUT CALAMITY WEST, PLAYWRIGHT

Calamity West is the 2026 recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, one of the nation’s most significant prizes for new American plays, for her play FEAST!. Originally developed in New York at Primary Stages through the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, FEAST! received further development at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. West’s work has been produced, commissioned and developed by some of the country’s leading theatrical institutions including The Public, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and Jackalope Theatre Company. From 2022 to 2026, West was an invited member of Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, where she wrote three new plays: FEAST!, Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona and PARALLAX. Her body of work also includes In the Canyon, Give It All Back, Rolling and Greetings from Moscow: A Love Story. West’s Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts is receiving its world premiere at Jackalope Theatre Company to be followed by the world premiere of FEAST! at Goodman Theatre, February 27 - March 28, 2027.

ABOUT JONATHAN BERRY, DIRECTOR

Jonathan Berry is a Chicago-based director, producer, educator and is the recently appointed artistic director at Raven Theatre. For Jackalope, he directed the world premiere of The Casuals.  He was an artistic producer at Steppenwolf, where directing credits include: Lindiwe, The Children, You Got Older, Constellations, Curious Incident… and The Crucible. Other work includes: Steep Theatre (Company Member): Paris, Birdland, Red Rex, The Knowledge, Festen, Moment and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Griffin (Company Member): The Harvest, Balm in Gilead, Golden Boy, Spring Awakening, Punk Rock, Port, Company and Picnic. Other credits include Roundabout Theater: Suicide, Incorporated; Gift Theatre: the remount of Obliterarion, the world premieres of Dirty and Suicide, Incorporated and at Goodman Theatre: The Solid Sand Below and The World of Extreme Happiness for New Stages. Assistant director for Broadway productions of Of Mice and Men and This is Our Youth.  He taught classes at UIC, Columbia College, Northwestern and was instrumental in leading the ensemble training program, The School, at Steppenwolf.  For three years, he served as artistic director of the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, Maine. 

Coming Up from Jackalope:

17th Annual Living Newspaper Festival 

August 20 - 24

Press Opening: Thursday, Aug. 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Performance Schedule: Thursday - Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m.

The Broadway Armory, 5917 N Broadway

JackalopeTheatre.org/2025-2026

Tickets: $20 - $35

The Living Newspaper Festival is inspired by the 1930s Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project that created stories based on recent events. This year’s Festival includes world premieres inspired from recent news headlines.

Performances, show times, dates are subject to change.

ABOUT JACKALOPE THEATRE

Jackalope Theatre Company expands the definition of American Identity by engaging with communities to produce works that celebrate diverse perspectives. Jackalope is a premier home for new and exciting Off-Loop Theatre based in Chicago's Edgewater and Rogers Park neighborhoods. They are committed to cultivating new voices that contribute to an expanding American culture and mythology. Each season, Jackalope produces full-length plays, new play development programming and provides free classes in partnership with the Chicago Park District.

Jackalope Theatre Company, presenting the 17th Annual Newspaper Festival, August 20 - 24, is proud to announce the world premiere of Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts by Calamity West, written by Calamity West and directed by Jonathan Berry, November 11 - December 19, 2026, at Jackalope Theatre in the Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N Broadway St. The total running time, including one intermission, is two hours and 30 minutes. Preview performances are Wednesday, Nov. 11, Friday, Nov. 13 and Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. with the press opening Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. The performance schedule is Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. with no Friday, Nov. 27 or Saturday, Nov. 28 performances. Tickets are $20 - $45 with student and Edgewater resident discounts available. Subscription and single tickets are now available at JackalopeTheatre.org or call/text the box office at 773.340.2543.

You’ll want to join this “Neighborhood Watch," a fast-paced comedy having its world premiere in Jackalope Theatre’s performance space in the Broadway Armory. Harsh Gagoomal plays Mo Rizvi with deft emotional range, a bearded, swarthy Middle Easterner who has moved into a house in white suburbia, in the weeks just after Donald Trump's return to the presidency.

Unfortunately for Mo—short for Mohammed—his bothersome next door neighbors are the widowed GenX-er Paul (Frank Nall), who wears his excessively liberal credentials on his sleeve (literally, a Bernie Sanders sweatshirt) with a Harris-Walz sign in the yard; and on the other side, Shawn (Victor Holstein) a 30-something ever-Trumper.

The broad comedic interplay between these opposites could lead one to believe ”Neighborhood Watch” is a lighthearted farce. Even the bouncy scene segue music keeps the situation-comedic vibe going.

But playwright Rehana Lew Mirza, who was commissioned to write "Neighborhood Watch" by the National New Play Network has more in store for us, using the laughter to slyly lure the audience into deeper matters, gradually, though not too deep. It's funny, first and foremost. Kudos to Karina Patel, Jackalope's darmaturg, for snagging this lovely script.

Shawn is suspicious as he eyes Mo unpacking household goods—a pressure cooker, electronics, a tank of propane and a mysterious black backpack, laughably obvious memes of terrorism, all in plain view. But ever-nosy Shawn feels compelled to draw Paul’s attention to the “danger” lurking from the new neighbor.

After he blithely disregards Shawn and introduces himself to Mo, we cringe at Paul’s virtue-signalling as he holds Mo hostage to a ham-handed, somewhat oblique “supportive” conversation. Paul is so caught in his conundrum of trying not to offend that he becomes even more offensive. Mo finally figures out this neighbor has cast him in the role of suffering minority, a moment of tokenism that’s laughable too, because it’s so exaggerated. As Harsh Gagoomal conveys Mo’s internal dialog so effectively, we can see him bemused on the inside as he figures out Paul’s designs on establishing a relationship—Paul the white savior, Mo the suffering minority. That’s how unconscious racism exhibits itself in the liberal camp.

Mirza imparts a comic air on all this, reminding me of TV’s “All in the Family,” if Archie Bunker were a liberal, with his Meathead son-in-law the bumbling Shawn next door. The assertive Gloria character would be Becca, Paul’s 22-year-old daughter Becca (Jamie Herb). After Paul advises her to dress more modestly, in deference to what he imagines are Mo’s Islamic religious leanings, Becca goes to meet Mo for herself, and we find both as their truest selves: mutual date material. Sparks fly.

Reporting back later to her dad, Becca gives us a laugh-filled take on how GenZ handle their GenX parents’ social missteps, excoriating him for “man-splaining, then coaching her father with that query I hear frequently enough from my adult son: “What have we learned?”

We also see Paul and Shawn partnering on common ground, as they spy on Becca to see what she’s up to with Mo. Shawn has his own romantic design on Becca, while Paul is just a run-of-the-mill helicopter parent of his generation.

Mirza brings us something deeper as the plot thickens around the core of the drama: the unexpected arrival of Mo’s “cousin” Javed at the end of Act I. Fresh out of federal jail, and now a devoted Muslim, Javid’s domineering relationship to Mo fills Act II. Avoiding spoilers, we learn there is much more between Mo and Javed than we might have guessed. We also get a small recount of the emotional dynamics involved in Javed’s journey to and from extremism, as he alights on a deeply held spiritual connection to Islam.

In “Neighborhood Watch,” Mirza scores light-hearted laughs at the expense of white liberal culture and the racism of a different sort that can thrive among. Stereotypes abound. And it’s funny. Comedy is all in the timing and director (and casting director) Kaiser Ahmed nails it. Nothing drags.

Also notable are the sets (Tianxuan Chen) and in particular the lighting (Maaz Ahmed), who instead of merely darkening areas that are inactive, casts them in a bluish light, a small thing perhaps but I thought it innovative.

“Neighborhood Watch” has been extended through July 12 at Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N Broadway in Chicago