CALAMITY WEST

Calamity West is the 2026 recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for her play FEAST!, a $150,000 national prize honoring bold, socially relevant American theatre and supporting its premiere. Brought to life at Primary Stages through the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, then given further development at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, FEAST! will receive its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in its 101st season. West’s work has been produced, commissioned, or developed by The Public Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company through Roundabout Underground, The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and Jackalope Theatre Company – to name a few. As a member of Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, West has also written Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona and PARALLAX. Her plays 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. She teaches at the University of Chicago, the Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts, Webster University, and through the Jackalope Playwrights Lab, which she founded in 2018. 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 global authoritarianism, she approaches the stage as a site of inquiry, dissent, and collective imagination. To learn more and subscribe to her monthly newsletter, visit calamitywest.com.