New Stages Festival at Goodman Theatre

The New Stages Festival returns for its 21st year, transforming the Owen Theatre into a showcase for bold new work in development. This year’s lineup features script-in-hand readings of Calamity West’s FEAST!, a sharply funny holiday dinner gone off the rails that exposes privilege, money, and marriage under pressure; Hansol Jung’s Pennies, an epic, time-bending journey from a modern call center to the River Styx that wrestles with grief, guilt, and emotional burnout; Christina Anderson’s This Part of His Life Blooms, in which a newly retired man turns to his neglected garden and unburied memories to confront love, friendship, and fatherhood; and Ike Holter’s The Audience Unseen, a real-time supernatural thriller where a routine interrogation becomes a terrifying descent into the unknown. With free tickets by reservation and a focus on inventive, risk-taking storytelling, the festival offers Chicago audiences an early look at some of the country’s most exciting playwrights and plays in progress.