Calamity West has been named the 2026 recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for her play FEAST!. This $150,000 national prize supports the premiere production of a new work, recognizing bold and socially relevant voices in American playwriting. Originally created in New York at Primary Stages through the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, and further developed at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and the Goodman Theatre, FEAST! will make its world premiere at the Goodman in Chicago in 2027.

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Over the past fifteen years, West has maintained an active artistic practice of producing new work in both Chicago and New York. Her plays have been produced, commissioned, or developed by leading institutions including The Public, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Primary Stages, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and Jackalope Theatre Company - to name a few.

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From 2022 to 2026, West is an invited member of Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, where she has written FEAST!, Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona, and PARALLAX. Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona received staged readings in both Chicago and New York. PARALLAX, set during an HOA meeting in the aftermath of an act of vandalism, examines power, fear, and the fragile social contracts that hold communities together. It is scheduled for its first public presentation in April 2026.

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Additional plays by West include, but are not limited to: In the Canyon, Engines and Instruments of Flight: A Fantasia in Three Acts, Give It All Back, Rolling, Greetings from Moscow: A Love Story, and Inside the World of Somewhere Else.

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At the core of West’s artistic practice is a conviction that bold theatre is necessary in moments of political and social fracture. In an era marked by democratic instability and the rise of American authoritarianism, she approaches the stage as a site of inquiry, dissent, collective imagination, and free expression.