Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theatre announced its 2023-24 season today, embarking on a bold journey through the rocky waters of our world today, while showcasing three diverse and provocative perspectives with a gritty classic, comedic absurdism, and magical realism.
Shattered Globe Theatre’s 2023-24 season artists (from left): Arthur Miller, Louis Contey, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, Kenneth Prestininzi, Charly Evon Simpson and AmBer Montgomery.
First, a classic launches Shattered Globe Theatre’s 33rd season, Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge. This is the story of Eddie, a longshoreman, who visits a lawyer, Alfieri, with a problem. Eddie’s teenage niece, an orphan who he raised as his own daughter, has fallen in love with a newly arrived Italian immigrant. They want to marry, but Eddie must stop them. Because things are not what they seem.
SGT Ensemble Member Louis Contey returns to tackle this timeless story about desire, the decay of old values, and yearning for what is lost when you’ve left home to build something new. Contey’s 1993 production of Miller’s masterpiece is one of the shows that first put Shattered Globe on the map. Ensemble Member Eileen Niccolai, who played Beatrice in 1993, also returns to reprise her role. Performances are September 8-October 21. Press opening is Tuesday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Next, batten down the hatches for Flood, SGT’s Chicago premiere comedy about the end of the world. Flood marks the Chicago debut of playwright Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, in a production directed by Kenneth Prestininzi.
Imagine a contemporary hi-rise apartment on the 19th floor. All Edith wants is to sit and have some tea with her husband, someday, when he’s done building his masterpiece. “It’s not too much to ask, is it?” The kids don’t call enough, and when they do, they seem full of accusations. Meanwhile, outside their apartment, the waters are rising. And rising. And rising.
Flood is theatre of the absurd, charting the relationship between two parents and their adult children for a comedic dive into love, companionship, gender and generational divides. Performances are January 25-March 9, 2024. Press opening is Sunday, January 28 at 3 p.m.
For its 33rd season finale, SGT presents Jump, a Midwest premiere bridging heartbreak and hope by Charly Evon Simpson, directed by Shattered Globe’s associate artistic director, AmBer Montgomery.
Meet Fay and Hopkins. Fay gives Hopkins hope. Hopkins helps Fay grieve her mother and the loss of her childhood home. Flickering lights, vapes that fall from the sky, and love that recycles leap into a play fueled by magical realism, for a touching story about hope and the promise of human connection. Performances are April 19-June 1, 2024. Press opening is Monday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m.
“A View from the Bridge, Flood and Jump sail back and forth and between generations to explore themes of family, refuge, and hope,” said Shattered Globe Producing Artistic Director Sandy Shinner. “These are visceral, human themes which we’re all grappling with more now than ever, and Shattered Globe looks forward to exploring them with the expansive possibilities that come with intimate, ensemble-driven theatre.”
All three productions in Shattered Globe’s 2023-24 season will be presented at the company’s resident home, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.
Season Traveler Memberships, range from $55 to $115, include all three shows, and are on sale now at sgtheatre.org/Membership. Single tickets are $15-$52, with discounted early bird tickets now on sale at sgtheatre.org, by calling the Theater Wit box office, (773) 975-8150, or purchasing in person at Theater Wit. For discounted group discounts, email groupsales@shatteredglobe.org or call (773) 770-0333.
Note: All three runs will include a Pay-What-You-Can preview. SGT’s waived ticket program also ensures maximum accessibility. Masks are optional but encouraged for most performances and will be mandatory at three designated performances.
Visit sgtheatre.org/current-season to purchase tickets, read content warnings, and learn about special events, accessible ticket options and SGT's full mask policy.
Visit sgtheatre.org for memberships, tickets and more information, and follow the company @shatteredglobe on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Shattered Globe’s 2023-24 Season: Meet the artists
Arthur Miller (playwright, A View From the Bridge, 1915-2005) is one of the most important figures in 20th century American theatre, as well as an activist who drew public attention to controversial political and social issues of his time. Miller was born on October 17, 1915 and grew up in New York City’s Harlem. He enjoyed a comfortable childhood until his father’s business was lost during the Depression. This first-hand knowledge of the fragility of the American dream would become a recurring theme as a playwright. He enrolled in the University of Michigan’s journalism program in 1934. Despite limited exposure to theatre, he began writing plays and won the prestigious Avery Hopwood Award for two consecutive years. When his early plays were rejected, Miller worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and wrote radio scripts to support his wife and family. He finally established himself with All My Sons in 1947. Directed by Elia Kazan, it ran for 328 performances, and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and two Tony Awards. This was followed by the 1949 Broadway premiere of Death of a Salesman, which ran for 742 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. By the 1950s, anti-communist suspicion in the United States was everywhere, themes reflected in Miller’s next two plays, an adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and The Crucible. Although The Crucible initially received mixed reviews, it won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play. A View From the Bridge was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act with A Memory of Two Mondays at Broadway’s Coronet Theatre. The run was unsuccessful, so Miller revised and extended the play into a two-act. It premiered on October 11, 1956 at the New Watergate Theatre Club under the direction of Peter Brook. Following a divorce from his first wife and remarriage to actress Marilyn Monroe in 1956, Miller would not write another play for nearly a decade. The couple divorced in 1961. A year later, Miller married photographer Inge Morath. “Timebends,” an autobiography, was published in 1987 to critical acclaim, and he collaborated on the 1996 screenplay of The Crucible. His final play, Finish the Picture, based on the filming of The Misfits, premiered at Goodman Theatre in 2004, directed by Robert Falls.
Louis Contey (director, A View From the Bridge, he/him) is an Ensemble Member with Shattered Globe Theatre and an Associate Artist at TimeLine Theatre. This year marks his 40th anniversary as a director. Contey has directed over 80 productions, is a twelve-time Jeff Award nominee, has received seven Jeff Citations, and an After Dark Award. He has taught acting and directing for the theatre programs at UIC, The Acting Studio, Act One Studio and The Theatre School at DePaul University. His Shattered Globe directing credits include A View From the Bridge (1993 and 2023), The Manchurian Candidate, A Streetcar Named Desire, All My Sons, Who’s Afraid of Viriginal Woolf?, Peter Pan, Les Liasons Dangereuse, Warhawks and Lindberghs, Holy Ghosts, Judgment at Nuremberg, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Whaleship Essex, In the Heat of the Night, The Tall Girls and The Heavens are Hung Black. At TimeLine, Contey directed The Price, Awake and Sing!, It’s All True, Copenhagen, Pravda, Paradise Lost, The General From America, A House with No Walls, Lillian, Frost/Nixon, The Guys and The Apple Family Plays. Other Chicago credits include The Master and Margarita (Strawdog), In a Garden (A Red Orchid); Marriage Play and Duck Variations (Goodman) and Haymarket Eight (Steppenwolf). He has also worked at Theatre at the Center, Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, Provision Theatre, Eclipse Theatre and American Theatre Company.
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen (playwright, Flood, he/him) is a CORE writer at the Playwrights Center, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Draw the Circle, which was produced at PlayMakers Rep, Mosaic Theatre, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre (published by Dramatists Play Service). His other full-length plays include Flood, which had its world premiere starring Chicago’s Laura Fisher and Matt DeCaro at Kansas City Rep in 2022; The Vessel, which was commissioned by the NYU graduate acting program; The Betterment Society, which is published in “The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays”; The Shaking Earth, which has won two second place international awards (International Woodward Prize, and the India's International Sulthan Padamsee Prize), and has been nominated for both a Weissberger Award and a Venturous Fund award; and The Telegram, a live-staged radio play commissioned and produced by Keen Company. Deen is a member of the NYTW Usual Suspects and the Dramatists Guild. He is an alum of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the Public Theater Writers Group, and New Dramatists. He earned his MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama.
Kenneth Prestininzi (director, Flood, he/him) has collaborated as a director/dramaturg with Mia Chung, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Martyna Mayok, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and many others. He directed the world premiere of Deen’s Flood at Kansas City Rep, and is staging the play’s second production at Shattered Globe in January 2024. His award-winning plays, musicals and directing work have been seen in Boston, Brighton, Edinburgh, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Morocco, New York City, Philadelphia, Prague, Providence, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. He teaches at the National Theater Institute and Connecticut College and was the Associate Chair of Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama for five years. Chicago productions include his original plays AmeriKafka, Beholder (Joseph Jefferson Award), Chaste and Cookie Play (Trap Door Theatre). He is the founder of Salvage Arts Productions, is an alum of New Dramatists and studied with María Irene Fornés.
Plays by Charly Evon Simpson (playwright, Jump, she/her) include Jump, Behind the Sheet, form of a girl unknown, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, sandblasted, and more. Her work has been seen and/or developed with The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Vineyard Theatre, WP Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark, Page 73, Ars Nova, Chautauqua Theater Company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, The Fire This Time Festival, National New Play Network through its NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop and National Showcase of New Plays, and others. Simpson was named the 2019-20 recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award from the Vineyard Theatre, co-recipient of the Dramatists Guild’s Lanford Wilson Award, was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award, and had two of her plays on the 2019 Kilroys List. Jump is the first recipient of the David Goldman Fund for New Plays. She has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan, EST/Sloan, South Coast Repertory, Barnard College, and more. She’s currently a core writer at The Playwrights’ Center and a resident of New Dramatists. She is a former member of WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Theater Lab, SPACE on Ryder Farm’s The Working Farm, Clubbed Thumb’s 17/18 Early Career Writers’ Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood, The Amoralists’ Wright Club, and Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab. She has also worked for HBO, on the second season of Industry, among other projects. Before that, she worked on Showtime’s American Rust. She received her BA from Brown University, a master’s in Women’s Studies from University of Oxford, New College, and her MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College, where she studied with Annie Baker, Brighde Mullins, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
AmBer Montgomery (director, Jump, she/her) is a director, educator and multi-disciplinary artist from Detroit, Michigan. She is Shattered Globe Theatre’s associate artistic director, where she recently served as lead producer for Radial Gradient and directed Rasheeda Speaking, earning her a Jeff nomination for Best Director. Montgomery also recently directed The Snow Queen (The House Theater); Countess Dracula (Otherworld Theater); and hippolytos (Story Theatre New Play Festival). Her associate and assistant directing credits include Sheepdog (Shattered Globe); School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play (Goodman Theatre); LINDIWE (Steppenwolf Theatre); Too Heavy for Your Pocket (TimeLine Theatre); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Writers Theatre); Measure for Measure (American Players Theater); and First Love is the Revolution (Steep Theatre). She was awarded a 2020 FAIR Assistantship at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and a 2018 Fellowship at Steppenwolf Theatre. She has attended training programs at the Globe Theater in London and LISPA (Now Arthaus Berlin). Originally trained as an actor, Montgomery holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Minnesota Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program.
About Shattered Globe Theatre
Shattered Globe Theatre was born in a storefront space on Halsted Street in 1991. Since then, SGT has produced more than 80 plays, including nine American and world premieres, and garnered an impressive 42 Jeff Awards and 114 Jeff Award nominations, as well as the acclaim of critics and audiences alike.
Shattered Globe Theatre, guided by Producing Artistic Director Sandy Shinner, seeks to discover new connections between story, artist and audience by exploring drama from bold, challenging perspectives, and continuously redefining what it means to be an ensemble theatre.
Shattered Globe’s values are rooted in a commitment to racial equity, respect for all artists and support for the ensemble, while creating new opportunities to amplify traditionally marginalized voices and collaborate in all aspects of our work. Through initiatives such as the Protégé Program, Shattered Globe creates a space which allows emerging artists to grow and share in the ensemble experience.
Shattered Globe Theatre is partially supported and funded by generous grants from The Bayless Family Foundation, The Shulman-Rochambeau Charitable Foundation, Brenda and James. Grusecki, Carol P. Eastin, a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Daniel Cyganowski, The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and The Saints.
Visit sgtheatre.org for subscriptions, tickets and information, and follow the company @shatteredglobe on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.