"Calamity West is one of the best playwrights in Chicago. Or maybe the country. Or the universe." - Chicago Reader
CALAMITY WEST
THOUGHTS ON
CALAMITY'S WORK
“West, a Chicago writer with an ebullient sense of theatricality, is the real deal."
- Chicago Tribune
"West is a colossal talent with a formidable intellect."
- Chicago Tribune
“Calamity West is, without question, a name to watch.”
- Chicago Tribune
“Calamity West manages to hook you in and get you comfortable
only to take you places no one wants to see clearly.”
- Third Coast
“West writes like a vise, slowly tightening the screws
until her characters are trapped and her audience is rapt.”
- Windy City Times
“…an essential voice…”
- Chicago Tribune
“West’s writing really hits the zeitgeist. She’s an important voice in the world.”
- PerformInk
“…a leading aesthetic innovator of storefront realism as well as a
tough-as-nails moralist.”
- Chicago Reader
Calamity West is an award-winning playwright and educator whose work has been produced and developed at The Lucille Lortel Theatre, Primary Stages, The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Underground, The Goodman, and Jackalope Theatre Company - to name a few.
From 2022 to 2026, she is in residence at Primary Stages as a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, where she has written FEAST! (2023) and Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona (2024). FEAST! also received development through The Lortel’s Alcove program (2024). She is concluding her residency with the development of a newest play currently titled Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am?! (2026)
At the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, West received the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, which resulted in The Last Supper and Three Years Later (2022). Her newest play, Inside the World of Somewhere Else, is currently being commissioned and developed by Red Yes Studios in New York City (2025).
Her plays span more than a decade of productions: In the Canyon (Jackalope, 2018; The Constructivists, 2024), Hinter (Steep Theatre, 2018), The Retribution Play (Jackalope, 2020), Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts (Roundabout Underground, 2018; Goodman’s New Stages Festival, 2019), Rolling (Jackalope, 2016), Ibsen Is Dead (Interrobang, 2014), and The Peacock (Jackalope, 2013). Most recent development includes Greetings from Moscow: A Love Story with Northlight Theatre and the University of Chicago (2025).
West’s honors include the 3Arts Theatre Award, the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, and an Alcove at The Lortel award. Her plays In the Canyon and Give It All Back appeared on The Kilroy’s List, and she has been nominated for the Platform Award and the Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award. She teaches at the University of Chicago, the Einhorn School of Performing Arts, and Webster University. In 2018, she founded the Playwrights Lab at Jackalope Theatre Company where she has been a company member since 2014.
