From a "Kung Fu rom-com" to a witchy new musical, The Goodman's popular New Stages Festival in its 22nd year continues to offer a first glimpse at the latest works by a handful of the hottest contemporary playwrights. This year's four-play line-up includes Bruceploitation by Qui Nguyen (Vietgone); House Gyalz by Abigail C. Onwunali (Blood Be Sweet); Shook by Mike Lew (A Beat of Our Own) with music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak (Galileo) and Wonderland by Will Eno (Thom Pain). Under Walter Artistic Director Susan V. Booth and Director of New Works Kat Zukaitis, this annual offering showcases works-in-progress in the intimate 400-seat Owen Theatre. Theater industry professionals are invited to Professionals Weekend (December 11-13), which includes special events and opportunities for networking. This year, Professionals Weekend includes readings of new works by The Goodman's 2026 New Stages Residency playwrights: Black-Eyed Peas & Collard Greens by Lachrisa Grandberry and The Last Time We Saw Them by William Glick. New Stages appears December 5-13; tickets are free and available starting October 30 at 10am at the Box Office (170 N. Dearborn), at 312.443.3800 or online at GoodmanTheatre.org/NewStages. Theater professionals interested in Professionals Weekend should RSVP by November 30 at GoodmanTheatre.org/Professionals. The Goodman is grateful for the support of The Joyce Foundation (Major Support for Diverse Artistic and Professional Development).
22nd NEW STAGES FESTIVAL LINE-UP | Owen Theatre
Bruceploitation
By Qui Nguyen
Directed by May Adrales
Readings: December 5 at 7pm and December 12 at 7:30pm
After Bruce Lee's death, a struggling Asian American actor gets his big Hollywood break... by replacing the legend... despite not knowing a lick of kung fu. Sparks fly when he meets the badass Black stuntwoman hired to train him, who's tired of making everyone else look like a hero while she stays out of frame. Turns out learning to throw a punch is way easier than keeping their hands off each other. A Kung Fu rom-com.
Qui Nguyen is an Emmy-Award winning tv writer, filmmaker, playwright, and co-founder of the pioneering geek theatre company, Vampire Cowboys. Notable plays include Vietgone, Poor Yella Rednecks, Bike Wreck, and the acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of She Kills Monsters (recently awarded a 2024 Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival Gold Medallion Award), Revenge Song, Soul Samurai, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, Alice in Slasherland, Fight Girl Battle World, and Living Dead in Denmark. For TV/Film, he's written for Marvel Studios, Netflix, AMC, SYFY, PBS. He most recently penned Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon (nominated for a 2022 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature) and co-directed and wrote Disney's Strange World. Qui is a proud member of the WGA and a board member of New Dramatists.
House Gyalz
By Abigail C. Onwunali
Directed by Lili-Anne Brown
Readings: December 8 at 7pm and December 13 at 11am
House Gyalz follows two Nigerian housemaids as they spiral into dangerous roleplay, examining class, power, and womanhood. When unexpected news raises the stakes of their games, they will pull out all the stops to survive. Blending sharp satire with explosive theatricality, Abigail C. Onwunali's dark comedy is a contemporary take on Jean Genet's classic The Maids.
Abigail C. Onwunali is a Nigerian-American storyteller working across playwriting, performance, and poetry. Her plays have been developed with New York Theatre Workshop, Red Bull Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Liberation Theater Company, Fault Line Theatre, and Yale Cabaret. Her play Blood Be Sweet will be part of New York Theatre Workshop's 2026–27 season. She is a 2025 New Harmony Project Fellow and recipient of the 2025 Irons in the Fire Residency, 2026 La MaMa Experiments in Playwriting Fellowship, 2026 Page 73 Writers Group, and 2025–26 NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellowship. She is a member of EST's Obie Award-winning Youngblood collective.
Shook
Book by Mike Lew
Music and Lyrics by Zoe Sarnak
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
Reading: December 11 at 7:30pm
Something is rotten at Camp Avon, the prestigious Shakespeare summer camp for teens. Is it the star-crossed lovers facing a stage kiss? The stage management intern who wants a chance to perform so badly that she disguises herself as a camper? Or the fact that there are actual witches in the woods? All the woods a stage and all the campers merely players in this angsty musical ode to the eternal power of theatre.
Mike Lew's plays include tiny father (Geffen, Barrington/Chautauqua, Audible); Teenage Dick (Donmar Warehouse, Ma-Yi/Public, Wooly Mammoth, Huntington, Artists Rep); Tiger Style! (TheatreWorks, SCR, Olney, Huntington, La Jolla, Alliance); Bike America (Ma-Yi, Alliance); microcrisis (Ma-Yi, InterAct); Alpha Asians; and How To Manong. His plays are currently in rep at Profile Theater. Musicals: A Beat of Our Own with Sam Willmott and Rehana Mirza (McCarter, La Jolla, Birmingham Rep); Shook with Zoe Sarnak (Northern Stage/Goodman commission); and Love Somebody with Betty Who and Rehana Mirza. Awards/Fellowships: Guggenheim, Mellon, PEN, Dramatists Guild Council/Tony Voter, New Dramatists, EST, Venturous, NYFA, MAP, Richard Rodgers, Kleban, Lanford Wilson, Helen Merrill, Weissberger, Kendeda, Heideman. Education: Juilliard, Yale.
Zoe Sarnak is a Drama Desk–nominated and Larson Award–winning composer, lyricist, writer and orchestrator, as well as a finalist for the Ebb and Kleban Awards. Upcoming and recent works include: Galileo (with Danny Strong and Michael Weiner) opening on Broadway in 2026; NY Times Critic's Pick The Lonely Few (with Rachel Bonds) at MCC and Geffen Playhouse; Empire Records (with Carol Heikkinen) at McCarter Theatre; Particle Fever (with David Henry Hwang and Bear McCreary) premiering at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2027; A Beautiful Mind (with Sarah Treem); The Invisible Line (with Christopher Oscar Peña and Mark St. Germain) and others soon to be announced. Her work has been developed and produced at Second Stage, The Public, Roundabout Theatre Company, New York Theatre Workshop, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geffen Playhouse, and MCC, among others. Her music has been featured by NY Times Live and the Guggenheim.
Wonderland
By Will Eno
Directed by Susan V. Booth
Reading: December 12 at 2pm
After a punishing decade-long exile in Europe, Orson Welles returns to Hollywood for a one-night only reading of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. The borders between fiction and real life—and between his outward wants and inner demons—begin to break down, as Alice's journey becomes hopelessly entangled with Orson's past, and the evening takes a wild turn into the present. From Obie-Award winning playwright Will Eno, Wonderland paints a hopeful, tender, and at times surreal portrait of humanity and reality in the modern age.
Will Eno lives in Brooklyn and is a Pulitzer Finalist in Drama and winner of the Obie, Lortel, and Drama Desk awards. He wrote the book for the massively successful Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical, which won 7 Golden Lion awards at Cannes and 9 Clio Awards. Will teaches playwriting, most recently at Princeton University, and he mentors students at Columbia and elsewhere. His daughter Albertine acted in a workshop of her dad's new play The Green Room at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 2025. Will was thrilled and honored to work for several years with the late and much-missed documentary film director Frederick Wiseman, who oversaw the French translation of his play The Realistic Joneses and was preparing to direct its premiere on the Paris stage in 2026. In addition to plays, Will also writes for television and film.
PROFESSIONALS WEEKEND READINGS | Alice Center for Education and Engagement
Black-Eyed Peas & Collard Greens
By Lachrisa Grandberry
Directed by J. Nicole Brooks
Reading: December 11 at 3pm
In a West Side Chicago apartment building, three families prepare to welcome the New Year with the beliefs, strategies, and secrets they've relied upon for generations. But what happens when our traditions no longer align with our reality? Black-Eyed Peas & Collard Greens is a multi-generational ensemble dramedy about inheritance and what happens when those inherited truths stop serving us. Funny, heartfelt, and deeply human, Lachrisa Grandberry's newest play explores how tradition comforts us, when it confines us, and what remains when we're finally brave enough to choose something new.
Lachrisa Grandberry is a Milwaukee-born, Chicago-based playwright, lyricist and poet whose work holds space for healing, liberation and joy. Her stories are a tapestry woven from the voices and experiences of many—especially black women and girls navigating the weight of inherited patterns and unspoken truths. A 2024 Dramatists Guild Foundation National Musical Theater Fellow, she also serves as Director of NOVA Programming at Northern Sky Theater, where she curates safe spaces for writers to explore and amplify their voices. In 2022, she was named one of Wisconsin's 52 Most Influential Black Leaders. Whether through her published poetry (Shredding Rugs) or her theatrical works, Lachrisa believes that storytelling is a way to learn, unlearn, release and heal. "I know that my stories are not my own," she writes. "They belong to all of us." More at lachrisagrandberry.com
The Last Time We Saw Them
By William Glick
Directed by Jessica Fisch
Reading: December 12 at 10am
In 1983, Tess, Sasha, and Amelia are young writers hoping to make their marks on Ronald Reagan's Washington. As the years pass, their lives—and the Conservative Movement that brought them to power—are made unrecognizable by wars abroad and division at home. Spanning four turbulent decades, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the beginning of the second Trump administration, The Last Time We Saw Them tells the story of three exceptional women whose ideals, rivalries and love of country and each other help forge the America of the 2020s.
William Glick is a Chicago-based playwright who was born and raised in Pompano Beach, Florida. His plays include The Last Time We Saw Them, Felt (Clubbed Thumb Emerging Writers Group), The Bigot (UT New Theatre), Kin Folk (World Premiere, The New Colony), the libretto for the children's opera Cry Wolf (Crane Prize for Performing Arts), and The Winter Farm (House Theatre Performance Lab). His work has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Heideman Award and shortlisted for the Relentless Award, the Ojai Playwriting Conference, and PlayPenn. He received his BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and his MFA in Writing from the Michener Center at the University of Texas-Austin.
ABOUT THE GOODMAN
Since 1925, The Goodman has been a theatrical home for artists and a gathering space for Chicagoland, where bold stories spark connection, conversation and change. Now, as it enters its second century, The Goodman builds on that legacy with an eye toward the future. Under the leadership of Walter Artistic Director Susan V. Booth and Executive Director John Collins, the theater continues to champion new work—following hundreds of plays developed and a national reputation for commissioning and premiering original stories by living writers—while reimagining classics and produce large-scale musicals.
But The Goodman's reach today extends beyond its home in the heart of the Loop. From the intimate magic of The Magic Parlour, now in its third year, to the boundary-pushing world of Theater of the Mind—an immersive experience that blurs the lines between science, storytelling and sensation—and from citywide initiatives like 100 Free Acts of Theater to partnerships with artists and companies across Chicago and around the world, The Goodman is expanding what theater can be, and where it can live.
At its core, The Goodman is driven by a belief that a more empathetic, more connected city is built one story at a time. Generation-spanning productions and programs offer theater for a lifetime—from babies and young children to teens, adults and seniors—including Theater for the Very Young (ages 0–5) and the beloved annual A Christmas Carol, which has welcomed audiences for five decades. Education and Engagement programs, led by Clifford Director Jared Bellot and based in the Alice Rapoport Center, use the tools of theater to spark imagination, reflection and belonging—reaching thousands each year, the majority from underserved communities.
With nearly 200 world or American premieres, two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards and nearly 200 Joseph Jefferson Awards, The Goodman remains a defining force in American theater—and the first to produce all 10 plays of August Wilson's American Century Cycle. The theater also frequently serves as a production partner—from national and international companies to Chicago's Off-Loop theaters—to help amplify a wide range of theatrical voices.
Founded by William O. Goodman and his family in memory of playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, the theater carries forward a legacy of artistic ambition and civic generosity. With the help of Mr. Goodman's descendants—Albert Ivar Goodman and his late mother, Edith-Marie Appleton—that spirit continues to shape its future as The Goodman expands its impact across Chicago and beyond. Marsha Cruzan is Chair of the Goodman Theatre Board of Trustees; Diane Landgren is Women's Board President; and Christopher Way is president of the Scenemakers Board for Young Professionals.
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