Pictured: First Floor Theater’s 2018-19 season playwrights (left to right) Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, Dan Giles and Halley Feiffer.

First Floor Theater has announced its seventh season, featuring a new script and two Chicago premieres.

“With this season, First Floor continues its dedication to radical new work. We’re proud to be bringing two smash hits to Chicago with HOODED and I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD and debuting one of the wildest plays I’ve ever read with MIKE PENCE SEX DREAM,” says Artistic Director Hutch Pimentel. “This season, we continue our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the American Theater while letting older generations know that we’ve had enough of the status quo.”

The season will be presented at the company’s resident home, The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park.

First Floor Theater’s 2018-19 season (from the press release):

October 20 – November 17, 2018
HOODED, OR BEING BLACK FOR DUMMIES – Chicago Premiere
By Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm
Directed by Mikael Burke

Marquis and Tru are both fourteen-year-old black boys, but they exist in two totally different worlds. Marquis is a book smart prep-schooler living in the affluent suburb of Achievement Heights; while Tru is a street-savvy kid from deep within the inner city of Baltimore. Their worlds overlap one day in a holding cell. Tru decides that Marquis has lost his “blackness” and pens a how-to manual entitled “Being Black for Dummies.” He assumes the role of professor, but Marquis proves to be a reluctant pupil. They butt heads, debate, wrestle and ultimately prove that Nietzsche and 2pac were basically saying the same thing.

February 16 – March 16, 2019
MIKE PENCE SEX DREAM – World Premiere
By Dan Giles
Directed by Artistic Director Hutch Pimentel

In the aftermath of Trump’s election, newlyweds Gary and Ben have to keep each other sane and solvent. But as the country’s political landscape drives Ben to his breaking point, Gary changes too –in ways that he has to keep secret from his husband. Gary can’t tell Ben about the nightly seductions of a certain phantasmagorical fascist. And he definitely can’t tell Ben that in the process of bringing home the bacon, he’s fallen in love with a pig. From the recent past to our imminent dystopia, MIKE PENCE SEX DREAM is a romantic travesty exploring the depths to which one man’s self-loathing can drag him.

April 20 – May 18, 2019
I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD – Chicago Premiere
By Halley Feiffer
Directed by Cole von Glahn

Ella is a precocious and fiercely competitive actress with a desperate need to make her father David, a famous playwright, proud. Over the course of a boozy, drug-fueled evening, Ella and David pass the time digging into family history, artistic passion and unspoken fears as they wait for the reviews, but what is unearthed can’t simply be reburied. This daring play pulls the audience into the middle of a deeply complicated relationship, exploring how we build and break idealized versions of our loved ones.

For more information, visit firstfloortheater.com.