Incubator Series
About the Incubator
Experiments with New Artists & New Ideas
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.
Season 2024-25 Incubator Projects
The 2024-25 Incubator Program is made possible by the generous support of
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.
Pretty Shahid
by Omer Abbas Salem
Directed by Laura Alcalá Baker
Featuring: Omer Abbas Salem, Gloria Imseih Petrelli, Sahar Dika, Adoni Esho, Debo Balogun, Sarah Price, Em Modaff, and Yourtana Sulaiman
Staged Readings
Sunday, June 29 and Monday, June 30 at 7:30pm
A young Iraqi immigrant is hit in the head with a thrown bottle the day after 9/11 and he wakes up sounding just like his favorite American – Julia Roberts. As he and his family navigate the racist days that followed the tragic day, he uses his new voice and lost memory to become more American. This is a play about assimilation and what we choose to forget about ourselves to fit in. It’s a romantic comedy, though. And gay. And has singing and dancing, just like a Julia Roberts movie.
About the Artist:
Omer Abbas Salem (he/they) is an actor and playwright. As an actor, they’ve worked at Roundabout Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Goodman, A Red Orchid, Steep Theatre, Jackalope Theatre, Silk Road Rising, First Floor Theatre, The New Coordinates, About Face Theatre, Griffin Theatre, and The Second City. As a playwright, their work has been produced at The Goodman, Steppenwolf Theatre, About Face Theatre, Steep Theatre, First Floor Theatre, Jackalope Theatre, The New Coordinates, The Story Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, National Queer Theatre, Definition Theatre, and The Theatre School of DePaul. They are a member of the 2021/22 Goodman Playwrights Unit and was developed in The Goodman’s New Stages Festival in 2022. Abbas Salem is also the winner of the 2022 Blueprint Commission from First Floor Theater and the Cunningham Commission from DePaul University. They are an Emerging Playwright Commission from Audible Theater and are also the most recent recipient of the Edgerton Commission from Steppenwolf Theater. They won the 2022 3Arts Award in Theater. They are an ensemble member of Steep Theatre, First Floor Theater, and The New Coordinates. They graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and the University of Chicago. They are represented by Gray Talent. Find out more at www.omerabbassalem.com
Apply for the 2025-2026 Incubator
Applications open June 9-23
A Red Orchid Theatre’s Incubator was created so that our organization and its artists could get to know emerging talent and foster exploration in Chicago’s theater community. Additionally, we were driven to create a playground for our artistic ensemble to explore projects outside of our planned programming.
Parameters – Emerging artists, companies, or collaborators with a Chicago history of less than five years that are without a space; BIPOC, Queer, and/or Gender Diverse projects/companies strongly encouraged to apply.
- People: This may be a new collaboration or solo experiment, an emerging artist or company in need of space to produce or workshop a new play or new idea for a performance piece.
- Plays: his may be workshops and/or productions of new plays or playwrights as well as experimentation with established plays, classical scripts or canonical works.
- Process: This may be an exploratory rehearsal process, experimentation with design elements, non-scripted forms, exploring different acting, directing, producing methodologies, inventing new artistic forms or how differing forms interact to make something new.
Incubators can, but do not have to, include a public facing component. Examples include but are not limited to; an invited read, discussions, a demonstration of process, a fully produced run, or none of the above. If there is to be a public facing component, admission can be free or ticketed for money.
A Red Orchid’s Incubator program only provides:
- Free theatre space.
- Informal artistic guidance through check-ins and feedback from AROT ensemble and staff.
- Limited administrative support.
- Marketing cross-promotion.
- Box Office and Front of House availability.
** Important to note: A Red Orchid Theatre does not fund or produce applicant programming. Selected Incubator artists or companies are responsible for all production costs. **
Timeframes:
- October 28 – November 11, 2025 – 2 week window
- February 10 – February 24, 2026 – 2 week window
- May 19 – June 2, 2026 – 2 week window
- July 13 – August 23, 2026 – 6 week window. Full production slot.
Note: Two week Incubator projects will take place concurrently with AROT’s production schedule. This means participants will be working within the constraints of the existing set and physical space of the current show. Incubators chosen for the full production slot in summer 2026 will have access to an empty theatre for set installation and build.
This application is due by 10:00 PM on Monday, June 23rd, 2025.
We look forward to your responses!
Previous Incubator Projects
The H Twins
THE H TWINS
by Hope Campbell
Featuring Hope Campbell Gundlah, Tess Cameron Gundlah, Timothy Weinert, Jennifer Jelsema, and Meghan Maureen McDonough
March 3-5, 2025
Identical twins Hilda & Helga are the blonde-haired, blue-eyed ideal- at least according to Uncle M, the researcher-turned-father-figure who supervises their highly controlled children’s home in 1940s Germany. After accidentally being exposed to American movies and music, the H Twins become convinced they’re destined to be vaudeville stars. But as they develop their song-and-dance acts and fret about impending adulthood, they grow less and less identical- and more and more questioning of their “ideological education” and the experiment in which they’ve been raised. The twins tell their story via a darkly funny, musical, reality-bending variety show.
The Worm My Sister
The Meat Machine presents A Red Orchid Incubator production of
THE WORM MY SISTER
Conceived of and directed by Ramona Rotten
Devised and performed by The Meat Machine
Featuring Lynda Cortez, Sam Hurwitz, Kelsey Rich, John Francis Klingle, Quinn Leary, Melissa Jane Carlson, Paul Brennan, Lou Smith & Emily Cobb
December 5 – 15, 2024
Zac Efron
Token Theatre presents the World Premiere of
ZAC EFRON
By David Rhee & Wai Yim
Directed by Alan Muraoka
Featuring Hansel Tan, Wai Yim & Gordon Chow with special appearances by Cheryl Hamada & Wai Ching Ho
June 20 – July 21, 2024
Zac Efron glimpses into a world that is rarely seen on the American stage: two Asian Americans looking for love and the complexities that come with their adventures. It is a poignant opportunity for radical self-acceptance through YouTube, tarot readings, and of course, one of America’s favorite sweethearts, Zac Efron. Hold onto your harness and clutch your pearls, it’s gonna be a wild ride!
The Receptionist
Kalliope & Co. presents
THE RECEPTIONIST
By Adam Bock
Directed by Kyle Stoffers
Featuring AROT Ensemble Member dado with Jessica Ervin, Jacob Alexander & Dano Duran
May 15 – June 2, 2024
At the start of a typical day in the Northeast Office, Beverly deals effortlessly with ringing phones and her colleague’s romantic troubles. But the appearance of a charming rep from the Central Office disrupts the friendly routine. And as the true nature of the company’s business becomes apparent, The Receptionist raises disquieting, provocative questions about the consequences of complicity with evil.
Act Five & Reawakening Desire
ACT FIVE
Conceived & installed by Ensemble Member dado
Script by Katherine Swan | Musical curation by Sam Clapp
What if the orchard was not destroyed, and we return years later to find our musicians still playing out there? In this exploration of an imagined Act Five of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, we finally get to meet and experience the offstage musicians in person. Act Five will be shared with our patrons via five open rehearsals.
REAWAKENING DESIRE
Directed by Ensemble Member Shade Murray
Leaning into the sexy, the giddy, and the heartbreaking of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, this project aims to investigate a world where desire is ignited in the most wonderfully unexpected ways. This workshop will culminate in a free, salon-style reading.
Celebration
Purpose: CELEBRATION was developed to experiment with combining theatrical and musical forms and further exploring relationships between the artists.
Set on the eve of an anniversary party held in an elite London restaurant, Harold Pinter’s Celebration explores the bizarrely acute and darkly hilarious condition of human disconnection. This theatrical event imposes Pinter’s restaurant onto an experimental performance of Mauricio Kagel’s music, exacerbating the tensions in human relationships and the ensuing existential disposition.
Sick by Seven
Purpose: SICK BY SEVEN was developed to explore the combination of video multimedia with theatrical forms in new work while exploring relationships with new artists and raising funds for a charitable organization.
Anxiety, phobias, mental illness, mysterious diseases, and medication are among the issues explored by artists in SICK BY SEVEN. The seven interconnected works, part of A Red Orchid Theatre’s Incubator series, combine live theater and video to investigate physical, mental and societal health in the modern world.
Puget Sound
Purpose: PUGET SOUND was a play development workshop that explored new work and new artistic relationships, culminating in a staged reading that invited audience feedback.
Two beach combers’ lives are disrupted when a severed foot washes ashore. “Puget Sound” explores what happens when the mysteries of the ocean collide with the mysteries of life and death.
Put Your House In Order
Purpose: PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER explored new working relationships, creating a new company with a new play, and implemented experimental marketing and ticketing strategies
Just outside of Chicago. Fall. In only 24 hours, a first date turns into a life-shaking adventure against the clock as two people are thrust into circumstances outside of their control.