"Calamity West is one of the best playwrights in Chicago. Or maybe the country. Or the universe." - Chicago Reader
CALAMITY WEST
THOUGHTS ON
CALAMITY'S WORK
“West, a Chicago writer with an ebullient sense of theatricality, is the real deal."
- Chicago Tribune
"West is a colossal talent with a formidable intellect."
- Chicago Tribune
“Calamity West is, without question, a name to watch.”
- Chicago Tribune
“Calamity West manages to hook you in and get you comfortable
only to take you places no one wants to see clearly.”
- Third Coast
“West writes like a vise, slowly tightening the screws
until her characters are trapped and her audience is rapt.”
- Windy City Times
“…an essential voice…”
- Chicago Tribune
“West’s writing really hits the zeitgeist. She’s an important voice in the world.”
- PerformInk
“…a leading aesthetic innovator of storefront realism as well as a
tough-as-nails moralist.”
- Chicago Reader
Calamity West is an award-winning playwright and educator whose work has been produced and developed at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Primary Stages, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Underground, the Goodman Theatre, and Jackalope Theatre Company - among others.
From 2022 to 2026, West is in residence at Primary Stages in New York as a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, where she has written FEAST! (2023) and Sgt. Hank Cole’s Drama Club of Algona (2024). FEAST! also received development through the Lortel’s Alcove program in 2024. She is concluding her residency with PARALLAX (2026), a new play examining community, power, and the fragile order of contemporary HOAs.
At the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, West received the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, which resulted in The Last Supper and Three Years Later (2022). Her play Inside the World of Somewhere Else is currently being commissioned and developed by Red Yes Studios in New York (2025).
Her plays span more than a decade of productions including, but not limited to: In the Canyon (Jackalope Theatre, 2018; The Constructivists, 2024), Hinter (Steep Theatre, 2018), Give It All Back (Sideshow Theatre, 2016; Eleusis Collective Digital Production, 2021), Rolling (Jackalope Theatre, 2016), and The Peacock (Jackalope Theatre, 2013). Her most recent development includes Greetings from Moscow: A Love Story with Northlight Theatre and the University of Chicago in 2025.
As an educator, West has been shaping the next generation of writers for a decade. She teaches at the University of Chicago, the Einhorn School of Performing Arts, and Webster University. In 2018, she founded the Playwrights Lab at Jackalope Theatre Company, providing a collaborative space for early-career writers to generate new work. She has been a company member at Jackalope since 2014 and continues to mentor emerging playwrights throughout Chicago and beyond.
West is committed to theatre that illuminates the complexities of American life while deepening empathy and civic imagination. She develops work that challenges audiences to reflect on their responsibilities to one another and to carry that awareness beyond the stage.
