By reid tang
Directed by Tina El Gamal
Our Story
As a vanguard for what’s next in Chicago theater, FFT aims to pave a new path for American Theater, pointing the way towards a reimagined model centering equity, radical interrogation, and unapologetic live performance that challenges the status quo in each story told.
First Floor Theater (FFT) is committed to:
Producing world, national and local premiere plays.
Amplifying underheard voices in the American theater.
Creating opportunities for the next generation of theatremakers.
Offering an accessible ticket model for audiences of all backgrounds to see live theater.
Operating as an antiracist institution.
Founded in 2012, First Floor Theater is known for pairing cutting-edge scripts with innovative design. After our initial creative impulse, we redefined and expanded our company, bringing new and innovative perspectives. As we continued to develop our identity, we moved to focus on intensely collaborative production processes that bring challenging, daring new works to Chicago stages, earning us the “Best New Theater Company” by the Chicago Reader in 2013.
Along the way, we’ve been a finalist for Broadway in Chicago’s Emerging Theatre Award in 2018, featured in Newcity’s Players 2019: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago, and have since received numerous Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, along with national recognition including the 2018 Francesca Primus Prize from ATCA. Notable productions include Hooded, or Being Black For Dummies, Mike Pence Sex Dream, peerless, Plano, Pro-Am, and One Party Consent.
Our work is made possible by our Season Sponsors:
With foundational support from
Additional support from
Special thanks to Raven Theatre, Black Box Acting Studio, Athenaeum Center, Big Works Industries, Flash Embroidery, Ian McLaren, Michael Brosilow, Benden Dawley, Martha Ruddy, and Robin the dog.
First Floor Theater presents the Chicago Premiere of
By reid tang
Directed by Tina El Gamal
Olivia Gregorich
Assistant Director & Dramaturg
Kendyl Meyer*
Stage Manager
Eve Pahoresky
Assistant Stage Manager
Samantha Kaufman
Fight and Intimacy Director
Conchita Avitia*
Lighting Designer
Spencer Donovan*
Scenic Designer
Nathan Rohrer
Costume Designer
Jae Robinson
Sound Designer
Lolo Ramos
Props Designer
Peter Wilde
Technical Director
Adelina Feldman-Schultz
Casting Director
Acacia Consulting Group
Press Relations
*denotes FFT company member
Note from the Director
Sometimes it feels like we’re in the after-the-afterparty of humanity.
The main event and all its glory have come and gone. We’ve overstayed our welcome. Our phone is dead, and we can’t get a ride home. What the hell are we supposed to do with the world we’ve been handed? At times, it feels like it’s been used up by those who came before us.
I often talk with friends about the absurdity of our lives - how strange it feels showing up to work as the world crumbles around us, and billionaires remain untouchable, continuously exploiting the rest of us. And yet, within the world’s perpetual shattering, we find joy, meaning, and something to giggle about. Our humanity never strays too far. For that, I am grateful.
While billionaires have traded in their humanity for something much more sinister, I look around and see so many people choosing every day to hold fast to all the things that make them human, despite the bleak reality of late stage capitalism. It is through our shared humanity that we are able to turn the tides - “build a machine much bigger than the machines [we] work for” and make our world more beautiful, more habitable. In spite of those who would have it otherwise.
Tina El Gamal, Director
Rock Me to the End of the World and Back
Clubbed Thumb first staged a reading of Work Hard Have Fun Make History in 2021. At the time, the world was thinking about getting shakily back to its feet amidst an ongoing global pandemic that was taking online shopping to stratospheric new heights. It was the same year that workers in an Alabama warehouse made history by attempting its first union election within Amazon (which responded with intense anti-union tactics). It was also the year that former Amazon employee Chris Smalls officially formed the independent Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island. They would be the first to win a successful election in April of 2022.
This all came after years of employees speaking more publicly about their experiences in the engine that would make two-day shipping not only possible but the standard. These stories included warehouse vending machines for pain medication, ambulances lining parking lots awaiting victims of heatstroke in warehouses without air conditioning, injury rates at twice the national average, and insufficient time for bathroom breaks while working for a company owned by the richest man in the world.
In 2025, Amazon employed approximately 1.5 million people worldwide, with the majority of these employees working in sortable fulfillment centers. Of all their distribution workers, 42.9% work in these warehouses. Increasing automation as AI and robotics technology become ever more sophisticated has made distribution one of the sectors most vulnerable to job cuts, and it has been estimated that 30% of all current U.S. jobs could become automated by 2030.
While employees sustain overuse injuries attempting to use their bodies with machine-like efficiency, machines are increasingly given more of the dexterity and flexibility previously achievable only with human employees. Under such conditions, having a body with its own rhythms is made abnormal, the need of rest is an inconvenience, and our unpredictable and unique variability is an unprofitable liability, as noted in the opening scene:
“Oh no the security questions are for me. So they can be sure I remain the same person that I was when they hired me, and the same person from before I got up to get another coffee, and the same person that they call in to watch the long videos about the overwhelming disadvantages of unionizing. Everyone changes from moment to moment, but I have to be careful not to change too much” (NO, p. 4)
In the world of this play, inhabiting a body is no easy matter, regardless of where you fall on the machine-to-human spectrum.
In 2022, Breaking the Binary Theatre hosted a second staged reading of the script in New York. As the project is a development hub for the work of transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) artists, it is reasonable to find questions about queerness, identity, and agency threaded through the play’s characters and structure.
After an early read, I found myself thinking about how the language of computers is a binary–everything reduced to a code of 1s and 0s. This play sets up a lot of binaries of between two characters in a scene (STOP/GO, YES/NO, OPEN/CLOSED, HUMAN/MACHINE etc) only to have a third character break into the dialogue, to interrupt or transform the dynamic, or else we see characters redefine themselves within their own context. Two people may stand on either end of a phone call, but there is a third space that is created between them that now is often inhabited by an audience: surveillance, a chaperone, something that may be called artificial intelligence, and theatergoers (in our case) along with everything else that exists beyond our power to express in words.
Absurd theater is existential in nature: it makes a point of highlighting that meaning is something we create together, and by extension, any recognizable ideologies and systems we live in are also created by choice (and can therefore be changed). This is an inherent rejection of pre-determined outcomes, though this play does have more than one professional prophet clocking in.
Scholars of various forms of collapse (ecological and otherwise), might recognize this particular sort of foretelling that NO BABY defines for us in Scene 6:
“a sign is someone screaming at you from the past, it is a distillation of things that have been learned, a warning kind of like prophecy. [...] I would listen to the signs if I were you.” (p.36)
tang tells us that this play is not about Amazon, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk (though their effigies inhabit a play which is titled with Amazon’s motto). Despite capturing so successfully the elements of our current economic and ideological mainstream that are antithetical to human flourishing on earth, tang perhaps offers these to us as warnings in this sense. They are embedded signs that I believe invite us to take the portents to heart and laugh our way to the possibility of an alternative.
Thank you for joining us in this imaginary and not-so-imaginary world where humans are slowly being replaced by machines, parents sometimes fail us, climate catastrophe looms, overwhelming distractions compete for our attention, our data is sold to extract future purchases, capitalism is unmasked as inherently absurd, billionaires have abandoned the rest of the species for a bunker in space, and those of us left behind are stumbling to our next bullshit job through mountains of post-consumer refuse.
In spite of these incredible forces of alienation, we reach a key moment toward the end where a tiny found family arrives in a room together and asks each other for the oldest and simplest form of comfort: “Rock me?” May we all continue to find ways to express ourselves in the full range of our weird, wacky, and unpredictable selves— and most of all to hold each other close.
Olivia Gregorich, Assistant Director & Dramaturg
Playwright
reid tang writes plays and things shaped like plays. Their work includes Isabel (NAATCO), DEBT (co-written w/ Adrian Einspanier, developed with Pride Plays, New York Stage and Film & Breaking the Binary Theatre), WORK HARD HAVE FUN MAKE HISTORY (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks), FUTURE WIFE (Relentless Award Honorable Mention, Goethe-Institut Beijing, Theatertreffen Stückemarkt), and Party in a Google Sheet (New Georges). They’ve been under commission with Breaking the Binary Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop, a recipient of the Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grant, and a MacDowell fellow. Currently, they’re a resident playwright at New Dramatists, and have been part of Ars Nova's Play Group, the New Georges Jam, Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers' Group, and NYTW’s 2050 Fellowship. They grew up in Singapore and presently live in Brooklyn, NY. reidtang.com
Director
Tina El Gamal is a Chicago-based actor, director, and producer. They have worked at theatres across the country, including Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare, Portland Opera, Silk Road Cultural Center, Steep Theatre, Remy Bumppo, Farmers Alley, and more. Tina was featured in Newcity 's Players 50 2022. They hold a BFA in Acting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is represented by Big Mouth Talent.www.tinaelgamal.com
In the Community
EMAN is a grassroots, volunteer group that works to provide critical relief and mutual aid to the local Edgewater community. They provide services to the community and addressing “what the government cannot or will not” do. Their organizing work includes the following services available to the community:
Food Distribution: Distribution of food and household supplies at the Edgewater Presbyterian Church on Saturday’s at 12:30pm
Free Store: A store that allows for neighbors to collect what they need, including seasonal clothes, toiletries, OTC medication, toys, and outdoor survival supplies for unhoused folks. Available Saturday’s from 12:15p - 1:30p
Community Garden: A community garden at the Vedgewater Community Garden, happening during Sundays from 3p-4p
Unhoused Support: Resources, such as clothing to sheltering equipment to hygiene products, that can be used by unhoused folks. Donation of items are encouraged!
COVID-19 Air Support: PPE and tests to address the continued impact of COVID-19 on the community
Interest folks can join their newsletter to engage in direct action, keep resources on hand for community members, and/or donate resources and time to the network.
Actors
YES / OPEN / BABY / HUMAN / JEFF
Sahar Dika is a Chicago-based actor and writer. She is thrilled to be making her First Floor debut! Other Chicago readings and productions include Birds of North America (U/S), Sharon, and Pretty Shahid (A Red Orchid Theatre); Wish You Were Here (Remy Bumppo; U/S); Modern Women and Nest (The Story Theatre); Crushed (The Understudy); Happy Days Are Here Again (Steep); Modern Women and Layalina (Goodman Theatre); Doug and Pretty Shahid (Jackalope Theatre Company); Mosque4Mosque (Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Scout); Venus in Fur (Circle Theatre; U/S) and Mosque Alert (Silk Road Rising). Television and film credits include Chicago Fire, Emperor Of Ocean Park, Christmas With Felicity, Monuments, Good Years, and Happy Hour. She is represented by DDO Artists Agency and is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA.
NO / STOP / LEFT / NO BABY
Jenn Geiger is an actor and artist. She's recently performed in Chicago in Antigonick and Ghost Fetus (Trap Door Theatre) as well as at Runaways Lab Theater, and Rhino Fest. Regional credits include A Christmas Carol and The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield (Actors Theatre of Louisville). International credits include Medusa (Global Hive Laboratories at Steppenwolf LookOut and Pleasance Theatre London). Jenn is an ensemble member at Avalanche Theatre and an alum of the Professional Training Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville and Ohio State University.
MACHINE / GO / CLOSED / RIGHT / YOUNG / ELON
Alice Wu can't wait to share Work Hard Have Fun Make History with audiences. Recent Chicago credits include Veal, Revolution (u/s) (A Red Orchid Theatre); The Skin of Our Teeth (Remy Bumppo); The Pets (Bramble Theatre); Time is a Color and the Color is Blue (Avalanche Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Midsommer Flight); and Arabia, Arabia! (The Plagiarists). Additional select regional credits include The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield (Humana Festival) and Circle Mirror Transformation (u/s) (Actors Theatre of Louisville). TV and film credits include Chicago Fire, Empire, HiveWheelhouse, and Tears to a Glass Eye. Alice received their BFA at NDSU and the Professional Training Company acting apprenticeship at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Alice is a company member with Avalanche Theatre and Red Theatre and is represented by DDO Artists Agency.
YES / OPEN / BABY / HUMAN / JEFF U/S
Joelle Denhof is honored to be making her debut at First Floor Theater! Recent Chicago credits include Wish You Were Here (Remy Bumppo). Other regional credits include English (Tipping Point Theater); More Fun Than Bowling, Emilia, The Tempest (Western Michigan University). She is a recent graduate of Western Michigan University's BFA acting class and is fairly new to the city. Joelle is signed with Stewart Talent and is looking forward to continued theatre and television opportunities in Chicago. She would like to thank her family and friends for their continued love and support.
NO / STOP / LEFT / NO BABY U/S
Kennedy Frazier is a Chicago-based actor and writer from the Ozarks. Recent credits include Treefall (Ego Death Theatre Collective) and Out (Do Process Theatre). They studied playwriting and Arabic literature at Kenyon College and they’re a proud graduate of THE ACADEMY at Black Box Acting.
MACHINE / GO / CLOSED / RIGHT / YOUNG / ELON U/S
Maliha Sayed is thrilled to be making her First Floor Theater debut! Chicago credits include Dhaba on Devon Avenue (Writers Theatre); Wish You Were Here (Remy Bumppo); A Lie of the Mind (Raven Theatre), Carousel (Music Theater Works); The Sondheim Tribute Revue & The Secret Garden (Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre); A Year With Frog and Toad (YPT Chicago); and Arabia, Arabia! (The Plagiarists). Regional credits include Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical (Constellation Stage). Television credits include Deli Boys (Hulu). Maliha has a BFA in Musical Theatre from Ithaca College. She is represented by Gray Talent Group.www.malihasayed.com
Creative Team
Olivia Gregorich (Assistant Director & Dramaturg) is an actor, director, dramaturg and musician thrilled to be part of a First Floor team for the first time. Recent credits include understudying Calypso (The Village Theater), coordinating partnerships for REMNANTS (Wender Collective), performing Julius Caesar (Olde School Shakespeare Collective), and text abridgement and dramaturgy for As You Like It (Lawrence University). In her not-so-copious free time she is trying new recipes, finding forests to frolic in, teaching herself tablet weaving, recording her debut solo EP, and continually exploring new horizons with her indie folk band Soft Holler. On IG at @oliviagperforms.
Kendyl Meyer* (Stage Manager) is stoked to be back for their third FFT production. Now a First Floor company member, they have previously Stage Managed One Party Consent and Pro-Am. Other stage management credits include Out, Darn Spot (Tyler Anthony Smith); Amélie the Musical, Into the Woods, American Psycho, Sweeney Todd, Cruel Intentions: The 90s Musical (Kokandy Productions); Two Gentlewomen of Verona, The Rover (Lakeside Shakespeare). They are very scared of the growth of evil technology and are so happy you're here to see this show. On IG at @kendylmakenzi.
Eve Pahoresky’s (Assistant Stage Manager) most recent credits include Sugar Wife, Cut to the Chase, Superior Donuts (Stage Manager, The Artistic Home); Gangsters!, Men on Boats, Journey’s End (Assistant Director, The Theatre School at DePaul); Son of the Stranger (Director, The Theatre School at DePaul); Titanic the Opera (Assistant Director, North Park University). She is in her final year at DePaul, double majoring in Theatre Arts and Communications and Media. Eve is looking forward to continuing her theatre endeavors in Chicago, and is excited to be working for the first time with First Floor Theater!
Samantha Kaufman (Fight and Intimacy Director) is an intimacy director, fight director, and teaching artist. She is based in Chicago and works internationally. Samantha is a Certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators. She is a Certified Teacher, Fight Director, and Theatrical Firearms Safety Instructor with the Society of American Fight Directors and a Jeff Award-nominated fight choreographer. Regionally, Samantha has worked with theatres such as Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Prague Shakespeare Company, among others. www.SamanthaJKaufman.com
Conchita Avitia* (Lighting Designer)is a freelance Mexican-American Lighting Designer based in Chicago. Previous First Floor Theater work include Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, One Party Consent, and In His Hands. Recent work includes No Trailer,Ruth On the Rocks, The Wizards (Concrete Content); Wish You Were Here (Remy Bumppo); Memorabilia, ¡Bernarda!, The Dream King [Jeff Award 2023 Recipient- Lighting Design Midsize] (Teatro Vista Productions); Parched 2.0, Mothering the Movement, 57 Blocks (Free Street Theatre); Happy Days Are Here (Again), Paris [Co-Designed](Steep Theatre); The Brightest Thing in the World [Jeff Nomination], Mosque4Mosque (About Face Theatre); and Chlorine Sky [Co-Designed] (Steppenwolf Theatre Company). She holds her BA in Theatre Design from Columbia College Chicago. Conchita is also a proud Artistic Collective member of Teatro Vista Productions and company member of First Floor Theater. www.avitialighting.com
Spencer Donovan* (Scenic Designer) is a Scenic, Projections, and Props designer. Chicago credits include First Floor Theatre, Oil Lamp Theatre, The Factory Theatre, Marriott Theatre, Three Crows Theatre, Wild Door Theatre, and others. He’s excited to be back at First Floor! He graduated with his master’s degree in design from Indiana University, Bloomington. Spencer is a company member at First Floor Theater. He’d like to thank his husband, Daniel, for always being supportive and for picking up the extra house chores during tech week.
Jae Robinson (Sound Designer) is a musician and sound designer in Chicago who goes by the alias Folie. Her career spans a decade of releases, tours and productions. The most recent of her Sound Design being featured in last year's Pussy Sludge put on by Facility Theatre.
Nathan Rohrer (Costume Designer) has been a successful costume designer in Chicago for two decades, where his work has been seen in theatre and dance productions citywide. With over 200 theatrical & dance credits to his name, he has designed for countless Chicago companies, including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Giordano Dance Chicago, Visceral Dance Chicago, The Hypocrites, Lifeline Theatre, The New Colony, Griffin Theatre, Emerald City Theatre, City Lit Theatre, and Deeply Rooted Productions. He has also worked with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Marriott-Lincolnshire Theatre, Northwestern University, Western Michigan University, Lake Forest College, and countless other performing arts entities nationwide. In addition to working as a Freelance costume designer, Nathan is the Costume Shop Manager and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Chicago. He was the resident costume designer at Thodos Dance Chicago for nine years, and he is the resident costume designer and a founding member of Chicago Repertory Ballet.
Lolo Ramos (Props Designer) is excited to be working with First Floor Theater for the first time. She is a multidisciplinary artist who enjoys collaborating, curating, collecting, and making. She hopes you are having a good day.
Peter Wilde (Technical Director) is a merry mischief maker and builder of stuff and things, including, but not limited to: this set. They also hang gutters and probably has a crush on you.
Jackie Berland (Box Facade Artist) is a creator who works to transform spaces. They believe that building cool spaces is the strongest path to a higher reality. Portals to new places. Lately, Jackie built props for Grelly Duval Best Actress (Grelly Duval). They were interstitial dramaturg for House of the Exquisite Corpse: Blood (Rough House Puppets) and built an ancient deity of spring time who lives in a sacred fairy fountain in their basement. They would like to thank August, Anastar, Peter for all the support and trust.
*denotes FFT company member
Additional Production Staff
Brenden Marble (Production Electrician)
Alexa Wiljanen (Scenic Charge)
Reading List
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (David Graeber, 2015)
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (David Graeber, 2018)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Shoshana Zuboff, 2018)
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (Cory Doctorow, 2025)
More Everything Forever: AI overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity (Adam Becker, 2025)
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (Karen Hao, 2025)
The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power (Dana Mattioli, 2024)
The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy (Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Ellen Reese (eds.), 2020)
On the Clock: What Low Wage Work Did To Me and How It Drives America Insane (Emily Guendelsberger, 2019)
Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy (Jonathan Taplin, 2018)
We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (Eric Blanc, 2025)
How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economies, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People-Powered Future! (Danny Caine, 2021)
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health—and a Vision for Change (Annie Leonard, 2010)
Curated by Olivia Gregorich, Assistant Director & Dramaturg
Our Company Members
† denotes FFT founding member
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Aurora Adachi-Winter
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Conchita Avitia
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Will Bishop †
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Sid Branca
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Mikael Burke
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Alexis Carrie †
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Caroline Chu
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Kate Cornelius-Schecter †
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Andrew Cutler †
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Spencer Donovan
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Adanna Eziri
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Micah Figueroa
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Amanda Fink †
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Brynne Frauenhoffer
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Markie Gray
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Jenni Hadley
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Bobby Huggins
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Hanna Kime
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Caitlin McCarthy
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Gracie Meier
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Ashley Neal
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Hutch Pimentel
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Omer Abbas Salem
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Griffin Sharps
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Claire Stone
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Rebecca Willingham
Company Member Updates
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Aurora Adachi-Winter
Featured in TimeLine’s Eureka Day as Meiko
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Conchita Avitia
Lighting Designer for About Face’s Modern Gentlemen and Free Street Theatre’s SPARK
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Mikael Burke
Directed Raven Theatre’s Oak and Chicago Children’s Theatre’s Goodnight Moon
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Caroline Chu
Featured in TimeLine’s Eureka Day as Winter/Meiko U/S
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Brynne Frauenhoffer
Disillusioned announced as a semi-finalist for American Blues Theater’s 2026 Blue Ink Award; Upline as part of Avalanche Theatre’s Next Draft series; Exorcise developed through the Season 13 Blueprint Commission
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Hanna Kime
The world premiere of The Targeted is now running at A Red Orchid Theatre; THE BEST DAMN THING produced by Dacha Theatre in Seattle
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Ashley Neal
Featured in Rivendell Theatre’s Pivot as Kara and [producingbody]’s spaceman
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Omer Abbas Salem
Commissioned by Raven Theatre and TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective; Featured in About Face’s Modern Gentlemen as Samuel"
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Griffin Sharps
Featured in Rivendell Theatre’s Fresh Produce Festival as Bobby in Bobby & Lorraine
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Rebecca Willinham
Directed Brynne Frauenhoffer’s Exorcise as part of the Blueprint Commission
The Blueprint Commission is First Floor Theater’s new play development program. Through an extensive development process which includes two dedicated workshops over the life of the commission, we provide resources for commissioned writers and a team of theater artists to bring new, daring plays into being. The ultimate goal of this initiative is indicated by its name: we want to play a part in shaping the future of the American Theater. We want that future to be more inclusive, brave, and revolutionary than what has come before.
First Floor Theater has commissioned Netta Walker for its 2026 Blueprint Commission recipient to support them in developing their play Nordica which draws inspiration from George S. Schuyler's Harlem Renaissance novel Black No More and continues her exploration of culture, mythology, and identity through a contemporary lens.
Previous recipients of The Blueprint Commission include Brynne Frauenhoffer, Gloria Imseih Petrelli, Omer Abbas Salem, and Ariel Zetina.
If you are a playwright and would like to be considered for this commission, we invite you to email a cover letter and work sample to our Artistic Producer, Andrew Cutler.
In the Community
(X) Collective is on a mission: to build community. They work in collaboration with community, relationship, and help create experiences that allow for people to connect and meet one another. The (X) Collective uses theatre to bring folks in a space and intentionally curates spaces for people to come together. A few of their initiatives include:
Mosaic Series: Rotating gatherings intended to help theatre artists who have been historically marginalized to connect with another. Each event is identity focus and allows for deeper community building through open conversation and dialogue.
(X) in the City: An invitation to get out in the city and meet new people. (X) in the City offers space to turn off and come out with other folks at coffee shops, civic centers, or art spaces.
Collective Conversations: A digital archive that centers community leaders, businesses, and leaders. These conversations highlights the diverse pathway to justice.
Interested folks can RSVP for a future event, sign-up for their newsletter, or support them financially by donating to their programming.
Our People
Staff
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Anastar Alvarez
Co-Director of Production
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Andrew Cutler †
Artistic Producer
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Katie Mazzini
Development Director
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Alexander Paredes-Ruiz
Marketing Director
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Shelbi Weaver
Co-Director of Production
Board of Directors
Lee Barrington Stark (she/her), Interim President
Andres Fonseca (he/him), Treasurer, Guranteed Rate
Maria Laftchiyska Schwartz (she/her), Levin Schreder & Carey, LTD
Rachel Kennedy (she/her), Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Chavala Ymker (they/them), Shedd Aquarium
In Season 13, we welcomed two new board members: Rachel Kennedy and Chavala Ymker!
If you love the Art and want to help us build for a better future, consider being part of our board! We’re always looking for new members.
Email Katie Mazzini for more information.
Creative Sustainability
First Floor Theater is embarking on a multi-year initiative of fundraising (r)evolution!
We are prioritizing creative sustainability to better nourish our artistic work, our audiences, and our community of artists. That looks like adaptive programming! More new and in-progress work! Micro-fundraising! Diversifying sources of funding!
First Floor celebrates the $5 donation. The $10 donation. The kind word. The shoutout on social media. These "small" acts of support are vital. They create a powerful, interconnected bedrock of support that will allow us to endure for years to come. We believe this is the future of fundraising for the arts: a web of community knit together in abundance. Resource sharing that doesn't break anyone's bank account. YOU CAN help us thrive, and it doesn't take a six-figure donation. If you'd like to be a part of building that web, donate to us today.
THANK YOU for supporting the arts!
Thank you to our supporters!
Annual Fund Contributors
Alexander J Kim, Aliza Broder, Ana Alvarez-Lundvick, Andres Fonseca, Andrew Carr, Ariella Kasmer-Jacobs, Arti Ishak, Barbara Thomson, Brenna DiStasio, Brynne Frauenhoffer, Cathy Cutler, Chavala Ymker, CJ Hoke, Claire Stone, Daniel Connelly, Dano Duran, Debbie Evans, Derek Lefcort, Elena Hochheiser, Elizabeth Hyland, Ella Torres, Emily Barr, Gabe Labovitz, Grace Bolander, Graham Carlson, Griffin Sharps, Ian Williams, Jacqueline Currie, James LaRocque, Japheth Learn, Jo Ann Potashnick, John McCarthy, Jonathan Green, Kate Cornelius Schecter, Katie Graham, Kin Wong, Kristin Cutler, Lee Stark, Maria M Schwartz, Mary Swanson, Matthew Noggle, Matthew Smart, Nicholas Kelly, Nicholas Scutti, Patrick Stengle, Paul Kassel, Paul Siegel, Rachel Kennedy, Richard Bowman, Sage Moss, Samantha Sowell, Sharon Clary Epstein, Steph Chu, Steven Fink, Tadhg Duhigg, Xan Belzley, Yibel Monarrez, and Yuchi Chiu
Members*
Xan Belzley, Richard Bowman, Andrew Carr,Steph Chu, Daniel Connelly, Debbie Evans, Elena Hochheiser, Elizabeth Hyland, Nicholas Kelly, Gabe and Steph Labovitz, Jane and John McCarthy, Sage Moss, Mary Perkins, Holly Sibbersen, Paul Siegel, Lee Stark, Mary Swanson, Ian Williams, Kin Wong, and Chavala Ymker
SHOUT US OUT
Got a pre-show program pic? Post it!
Know a friend who might love the art (or hate it - we don’t mind controversy)? Tell them!
Want to figure out what everything means? Watch it again!
Show love to all our artists by staying engaged with us long after you leave the warehouse.