Kristin Idaszak

The Gilded Age lasted roughly from the 1870s to the turn of the century: a period marked by great technological innovation, rapid urbanization, and extraordinary inequality. Tariffs were high, there was no income tax, and wealth distribution was at its greatest disparity in American history—until now. THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS collides two major events of the Gilded Age—the Vanderbilt ball and the Haymarket Affair—into a single evening. Is this a society comedy of manners? A high-stakes clash between robber barons and anarchists? Or is it all a hallucination? The play explores the invention of bling culture in America, how we construct of reality, proto-wellness culture & chronic illness, and the end of history as we know it.

Robert Falcon Scott's explorers perform a play to stave off polar madness during the four months of Antarctic night. A female glaciologist fights for her place in cutting-edge climate change research in 1978. A present-day couple travels to the ends of the earth to get married. THREE ANTARCTICAS explores the entire history of humans in Antarctica through the lens of gender, queerness, and climate change. Is it possible to go to the edge of the world and return unchanged?

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When Iris, a professional alpinist, is diagnosed with a heart condition that may prevent her from ever climbing again, she reluctantly turns to a therapist/guru who specializes in working with elite rock climbers. But Iris begins unpacking a whole lot more than she bargained for as her therapist pushes her to unfurl a tragic accident that changed her life forever. Simultaneously moving forward and backward in time, Last Ascent investigates grief, chronic illness, neo-imperialism, and the ecological devastation wreaking havoc on our planet and on our bodies.

When Quinn discovers her estranged mother is dying, she returns to a home she fled long ago. As she cares for her mother, Quinn wrestles with disturbing childhood memories. What is her mother’s secret? What do the bedtime stories of Selkies her mother once told her really mean? Told in three interconnected monologues, SECOND SKIN investigates the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, and how one mistake can reverberate across generations.

A struggling detective novelist recently read a self-help book about how to be happy. Actually, it’s about how to tidy. As she cleans her house, the novelist excavates her own personal history, and the history of the planet. But as she discovers troubling gaps in her memory, a series of clues lead her closer to an answer she may not want to find. Tidy examines the holes in our lives that we try to fill through consumption, and how we decide what to keep and what to leave behind. Who and what will survive the sixth mass extinction? And will it spark joy?

Escaping from a toxic work environment and a predatory boss, Jordan takes an impromptu vacation—and accidentally travels back in time to the 10th century. ​Taken in by the canny women who live in a medieval abbey, she joins their efforts to protect themselves from a lecherous local lord and becomes the assistant to Hrotsvit, the first female playwright in the Western canon. ​Revenge is a feminist farce about healing, community, and a world ​beyond the male gaze.

The fledglings of Bird Scout Troop #7 are on their first ever annual migration when they get separated from their flock. They find themselves lost in a forest that's been ravaged by an out-of-control fire. On their quest to rejoin their flock, the scouts must overcome encounters with a desperate predator, an ancient oak tree, and Wildfire herself. Wildfire and the Bird Scouts is a story about the way we ask the next generation to solve the problems that we have created. It’s about ingenuity and resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And it’s about the way our environment is changing irrevocably.

Prohibition is in full swing, but New York City is still celebrating New Year’s Eve in style—with a batch of poisoned hooch and an immigrant woman's murder by cyanide. Cue Alexander Gettler, an obsessive chemist whose research helped create the modern field of forensic toxicology. With help from Lipstick, an intrepid flapper and indefatigable reporter who mistakes his laboratory for a speakeasy, Gettler must try to catch a murderer and convince the federal government to stop poisoning alcohol. Inspired by the real life work of Gettler and pioneering journalist Lois Long, THE SUREST POISON chronicles the dark side of the noble experiment.

Teeny and Lena grew up together in a rural midwestern town, dreaming of leaving for the big city. But now Teeny is the town sheriff and Lena is a newly-single mother. When the body of Lena’s daughter is found near the lake outside of town, their friendship is stretched to the breaking point. Teeny's investigation provides more questions than answers: Have girls been going missing for years? Why are the loons acting so strange? What has the town's lake witnessed? STRANGE HEART BEATING is a darkly fantastical look at the rural Midwest, the murky nature of justice, and the prejudices that lie just beneath the surface.

The audience has arrived at the theatre to see a show about the Chicago slaughterhouses - only to find that the play has been canceled. Instead, the writer is there to give a slideshow presentation about the history of the stockyards. In trying to explore her family's Polish identity and the exploitation of stockyard workers, the writer unintentionally exposes a trauma from her own past. Inspired by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, ANOTHER JUNGLE explores the misuse of power, the way narratives get co-opted, and the way identity accretes over the course of generations.

Hope is career-focused physicist looking for parallel universes. Her boyfriend, Jonas, is an ambulance driver who just wants to get married and have a family. When a mysterious stranger careens into their world, the delicate balance of their life together is thrown into chaos. Guided by an alive-dead cat named Schrödinger, FUGUE FOR PARTICLE ACCELERATOR asks the questions: What would happen if we could travel the road not taken? How do the choices we make effect the lives we might have lived? Is there a world where we know how to make all the right choices?