The Incubator at A Red Orchid Theatre was created to get to know emerging talent, encourage dreaming, and foster exploration in Chicago’s theatre community. Leading with curiosity, it provides artists with the space, stage, and time to incubate new work, new artistic relationships, and new artistic forms. A Red Orchid’s ensemble maintains the conviction that live theatre is the greatest sustenance for the human spirit, and that passionately committed artists will draw passionately committed audiences. The Incubator is an active manifestation of that conviction and of A Red Orchid’s mission to cultivate new audiences for the modern stage.

The 2026-2027 Incubator Program is made possible by the generous support of

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Brett Neveu (he/him) A Red Orchid Ensemble member since 2004. Productions with A Red Orchid Theatre include Revolution, Traitor, The Malignant Ampersands and recent film credits include Eric LaRue (dir. Michael Shannon), Night’s End (dir. Jennifer Reeder) and Brilliant Blue (dir. Brett Neveu). Brett is also an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University where he teaches screenwriting. 

Tanya Palmer (she/her) serves as the Assistant Dean and Executive Artistic Director at Northwestern University’s School of Communication, overseeing programming at the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts. Prior to joining Northwestern, she was on faculty at Indiana University and served as the Director of New Play Development at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago for fourteen seasons and at Actors Theatre of Louisville for five seasons. 

Matt Brown (he/him) is a photographer and a Director of Photography living in Chicago. He holds a BA in English Literature and Fine Art Photography from East Tennessee State University, where he studied with Guggenheim-winning photographer Mike Smith. His photography has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the South, including the 2013 Slow Exposures Festival of Photography. 

Amy B. Tiong (she/her) is a Chinese-American playwright, screenwriter, and film director whose genre-bending work explores identity and generational healing. A Gates Millennium Scholar and NYU Tisch Dean’s Scholar, she earned her MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University and was a 2025 Hansberry-Lilly Playwriting Fellow. Her work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ensemble Studio Theater, Wavelength Productions, Ghetto Film School, the Dolby Institute, and PictureStart. Her short films have premiered at AMC Lincoln Center and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. She has also worked in production at VICE Media, FX, and Refinery29.

Jenni Lamb (she/her) is a Chicago-based writer, theatre maker, and former improviser. Her plays have received readings and development nationally, and she is a past resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and Goodman Theatre. Currently, she is founder of Second Site – a collective focused on creating new stories in non-traditional spaces both physical and virtual. She is thrilled to be part of the Incubator with A Red Orchid! 

Emily Blanquera (she/her) is a farmer with Evanston Grows. As she can, she also directs and designs for theater and dance. She was happy to design the lights/scenery for The New Theatre Project’s factory floor productions of UNCLE VANYA and FAR AWAY, and to direct THE SHAPE OF THE BONES. Most recently, she designed the set for ANY REBELLION OF WILL and assisted Robert Falls on FLYING MONKEYS. 

Grace Steckler (she/her) is an actor and playwright. Her work on Chicago stages includes Octet (Raven Theatre, Goodman Theatre), As You Like It (Writers Theatre), Short Shakes and Shakes in the City (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Drunk Shakespeare Chicago, and various plays with the Backroom Shakespeare Project. Onscreen, she recently wrapped shooting the feature film Block Party (Hiffclanger Productions). Coming up, Grace will be doing the rep series at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in both The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Brandon Jackson Baird, MD (he/him) is a musical theatre writer and Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed the Northwestern University American Musical Theatre Project Chicago Writers Workshop in 2026.  He completed the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Songwriting Workshop and is currently in the Advanced Workshop as a Composer. His musical, CODE, exploring life-and-death decision-making in the world of medicine, was selected for the 2026 Instrumental Theatre Company Mixtape New Works Festival Vol 2. His work has also been highlighted in the 2026 BMI Workshop Spotlight.  Dr. Baird also serves as Co-Director of the Voice Center at UChicago and is a laryngeal surgeon specializing in the treatment of voice disorders. He trained in Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford University and completed fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital under Steven Zeitels, the surgeon who treated Adele, Julie Andrews, Sam Smith and others. He was recently featured on the Tamron Hall Show and ABC7 News in “The Doctor Who Saved My Voice.” 

Dana Saleh Omar (She/Her) is a proud Palestinian-Jordanian first generation child. She recently produced, co-wrote and starred in her own short titled “Stuck” which is looking for distribution. She is a musician, actor and creator from Chicago. Recent Highlights: The Antiquities (Goodman Theatre), Broadway National Tour: The Band’s Visit, Off-Broadway:  We Live in Cairo (Joe’s Pub). Regional: Once (Writers Theatre) Frankenstein: A Ghost Story (composer/musician, KC Rep.), We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theatre), Pirates of Penzance (Pasadena Playhouse), HMS Pinafore (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville), All Our Tragic (The Hypocrites), The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (People’s Light), One Hundred Dresses (Chicago Children’s Theatre), TV: Chicago PD. 

Kyle Hatley (he/him) is a writer, director and actor. REGIONAL ACTING: An Iliad, Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie, The Whipping Man, The Foreigner  (Kansas City Repertory Theatre);  An Iliad (Geva Theatre Center); The Temperamentals and Take Me Out (About Face Theatre); Danny Casolaro Died For You (TimeLine Theatre Company); End of the Rainbow (Porchlight Theatre); The Actuary and Peter and the Starcatcher (Peninsula Players Theatre); REGIONAL DIRECTING: Sticky
Traps, When I Come To Die, Little Shop of Horrors, Carousel, Circle Mirror Transformation, Broke-ology, The Borderland and A Christmas Carol (KC Rep); Jesus Christ Superstar (Arts Asylum, This Happy Breed); Amadeus, and Oklahoma! (TheatreWorks); Carousel, Titus Andronicus, Death of Cupid, Master of the Universe (The Living Room); The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (KCAT); Ben Franklyn’s Apprentice and Red Badge Variations (The Coterie Theatre). STAGE ADAPTATIONS: War of The Worlds, The Death of Cupid, Master of the Universe, Head, Watering the Grave. SHORT FILMS: Marbles, The Witchman Interviews, and In Her Wake. TV/FILM ACTING: Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, S.W.A.T., The Rookie: Feds, Prison Break, In An Instant, As The World Turns, Soul Sessions, The Thinning: New World Order, and Skincare. Kyle served as associate artistic director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre from 2007 to 2014. In 2015, he was the Resident Director at KC Rep. He received an Ogle Award for his original audio series, The Dead Girl in 2008, and he is a 2011 Charlotte Street Foundation Generative Artist Fellow. His award-winning short film, Marbles, was officially selected to over 50 film festivals. Kyle is a proud member of the studio team at BRC Imagination Arts in Los Angeles, California where he lives with his wife and son. 

Bobby Kennedy (he/him) is a Chicago-based dramaturg, producer and director. He is the Director of Artistic Development at Writers Theatre, where he leads the theatre’s new work program. World premieres produced at WT during his tenure include Dhaba on Devon Avenue by Madhuri Shekar, Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, Wife of a Salesman by Eleanor Burgess, Dishwasher Dreams by Alauddin Ullah, Witch by Jen Silverman, Trevor by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick-Davis, The Hunter and the Bear by PigPen Theatre Co., and Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf by Tim Sniffen. He has also worked on productions at SideShow Theatre Company, The Gift Theatre, Jackalope Theatre Company, Next Theatre Company and New Repertory Theatre.