The Goodman Theatre has announced a line-up of free staged readings written by members of its Playwrights Unit.

The year-long residency allows Chicago-based writers to develop their plays-in-progress with the Goodman’s artistic team, in partnership with Chicago Dramatists. Members of the 2017/2018 Playwrights Unit include Sam Collier, Ricardo Gamboa, Isaac Gomez, Kristin Idaszak and Nigel O’Hearn.

In recent years, Playwrights Unit works at the Goodman have included Sandra Delgado’s La Havana Madrid, Andrew Hinderaker’s The Magic Play, Seth Bockley’s Ask Aunt Susan, Kristiana Rae Colón’s florissant & canfield and Martín Zimmerman’s The Solid Sand Below.

The one-time-only free readings will take place July 14 – 18 at the Goodman. To make a reservation visit goodmantheatre.org. Availability is limited.

The 2017/2018 Playwrights Unit Readings (from the press release): 

Wade by Isaac Gomez
Directed by Marti Lyons
Saturday, July 14 | 2pm

As Hurricane Harvey wreaks havoc, six Houstonians find themselves trapped in the downtown convention center where 10,000 displaced people wait out the storm of the year. In the midst of cabin fever, head injuries, secret rescues and weathered barriers, Wade is a cry for a revival at a time and place when survival is no longer enough.

The Woyzeck Experiment by Nigel O’Hearn
Directed by Elly Green
Sunday, July 15 | 2pm

To properly train criminally divisive subjects and safely re-assimilate them back into society, State Training and Re-Assimilation Program 1017 – codenamed “The Woyzeck Experiment” – has developed a new methodology for inscribing empathy into its subjects; a new methodology that goes beyond the standard, state-proscribed linguistic prohibitions and punishments. Drawing on Georg Büchner’s unfinished 1836 play Woyzeck, The Woyzeck Experiment explores the means of identity formation, the pains of identification, and the violence intrinsic to language and actor training.

A Hundred Circling Camps by Sam Collier
Directed by Nina Morrison
Monday, July 16 | 7:30pm

During the summer of 1932, over 20,000 people hopped trains to Washington D.C. and camped out to demand fair pay for veterans of the World War. The legacy of the Bonus Army is written into our laws and culture, but the march has been largely forgotten. As America protests and forgets and protests and forgets, what is carried forward? Touching on the Poor People’s Campaign, Occupy Wall Street and Standing Rock protests, A Hundred Circling Camps explores what it means to live in public as an act of resistance.

The Wizards by Ricardo Gamboa
Directed by Azar Kazemi
Tuesday, July 17 | 7:30pm

Amado and Sam, a brown and black genderqueer couple, move back to Amado’s hometown of Chicago after surviving a hate crime in New York the day after the 2016 presidential election. In their new apartment in the city’s gentrifying Pilsen neighborhood, they find an Ouija board that puts them in touch with The Wizards, a Mexican-American Motown cover band on the Southside during the 70s. The Wizards is a supernatural thriller about the histories and people that haunt us.

Three Antarcticas by Kristin Idaszak
Directed by Susan E. Bowen
Wednesday, July 18 | 7pm

Robert Falcon Scott’s explorers perform a play to stave off polar madness during the four months of Antarctic night. A female glaciologist fights for her place in cutting-edge climate change research in 1979. A present-day couple travels to the ends of the earth to get married. Is it possible to go to the edge of the world and return unchanged?