Joe Zarrow

Hellmouth: A Neo-Medieval Pageant Play about the 1980s Satanic Panic

A rebellious carnival barker must confront demons of trauma, memory, and belief when her overbearing evangelical mother interrupts her 1980s Satanic Panic pageant.

Armed only with her dreams of making the world a better place and six weeks of training, Kay Josephs quits her corporate job to teach English in an urban high school. She wakes up to harsh realities: the copy machine is broken, the system is broken, and the spirits of her fellow teachers are broken. Or are they? A dark comedy of academic intrigue.

"One of the best new plays of the year...There are very few excellent plays about public education. This is one." - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

"★★★★ This clear-eyed glimpse into the teachers' lounge makes hearty laughs part of an all too relevant lesson plan." - Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago

"Former public school teacher Joe Zarrow achieves something remarkable...an entertaining play about education that re-creates all the quirks and craziness of modern education without lapsing into either cynical hopelessness or Hollywood-style superteacher fantasies. His dialogue feels authentic, and his characters are flawed but likable human beings, not mouthpieces for this or that ideology." - Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader

"Engaging, intelligent, and important. Highly recommended." - Peter Thomas Ricci, Chicago Theater Review

Princess Priscilla has died by suicide, and the King tearfully delivers her eulogy. After the funeral, Priscilla’s ghost appears to the brave and hot-headed Sir Ambrose. Priscilla reveals to Ambrose that the King repeatedly raped her through childhood. She wants Ambrose to “set things right,” but with two requirements: no violence, and no dungeons. Ambrose, enraged by the King’s crimes, has a hard time stifling his own will to use his sword. He succeeds at getting the King to admit to and express regret for his previous behavior, but soon after, the King kills himself as well. Now haunted by two ghosts, Ambrose is left to come to terms with his own toxicity and heal the community. Give Up the Ghost is a revenge tragedy without revenge (a tragic revengedy?), examining how we can move society towards a more enlightened vision of justice.

CW: Suicide, abuse, rape, murder, onstage violence, misogynistic language.

Mission Purple, a Chicago nonprofit connecting urban and rural citizens, is falling apart. The Director disappeared to a retreat in Wisconsin months ago. The board fires friends Ros and Tommy. Single and unemployed, they decide to go up to Wisconsin for long weekend and to look for the Director, who happens to be Ros's mom.

In Wisconsin, the Mission Purple staff are missing, having abandoned their rental cabin. Ros and Tommy stay at an uncomfortable motel. Tommy can barely leave the room. A long weekend turns into a long winter. The local paper prints an anonymous love ode to Ros and the poet turns out to be Lando, a former coworker crush. Ros approaches him, but Lando mistakes her for a townie. Ros rolls with it.

Angry city and country lovers pile up. Mission Purple goes bankrupt, but a mysterious benefactor writes them a blank check. Wounds heal. Tommy weds a local dairy farmer. Ros reveals herself, and quits Mission Purple in order to find a new, honest place in the world. A modern update of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT and its obsession with boundary-blurring, THE RETREAT asks, why do we so often yearn to be something other than what we are? How do our personal desires overlap and conflict with our professional and political selves?

In this short play inspired by "Kodak Shirleys," the models whose faces were used to calibrate color film printers, an African-American artist attempts to get a white friend's help with her photography project critiquing racism in technology. Skipping back to 1970, the original Kodak Shirley model struggles with the unglamorous truths of her job. Commissioned for Broken Nose Theatre's Bechdel Fest.

At a small town high school's active shooter drill, the backdrop of blank shots and bullet hole makeup inspires two teens and two adults to explore what is real in their world. Written for The Appetizer Plays speed playwriting festival.

Captain Talosi attempts one last interstellar love connection as alien troops board the Starship Hieronymus. A monologue written to be performed via Zoom to an audience of one.

RETCON is a universe-hopping comedy about geek culture, race, and keeping your story straight. An unknown African-American actress wins the lead role in the movie debut of Chronometa, a beloved comic book heroine who first appeared in the 1940s. Nerdy traditionalists, led by a mysterious blogger, think their hero must stay absolutely true to the original comics and be played by a white performer. The traditionalists pressure the studio to make some unsavory alterations to the screenplay. The actress, unhappy about this compromise, leaks the script to an idealistic young fan who publishes it on the internet. This escalates into a vicious campaign of trolling against the fan and the actress. This main plot is interwoven with the storyline of Chronometa herself, a superhero who grows with the decades. We also see the “origin stories” of the play’s real-life characters: the actress, the trolling blogger, the fan, the director, and the nebbishy continuity supervisor. The play ends on an optimistic note, jumping ten years into the future to see how comic books might continue to evolve.

Boyd is stuck in his head. He can't concentrate on his drone-piloting work, on his relationships, or even on sex. When his wife Monica issues him an ultimatum to work on his mental health, Boyd turns to a mad scientist to give his brain a literal out-of-body experience. Will it be enough to save Boyd and Monica's marriage? A dark sci-fi comedy about the mind-body problem.

From Unicorn Theatre's Semifinalist Rating for its In-Progress New Play Reading Series: "Our readers especially appreciated the exploration of the concept of isolation and how it affects one's relationships with others. They thought that the play asks us to consider how a sense of disconnect within the self affects our entire lives and whether embracing our internal chaos will help or make things even worse. Our readers enjoyed the script's magical realism feel and thought that it told an interesting, often melancholic story balanced with wit and absurdity."

When Martin's girlfriend kicks him out of their apartment for cheating, he has to find new digs quickly in Chicago's diverse, rapidly-gentrifying West Town neighborhood. To get the only existing apartment, he'll have to compete with a rabid overgrown frat boy, a Machiavellian real estate agent, a determined Polish saleslady, an embittered barista, and a flock of very angry pigeons. How far will Martin be willing to go to stay in the neighborhood he loves so much?

"Without a doubt, one can arrive unprepared for Joe Zarrow's new play, The Pigeons, produced by Walkabout Theatre, at Swim Cafe's space. It's easily the cleverest, foxiest and physically wildest farce I've seen since, well, forever."
- Paige Listerud, Chicago Theater Blog

"Very funny satire."
- Laura Molzahn, Chicago Reader (Recommended)

Sibling rivalry, a circle of vengeance-wreaking, and a cat named Bongo with an unfortunate haircut. A ten-minute play for young actors, commissioned for the Piven Theatre Scene Study Class.

A professor desperate for tenure gets to share her work at a TED-esque Big Idea conference, but only after she makes a deal with someone suspect in this short comic take on the Faust myth.

I have not actually written this play, nor do I plan to, but it's kind of a fun idea, yeah?