Author: Max Langert

Strawdog Theatre Company to Stage 12 OPHELIAS in Chicago This Spring

Max Langert

Strawdog Theatre Company has announced the cast for the final production of its 38th season, 12 Ophelias, written by Caridad Svich and directed by Strawdog co-artistic director, Kamille Dawkins*.

The production features Tierra Matthews as Ophelia, Dryden Zurawski as Rude Boy, Molly Kempfer as Mina, Rafael Gray Lopez as H, Jillian Leff as R, Jared Sprowls as G, and Eileen Dixon as Gertrude.

Understudies for this production are Fiona Walsh Calton as Ophelia (Understudy), Andrew Freeland as Rude Boy (Understudy), Shay Gordon* as R (Understudy), Makari Robinson-McNeese as H and G (Understudy), and Isa Grofsorean as Gertrude and Mina (Understudy).

In this play with broken songs, Shakespeare’s Ophelia rises out of the water dreaming of reclaiming her life. She finds herself in a neo-Elizabethan Appalachian setting where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet is a Rude Boy and nothing is what it seems. In this mirrored world of word-scraps and cold sex, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself.

The production will run April 17 – May 24, 2026, with previews April 10 – 12. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 2pm at The Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St. Chicago, IL 60626. Tickets will go live at strawdog.org on February 23, 2026. Tickets are sliding scale between $10-$80.

The production team includes Becca Levy* (Movement and Intimacy Director), Maureen Azzun* (Assistant Director), Rose Johnson (Scenic Designer), Chris Stopka (Technical Director), Leo Bassow (Props Designer), Emily N. Brink (Costume Designer), Ellie Humphrys (Lighting Designer), and Heath Hays* (Sound Designer) with Stage Management from Phil Claudnic and Production Management from Shelby Burgus. Co-Artistic Director, Noah Elman* is Producer.

*Denotes Strawdog ensemble member

Ushuaia Blue at Weber State in February

Max Langert

Weber State University will produce Ushuaia Blue as part of their 2026 season. You can read more about the play HERE and get tickets on the Weber State site HERE.

Show details:

Feb. 13, 14 & 18-21 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 21 at 2 p.m.
ASL Interpreted Performance Feb. 19
By Caridad Svich

Ushuaia Blue is a haunting and poetic journey through memory, love, and loss. Set at the edge of the world in the windswept landscapes of Tierra del Fuego, the play follows a grieving couple as they search for connection in the wake of unimaginable tragedy. With lyrical language and raw emotion, Ushuaia Blue offers a moving exploration of what it means to remember, to endure, and to hope.

Interview with the UK’s Open University on classical studies and theatre

Max Langert

A new published interview with UK’s Open University can be found on their website HERE.

A snippet:

With the Greeks it’s more about stepping into something so old. It’s pre-Christian. For me, that’s a really fascinating space to be in. A lot of Western drama tends to be built around a kind of Christian model. I’m interested in stuff that’s pagan. I’m interested in ritual and ceremony in that sense. But I’m also interested in the fact that a lot of Western drama also comes from places that mimic or echo some of the deep problems in current society. Classical Athens was built on slave labour, right? There were people excluded from seeing the plays, it was for a very specific crowd. I think that all those things are mimicked in US culture. I want to acknowledge that because I think sometimes what happens with ancient Greek plays is that they’re divorced from their contexts. They’re seen as pristine artefacts. They’re not pristine. They’re actually quite dirty. I like the dirtiness of it, and I mean dirty in a socio-political sense. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it’s weird. 

Fugitive Dreams Soars as an Allegorical Road Film – The Hollywood Beat

Max Langert

From the Hollywood Beat:

Fugitive Dreams unfolds like a fever dream along the rails of America—unsettling, poetic, and deeply human. Directed by Jason Neulander and adapted from Caridad Svich’s play, this 2024 release invites viewers into a fragmented journey across a dreamscape America, carried forward by the trembling hope of two lost souls. The film does not follow a traditional plot; instead, it drifts between moments of empathy, despair, and quiet grace, with a non-linear narrative that feels fittingly disorienting.

Read the full review HERE.

Caridad’s brand new Substack: Pocket Theatre

Max Langert

Caridad has a new Substack which you can subscribe to, and the first post, I miss when plays were just plays, can be found HERE.

A snippet:

My concern lies with the needs of the MOMENT overriding the needs of a play and moreover the necessity of what a play can do, in its own humble manner, to achieve the elusive state of wonder that so many ascribe to this form of media. If the play speaks sideways to the NOW, is it suspect? Is it not meeting its moment? or Is it meeting its potential audience in a different way to contemplate human existence?

 

New Anthology Transmedia Theatre Plays publishes in May by Methuen Drama

Max Langert

Description

Between 2020 and 2022, theatre had to adapt and, in doing so, challenged ideas of what was possible – and what was even ‘theatre’.

Due to the global pandemic, an exceptional and wide range of works were made for, or adapted to, brand new conditions and limitations. While these works are defined by interpandemic conditions in the Anthropocene, they serve as portals to thinking about theatre-making in the future.

Gathered in this collection are pieces adapted or made for podcast theatre, a livestream illusionist interactive performance, an audience-uploaded hybrid performance, one-on-one online interaction, lip-synch opera-theatre, climate crisis activist manifesto film/theatre, spoken word and gaming installation art and multi-location broadcast plays, providing an accessible introduction to ‘Transmedia’ theatre.

Transmedia theatre has been a boundary-breaking and rich area of performance since the 1990s, but the (by necessity) explosion of works that were created during the early years of the pandemic signalled a new, exciting and accessible method by which theatre-makers could share their work and also challenge their own practices.

While these specific works are markers of a specific time in performance history, they also point ways forward, not only in terms of form and function, but in how educators, students and fellow practitioners could conceive of re-staging these works in person and/or on digital platforms.

For a generation that has grown up online, whose vocabularies of expression are as much digitally native as they are IRL, transmedia theatre, and the realm too of VR and AR story and audience design which it borders, holds a firm place in busting open the realm of the possible.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Can I Live? By Fehinti Balogun (UK)
I am Sending You the Sacred Face by Heather Christian (US)
Odds On by Dante or Die (UK)
To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) by Dead Centre (Ireland)
I Hate it Here: Stories from the End of the Old World by Ike Holter (US)
Every Dollar is a Soldier/with money you’re a dragon by Daniel York Loh (UK)
T.M. by Ontroerend Goed (Belgium)
Link to book on Bloomsbury HERE.

Desdemona’s Child (blood cry) has been acquired for licensing by Theatrical Rights Worldwide (TRW)

Max Langert

You can find the link to the upcoming publication HERE.

PLAY OVERVIEW:

Desdemona’s child comes back to the town in which they were raised, haunted by the ghost of Beautiful D, and with a desire to come to terms with trauma from their past. In this town, trouble rages, as a climate of hate threatens to overtake all. A flood and a whole lotta honest witnessing may start to turn the tide of human darkness. This play is set in modern-day US, freely inspired by and set in the wake of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Find more information about the play on this website HERE.