‘The Secretaries’ at First Floor Theater is a Subversive Farce about “Hiller”‘s Nazi Germany

Written by Chicago playwright and actor Omer Abbas Salem, The Secretaries is a funny and subversive farce set in a parallel universe’s Nazi Germany. Salem (he/they) is a well known Chicago actor and one of our city’s most exciting emerging playwrights. While The Secretaires is their first true in-person production, Salem’s work has been developed at the Goodman, Jackalope, Steppenwolf, National Queer Theater, and The New Coordinates.

The theatre canon is filled with stories about the Holocaust and, from Cabaret to Sound of Music, big musical numbers about mass genocide. Salem’s script, with its creative alterations to history, offers audiences something new and provocative. This play’s four dynamic characters, outfitted in Aryan Drag, struggle through their time employed as Secretaries at “Hiller’s Office of Mysteries.” Yes, Hiller, not Hitler.

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‘Sugar in our Wounds,’ an Ode to Black Love in a Time of Great Pain

Sugar in our Wounds by Donja R. Love at First Floor Theater is nestled in the upstairs of the Den Theatre, a space designed by Joy Ahn to hold its audience tightly through the events of the play. Seemingly endless branches that source from an ancient tree glow from within, arching over the space as if to say come closer, I have a story in my roots. If you listen closely, Sam Clapp’s sound design will have you thinking you hear the ancestors murmuring to you as the wind whistles through the branches. Continue reading “‘Sugar in our Wounds,’ an Ode to Black Love in a Time of Great Pain”

‘Mike Pence Sex Dream’ Takes Morality for a Wild Ride

Mike Pence Sex Dream by Dan Giles at First Floor Theatre, directed by Hutch Pimentel, is a sometimes ruckus sometimes sobering depiction of the weight of capitalism and cancel culture in the face of animal cruelty and neoliberalism. A mouthful right? And yet, it’s shaping up to be one of the hottest, realest show of the season. Continue reading “‘Mike Pence Sex Dream’ Takes Morality for a Wild Ride”