"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 the 2026 recipient of The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Award for her play FEAST!, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for new plays of social relevance. Her work has been developed, produced, and presented by leading institutions including The Goodman Theatre, Primary Stages, The Public, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Underground, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and Jackalope Theatre Company - to name a few.
From 2022 to 2026 West is in residence at Primary Stages in New York as a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group. During this residency, she has written FEAST! and Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona, both of which have received multiple staged readings and workshops in New York and Chicago. She will conclude her residency with Parallax, her newest play examining community, power, and the fragile social order of HOAs (welcome to the neighborhood).
West’s body of work spans nearly fifteen years of productions, commissions, and long-term development processes. Selected plays include Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona, In the Canyon, Give It All Back, and Engines and Instruments of Flight. Recent projects include Greetings from Moscow: A Love Story, developed with Northlight Theatre and the University of Chicago, and Inside the World of Somewhere Else, a surreal exploration of digital life and self-erasure developed with Red Yes Studios in New York.
At the core of West’s practice is a belief that bold theatre is essential in moments of political and social fracture. In an era shaped by the rise of global authoritarianism, she views theatre as a vital site of inquiry, dissent, and collective imagination. Her plays resist fear-driven narratives by insisting on complexity, moral tension, and human contradiction.
