Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s (BWBTC) 2025 season opens with an extended run of its new works festival, collectively called Fighting Words, September 6 – 14 at the Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark St. and followed by a world premiere, The Mark, by BWBTC Ensemble Member Jillian Leff, October 11 – November 22 at The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway. Tickets for Fighting Words go on sale August 6 and tickets for The Mark go on sale September 11.
“Following such a triumphant inauguration of presenting our new works in the multi-week festival format, there was no question about having Fighting Words return in the same manner,” states Artistic Director Hayley Rice. “With more opportunities for our astute audiences to appreciate and engage with our playwrights (at a manageable price with our sliding scale tickets), BWBTC strives for accessible, original programming. True to our roots, this Fighting Words showcases new scripts with scrappy fights for survival among feral girls, old school pro-wrestling with a hint of revenge and queer sword fighting pirates, all featuring dozens of local talents.”
“Following this fall’s Fighting Words is The Mark, a successful product of a previous Fighting Words,” continues Rice. “A thrilling and thought provoking show from ensemble member Jillian Leff, it has a strong message of fighting for what is right, despite what those in charge try to convince you of as ‘the truth.’ In a time when the arts are being choked with bias, BWBTC is determined to ensure our audiences stories that are thought-provoking, potent, fearless and most importantly showcase marginalized voices.”
FIGHTING WORDS
September 6 - 14
Schedule: TBA
Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark St.
Ticket prices: Pay-What-You-Can
Tickets go on sale: Friday, Aug. 1
Each weekend the festival will have staged readings of the 2025 selections:
Calvaria: A Play For Feral Girls
By Maggie Smith (she/her)
Directed by Morgan Manasa (she/her)
When her family’s bull is found decapitated in the middle of a farm field, Edie Hruska makes it her mission to find the culprit. While on her search, she comes across a group of young girls claiming to communicate with gods, begging Edie to become their newest acolyte. While acclimating to their lifestyle, Edie finds herself face-to-face with the girls’ true intentions and they are much more sinister than just a dead bull. Calvaria: A Play For Feral Girls is the 2025-2026 winner of BWBTC's Margaret W. Martin Award and the Joining Sword and Pen International Playwriting Competition.
Two Out Of Three Falls
By Bill Daniel (he/him)
Directed by Ashley Yates (she/her)
Johanna Goodish was the child of notorious pro wrestler King Kong Bruiser. 30 years ago, he was murdered in a locker room shower in Puerto Rico and the killer was never tried. The witnesses never talked. Since she began her own wrestling career, she has been trying to escape his shadow. And now, she's been seeing his ghost. When an opportunity for revenge presents itself, she takes it. But it means she'll be face to face in the ring with the man who held the knife when it happened.
Yo Ho
By SMJ (they/them)
Directed by Maureen Yasko (she/her)
Yo Ho charts the journey of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two pirates aboard a campy, sexually charged ship facing immediate threat from the crown. Equal parts historical fantasy and introspective sexual and gender exploration, this play is a deeply emotional reimaging and reminder of queer history.
WORLD PREMIERE
The Mark
October 11 – November 22
By BWBTC Ensemble Member Jillian Leff (she/her)
Directed by Richard Costas (he/him)
The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway.
Ticket prices: $35-$20
Tickets go on sale: Friday, Aug. 1
Select performances will be available for streaming.
Developed through BWBTC’s Fighting Words program, The Mark centers in a dystopian, classist, society, where a young Laborer named Raina is given an unexpected chance to join The Army. As she starts to acclimate to her new position and higher standing in society, a resistance is brewing among The Laborers. An assassination attempt upends Raina's life as she becomes caught in the middle of the war between the two classes, as well as her own battle of discovering who and what she believes in.
ABOUT FIGHTING WORDS
Fighting Words is Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s script development program. Each season we choose three scripts for development and read each one aloud three times–first within the company, then with a small group of invited guests and, finally, as part of Fight Words, a festival that includes all three plays. Every other season the winner of BWBTC’s International Playwriting Competition and the Margaret W. Martin Award is automatically included as a part of the process. During Fighting Words, discussions after each reading provide feedback for the playwrights, assisting them in developing their scripts further.
ABOUT JOINING SWORD & PEN INTERNATIONAL PLAYWRIGHTING COMPETITION AND THE MARGARET W. MARTIN AWARD
The Joining Sword & Pen international playwriting competition launched in 2005 to generate more scripts that featured women in roles involving stage combat. Created in collaboration with Artistic Advisor and Fight Master in the Society of American Fight Directors David Woolley who sponsors the competition, scripts inspired by a specific image are submitted and go through a blind judging process. The winning script goes through BWBTC’s new play development program, but also receives a full production, cash prize and the Margaret W. Martin Award.
Margaret W. Martin was ahead of her time. In the 1960s and 70s, she maintained her full time job, taught piano, and raised a family of six children (four girls, two boys) all while she traveled the globe from the United States to Saudi Arabia, across Europe and Vientiane Laos during the height of the Vietnam war. She founded the American International School – Riyadh (K-12) in Saudi Arabia in 1963 and it has flourished as an institution since then. The Margaret W. Martin Award is in honor of Artistic Advisor and SAFD Fight Master David Woolley’s mother.
ABOUT BABES WITH BLADES THEATRE COMPANY
Babes With Blades Theatre Company, for more than 25 years and moving into the future, strives to develop and present scripts focused on complex, dynamic (often combative) characters who continue to be underrepresented on theatre stages based on gender. Babes With Blades Theatre Company uses, and will continue to use, stage combat to tell stories that elevate the voices of underrepresented communities and dismantle the patriarchy.
In each element of its programming, BWBTC embrace two key concepts:
1) Folks of marginalized genders and underrepresented communities are central to the story, driving the action rather than responding or submitting to it and
2) Everyone is capable of a full emotional and physical range, up to and including violence and its consequences.
The company offers participants and patrons alike an unparalleled opportunity to experience every person as heroes and villains; rescuers and rescues; right, wrong and everywhere in between: exciting, vivid, dynamic PEOPLE. It’s as simple and as subversive as that.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT STATEMENT:
Babes With Blades Theatre Company produces theatre in venues located on the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other tribes such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox also called this area home. This region that we now commonly refer to as “The Chicagoland Area”, has long been a center for Indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Today, one of the largest urban Native American communities in the United States resides in Chicago. Members of this community continue to contribute to the life of this city and to celebrate their heritage, practice traditions and care for the land and waterways.
Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s 2025 programming is partially made possible by the kind support of The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, a grant from The Illinois Arts Council Agency, a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE), and the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.
Row One: Maggie Smith (playwright, Fighting Words Calvaria: A Play For Feral Girls); Morgan Manasa (director, Fighting Words Calvaria: A Play For Feral Girls); Bill Daniels (playwright, Fighting Words Two Out Of Three Falls); Ashley Yates (director, Fighting Words Two Out Of Three Falls)
Row Two: SMJ (playwright, Fighting Words Yo Ho); Maureen Yasko (director, Fighting Words Yo Ho); Jillian Leff (playwright, The Mark); Richard Costas (director, The Mark)