Broken Nose Theatre, one of Chicago’s premier Pay-What-You-Can theatre companies, is excited to announce its tenth season, featuring two streaming audio plays followed by two in-person performances, including a world premiere and Chicago premiere. BNT is proud to celebrate a decade of programming, most of which was presented under their economically accessible ticketing model in the Chicago theatre community.
The 2021-22 season kicks off this fall with a streaming audio adaptation of BNT’s hit 2018 play Kingdom, written by Resident Playwright Michael Allen Harris and directed by Manny Buckley. This spellbindingly lyrical family drama features ensemble members RjW Mays and Watson Swift reprising the roles they performed in 2018, joined by ensemble members Ben F. Locke and William Anthony Sebastian Rose II, and guest artist Darren Jones.
Up next, BNT presents the virtual world premiere audio drama Primer, a deeply honest look at the prioritization of property over people, written by ensemble member Spenser Davis and directed by Literary Manager Brittney Brown. Set in the same location of Davis’s hit 2018 play Plainclothes, the cast consists entirely of Broken Nose Theatre company members: Kim Boler, JD Caudill, Catherine Dildilian, August Forman, RjW Mays, Watson Swift, Aria Szalai-Raymond, David Weiss and Brenda Scott Wlazlo, with several reprising their characters from Plainclothes.
Broken Nose Theatre is excited to welcome back live audiences in February 2022 with the world premiere of Eric Reyes Loo’s drama This Is Only a Test. Toma Tavares Langston directs this all-too-prescient view of the future our youth may be inheriting. In spring of 2022, BNT presents the Chicago premiere of Stephanie Alison Walker’s drama Friends With Guns directed by Georgette Verdin, a conversation-provoking drama about relationships in the wake of disagreement. Both plays will be presented at BNT’s resident home, The Den Theatre at 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.
BNT’s tenth season will also include the 9th annual Bechdel Fest, the company’s annual theatre festival, featuring a full slate of new short plays with female-identifying, trans and nonbinary casts.
Finally, Broken Nose will continue to provide institutional support to two outside playwrights through The Paper Trail, its new play development program. This season’s playwrights include Rachel DuBose and Brynne Frauenhoffer.
Tickets for all Broken Nose Theatre performances are “pay-what-you-can,” allowing patrons to set their own price. Tickets for Kingdom and Primer are currently available at www.brokennosetheatre.com. Tickets for additional performances will go on sale at a later date.
Artistic Director E.M. Davis and Managing Director Rose Hamill comment, “After the last year and a half we all experienced, combined with so much uncertainty as our industry slowly reopens, we still get emotional thinking about a new year of theatrical programming. Our tenth anniversary season combines audio dramas with in-person productions, staged readings with virtual workshops, allowing us to take everything we have learned from working digitally and apply it to thought-provoking new work about captivating characters coming to terms with a world that has shifted beneath their feet. While we may not be in the same physical space together until 2022, we are thrilled to bring two compelling pieces of audio drama to you this fall, both of which are cast almost entirely from within our incredibly talented ensemble. Then in the new year, we're bringing back the conversation-driven stories we had to pause last season, helmed by two directors we admire so much within the community. And all of it, made possible through our economically accessible Pay-What-You-Can ticketing model, removing the financial barrier that can prevent so many from experiencing live theatre. We cannot wait to share these with you”
Broken Nose Theatre’s Tenth Season includes:
October 4 – 24, 2021
- Kingdom – An audio adaptation of the 2018 hit play
- Written by Resident Playwright Michael Allen Harris
- Directed by Manny Buckley
- Featuring Darren Jones, Ben F. Locke, RjW Mays, William Anthony Sebastian Rose II and Watson Swift.
After the state of Florida legalizes same sex marriage, Arthur and Henry, partners of fifty years, come to terms with their differing opinions on the necessity of becoming husbands, even as their son Alexander finds himself wading through some rough new waters of his own. Kingdom is the story of an entirely-LGBTQ African American family that lives in the near-literal shadow of Orlando’s magical kingdom, as they struggle to create a life together that captures a little bit of that same magic. Critically acclaimed when it was originally staged by Broken Nose in 2018, Kingdom received the 2018 BTAA Lorraine Hansberry Award.
November 15 – December 5, 2021
- Primer – World Premiere audio drama
- Written by ensemble member Spenser Davis
- Directed by Literary Manager Brittney Brown
- Featuring Kim Boler, JD Caudill, Catherine Dildilian, August Forman, RjW Mays, Watson Swift, Aria Szalai-Raymond, David Weiss and Brenda Scott Wlazlo.
When looters smash in a Michigan Avenue store's front windows, this singular act of destruction affects a host of individuals, including the store's security team, its managers, employees at one of its Cosmetics kiosks and more. Featuring a sequence of scenes that view the incident from vastly different perspectives, Primer offers a panorama of a single act of looting in the heart of the Magnificent Mile. Set in Brady's, the same fictional store that served as backdrop to Davis's much-lauded play Plainclothes (for which he received the M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award), and featuring the return of some notable characters, Primer examines institutions' tendencies to prioritize property over people, as well as our country's eagerness to cover up its blemishes, rather than treating the sicknesses that live just beneath the surface.
February 11 – March 12, 2022
- This Is Only a Test – World Premiere!
- By Eric Reyes Loo
- Directed by Toma Tavares Langston
- The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
It could happen anywhere, at any time, and the faculty at Washington High have decided to take "being prepared" to a whole new level. Through a series of Active Shooter Drills, their students will be trained on how to fight back against intruders. But as they’re asked to quell violence by responding violently, four teenagers begin to wonder: if we’re so prepared, why do we feel even more unsafe? Directed by rising director Toma Tavares Langston (The Light; Hedwig and the Angry Itch), this brand-new play asks us to consider the moment when preparing for the worst tips over into a whole new breed of violence all its own.
May 13 – June 11, 2022
- Friends With Guns – Chicago Premiere!
- Written by Stephanie Alison Walker
- Directed by Georgette Verdin
- The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Shannon and Josh live in a nice neighborhood, a place where they can raise their family surrounded by other young liberal couples who think and vote just like them. But when the newest married couple in their social circle reveals that they’re proud gun owners, they’re forced to explore, defend and reconsider what they thought was a cut-and-dry political issue. Walker’s complex play centers around a marriage and series of friendships, all pushed to the brink by the realization that they may not agree on something. A smash hit in Los Angeles, this play’s conversation-stirring Chicago premiere will be helmed by Georgette Verdin, Managing Artistic Director of Interrobang Theatre Project.
Bechdel Fest 9
Dates and artists to be announced
Now in its ninth iteration, Bechdel Fest features a slate of brand-new short plays that each center around female-identifying, trans and nonbinary characters talking about things other than men. Since its inception in 2013, this annual event has allowed BNT to partner with some of the city's most outstanding artists to tell vibrant and relevant stories, all of which pass the now-famous Bechdel-Wallace Test with flying colors.
The Paper Trail – New Play Development Initiative
Created in 2016, this new-play development series was formed as a way for BNT to provide resources to playwrights outside of the company, as each season the company partners with a fresh pair of artists to help bring their ideas from seed to finished script. This season, BNT is thrilled to be developing enthralling new scripts with playwrights Rachel DuBose and Brynne Frauenhoffer, two of the most exciting voices currently telling stories in Chicago. BNT will also be spending this season serving as ambassadors for the work of past Paper Trail participants Lane Anthony Flores (The Book of Shadows), Michael Turrentine (Mare) and Cassandra Rose (Billy to His Friends), in hopes of finding artistic homes for each of their thrilling new plays.
Broken Nose Theatre’s 2021-22 season features playwrights (top, l to r) Michael Allen Harris, Spenser Davis, Eric Reyes Loo and Stephanie Alison Walker with directors (bottom, l to r) Manny Buckley, Brittney Brown, Toma Tavares Langston and Georgette Verdin.
About the Artists
Michael Allen Harris (Playwright, Kingdom) is a dramatic writer who currently resides in THE BRONX! He received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Tisch in 2019. He is a 2020 Film Independent: Episodic Lab Fellow. His plays include Kingdom (Broken Nose Theatre), Punk (The New Colony) and Rocky Road (New Studio, Columbia College Chicago). Kingdom was awarded the 2018 BTAA Lorraine Hansberry Award, and was nominated for Best New Play at the 2018 Non-Equity Jeff Awards. Most recently he workshopped his new play Janet Jackson with Broken Nose in the Off/Nights New Play Workshop Series. He is proud to be one of the Resident Playwrights of Broken Nose. Outside of writing, he LOVES video games, his favorite series include Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid & The Last of Us.
Manny Buckley (Director, Kingdom) is a Chicago-based director, actor, playwright and teaching artist. As a writer and director, his work has been produced in Chicago in the Blue Ink Festival, Ripped: The Living Newspaper Festival, #Enough: Plays To End Gun Violence and nationally in the One Minute Play festival. His play Change of a Dress was a semi-finalist for the Neil LaBute Playwriting Award. He assistant directed the Jeff Award-winning The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, and most recently, his solo play about civil rights icon Frederick Douglass, The Lion, received a staged reading at American Blues Theater, where he is a proud ensemble member. Manny is a Black Theatre Alliance and Black Excellence Award-winner.
Spenser Davis (Playwright, Primer) is an award-winning writer-director based in Chicago. He is the current Michael Maggio Directing Fellow at The Goodman, where he recently served as Associate Director for Bob Falls's production of The Sound Inside. He has received the 2020 Elizabeth George Commission from South Coast Rep, the 2019 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award from the American Theatre Critics’ Association, was a finalist for the Harold & Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, and is a three-time nominee for the Joseph Jefferson Best Director Award, winning once. This past season, he directed his virtual play The Spin in both Chicago (Interrobang Theatre Project) and Austin, Texas (Street Corner Arts). Other credits include A Red Orchid Theatre, First Floor Theater, Promethean Theatre, American Blues, The New Colony, Hell in a Handbag and Steppenwolf 1700; he’s a longtime ensemble member of Broken Nose Theatre, as well as a member of The Factory. His other plays include Plainclothes, Merge, Sick, Underdogz and A Million Tiny Pieces. He’s represented by William Morris Endeavor. All of the love to Elise.
Brittney Brown (Director, Primer) is a Chicago-based actor and director. Some select Chicago acting credits include Theo Ubique's Hedwig and the Angry Inch & Sweeney Todd, Pride Films and Plays' All That He Was (Jeff Nomination – Best Performer in a Supporting Role), New American Folk Theatre’s Hot Pink or Ready to Blow & Scraps, Kokandy Production’s Bonnie and Clyde and Griffin Theatre’s Ragtime &Violet. Brittney has assistant directed productions of May the Road Rise Up (Factory Theater) and Wolves (Exit 63), was a featured director in Broken Nose Theatre’s Bechdel Fest 7: Momentum, and will direct Avalanche Theatre’s production of Artemis Books and the Well-Meaning Man. She is a Literary Manager for Broken Nose Theatre and the Casting Director for Factory Theater.
Eric Reyes Loo (Playwright, This Is Only a Test) spent his childhood crafting the perfect comeback during his sixteen years of Catholic school education, where his mother sent him to become a priest. He came out a theatre queen and loudmouth jokester instead. All of this gave him plenty of material as he turned to writing and producing theatre in New York and his native Los Angeles. Eric’s critically-acclaimed play Death and Cockroaches was produced by Chalk Repertory Theatre, where Eric is also a member of the Artistic Circle. In addition, Eric is a television writer/producer who has written on Guidance for AwesomenessTV/Hulu and A.J. and the Queen for Netflix. He also has numerous projects in development.
Toma Tavares Langston (Director, This Is Only a Test) is a Chicago freelance theater director. Notable works include Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Theo Ubique – 2020 Jeff Nomination, Production – Musical) and The Light (The New Colony – 2018 Jeff Nomination, Director – Play). Toma was awarded a 2015 Victory Gardens Theater Director Inclusion Initiative fellowship. Other Chicago works include Sucker Punch (Victory Gardens, Assistant Director), 1980 or Why I'm Voting for John Anderson (Jackalope Theatre, Assistant Director), The Last Five Years, The Shadow Box, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. He is currently pursuing his MBA in Public Administration at Southern New Hampshire University. Toma would like to give a special thanks to E.M., Rose, Eric and the Broken Nose Theatre crew for the opportunity to tell this impactful story.
Stephanie Alison Walker (Playwright, Friends With Guns) is an award-winning playwright committed to radical truth-telling and listening in her work. She specializes in nuanced and complex stories that center women, humor in darkness, personalization of the political and historical drama. Full-length plays include The Madres (Winner of the 2019 Francesca Primus Prize), The Abuelas (Winner of Ashland New Plays Festival), Friends With Guns (O'Neill Finalist), The Art of Disappearing (Primus Prize Finalist, Princess Grace Finalist), American Home (Winner of American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award), The Sister House and The Ordeal of Water (Bay Area Play Festival Finalist 2020, Screencraft Stage Play Contest Finalist). Her newest play, Sophia Hayden Deserves Better, tells the untold story of the sole female architect at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Stephanie’s short plays are anthologized by Smith & Kraus and have been produced all over the world. In addition to writing plays, she is currently adapting Friends with Guns and The Abuelas as features, continuing to develop her television pilots, writing a novel that is a mashup of the spy and chick lit genres while raising two spirited boys and selling real estate in the suburbs of Chicago. She is a proud alumni of the Playwrights Union, a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Antaeus Playwrights Lab and Honor Roll! – an advocacy and action group of women+ playwrights over forty whose aim is to significantly increase inclusion and representation on stage and in the theatrical canon. stephaniealisonwalker.com
Georgette Verdin (Director, Friends With Guns) is a Cuban-American freelance director, theatre and speech educator, arts integration specialist and the Managing Artistic Director of Interrobang Theatre Project. Recent directing credits include Tribes (Nina Raine) at Western Michigan University, Jeff recommended productions of Out of Love (U.S. Premiere, Elinor Cook), Grace and Recent Tragic Events (Craig Wright) and Time Stands Still (Donald Margulies), as well as the 2013 & 2016 Yale Drama Series winners, Still (Jen Silverman) and Utility (Emily Schwend). Georgette has also worked with Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, Facility Theatre and Chicago Dramatists, among others. Georgette holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Performance from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA and a Master in Directing from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She is an associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
About Broken Nose Theatre:
Broken Nose Theatre is a Pay-What-You-Can theatre company. Founded in 2012, BNT was the 2018 recipient of the Emerging Theater Award, presented by the League of Chicago Theatres and Broadway in Chicago. The company has produced and developed 30 full-length plays (including 12 Chicago or world premieres) and over 60 new short plays through our annual Bechdel Fest. We strive to spark conversation, cultivate empathy, and amplify underrepresented voices, and are committed to making new, exciting and relevant theatre that is economically accessible to all audiences. For more information, please visit www.brokennosetheatre.com.