ONE PARTY CONSENT

BY OMER ABBAS SALEM*, DIRECTED BY NADYA NAUMAAN

WORLD PREMIERE

FEBRUARY 13 - MARCH 15, 2025

Trust is tricky. You enter working relationships and it's unprofessional not to offer it. When you feel your trust challenged, you convince yourself that you're the problem. And some people take advantage of that. Fola is an MFA directing grad student stepping into a mid-year review with their advisor. What happens when you record a professional meeting and you don't tell the other? And what do you do when you record something really incriminating? This is a play about the degradation of trust.

EVANSTON SALT COSTs CLIMBING

BY WILL ARBERY, DIRECTED BY micah figueroA*

CHICAGO PREMIERE

MAY 15 - JUNE 14, 2025

Winters keep getting worse in Evanston, IL, where salt truck drivers Peter and Basil battle the ice and snow and pass the time with jokes and stories. But what’s with this creeping sense of dread? Is it because their boss Maiworm has noble visions of new green technology that would make their jobs obsolete? Or is there a more terrifying warning calling out from under these roads? At least they have each other, right?

omer abbas salem*

Omer Abbas Salem (Playwright, One Party Consent, he/they) is an actor and playwright. As an actor, they've worked at Roundabout Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Goodman, Steep Theatre, Jackalope Theatre, Silk Road Rising, First Floor Theatre, The New Coordinates, About Face Theatre, Griffin Theatre, and The Second City. As a playwright, their work has been produced at The Goodman, Steppenwolf Theatre, About Face Theatre, Steep Theatre, First Floor Theatre, Jackalope Theatre, The New Coordinates, The Story Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, National Queer Theatre, Definition Theatre, and The Theatre School of DePaul. They are a member of the 2021/22 Goodman Playwrights Unit and had a play developed in The Goodman’s New Stages Festival in 2022. They are the winner of the 2022 Blueprint Commission winner from First Floor recipient of the 2021 Cunningham Commission from DePaul University. They were given an Emerging Playwright Commission from Audible Theater and are also the most recent recipient of the Edgerton Commission at Steppenwolf Theater. They also won the 2022 3Arts Award in Theater. They will have World Premieres produced in this upcoming season with Steep Theatre, First Floor Theatre, and The Theatre School at DePaul. They are an ensemble member of Steep Theatre, First Floor Theater, and The New Coordinates. They graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and the University of Chicago. They are represented by Gray Talent and the Gersh Agency. Find out more at www.omerabbassalem.com.

As of August 2024.

nadya NAUMAAN

Nadya Naumaan (Director, One Party Consent, they/she) is a Pakistani-American nonbinary queer Muslim artist, working in theater and filmmaking in Chicago over the last 6 years as a director/associate director,   dramaturg, producer, scriptwriter, playwright, stage manager, and actor. Previous credits include the Steppenwolf SCOUT iteration and About Face Theatre production of Mosque4Mosque (AD), Jackalope's Pretty Shahid (Dramaturg/AD), Court Theatre's Photograph 51 (AD), ITP’s I Call My Brothers (Dramaturg), and New Coordinates' Love in the Time of Jonestown (AD). Nadya's short film STUCK was a finalist in The Mosquers Film Festival in 2019 and was screened at 8 other film festivals. Their webseries, Pooj&Nad, was a finalist at the same festival in 2022. They just completed their short film, A Simple Ask, which will be screened in Chicago soon. Nadya is thrilled to be working with First Floor Theater after many years of admiring their work.

As of August 2024.

WILL ARBERY

Will Arbery (Playwright, Evanston Salts Cost Climbing, he/him) is a playwright and screenwriter from Texas. Within television, Willmost recently wrote on the fourth season of Succession for which he won the WGA Award for Episodic Drama. He has feature projects in development with filmmakers including Romain Gavras and Derek Cianfrance. As a playwright, he is best known for Heroes of the Fourth Turning, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2020, and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the Obie Award for Playwriting, the John Gassner Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Arbery also won the Whiting Award for Drama in 2020. He had two acclaimed theatrical productions in 2022 – Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (The New Group) and Corsicana (Playwrights Horizons). Current commissions include: The Met Opera, Manhattan Theater Club, and Jeffrey Seller Associates.Texas Monthly flagged him as one of the most influential cultural figures of the past 50 years out of Texas and The New Yorker has called him the playwright of the moment; and he has recently been profiled by The New York Times Magazine and the LA Times. 

As of August 2024.

micah figueroa*

Micah Figueroa (Director, Evanston Salts Cost Climbing, he/him) is a Chicago based Director, Actor, Choreographer, Teaching Artist, and First Floor Theatre Company Member. His most recent directing credit include In His Hands at First Floor Theater, Associate Directed A Year With Frog and Toad at Chicago Children's Theatre, Adapted and Directed The Distance for The Actor’s Gymnasium Spring Youth Circus, Directed the zoom recording of Makasha Copeland’s Fabuloso! at Sideshow Theatre Company, Peter and the Wolf by Rachel Copel at Odradek Theatre, and Asst. Directed of Act(s) of God by Kareem Bandealy at Lookingglass Theatre. He has been a combination of Fight, Intimacy, Movement, and/or Circus Director variously at First Floor (Mike Pence Sex Dream, Plano, Botticelli in the Fire), Remy Bumppo, Writer’s, Actor’s Gymnasium, TimeLine, Steep, Haven, Northwestern University, UIC, Texas Christian University, and Northbrook Theatres as well as Dallas Theatre Center, and Shakespeare Dallas among others. Micah holds a degree in Theatre Studies (Directing and Playwriting) from Southern Methodist University and attended the British American Drama Academy in London, England.

As of August 2024.

GLORIA IMSEIH PETRELLI

Gloria Imseih Petrelli (Blueprint Commission Recipient, she/they) is a Chicago born and based theatre artist and political organizer whose work is an exploration of their Palestinian identity, community, and joy as a practice. www.thegloriaimseihpetrelli.com

Brynne Frauenhoffer

(Vape Naysh, Pro-Am)

Jenni Hadley

(Polaroid Stories, Pro-Am)

Rebecca Willingham

(Killed A Man (Joking), Pro-Am)