Thursday, June 26, 2025

Job Posting: Stage Manager needed for Angry Fags


Ghostlight Ensemble is seeking a Stage Manager for its fall production of Angry Fags by Topher Payne.

An out lesbian state senator is up for re-election. Her female opponent is a moderate conservative who has aligned herself with right-wing extremists. They’re locked in a tight race in which each side caters to its base and any event can become instantaneously politicized.

When a gay man is bashed with a baseball bat and left to die, his ex-boyfriend, a campaign aide for the incumbent senator, is enraged. But his boss’s unwillingness to label it a hate crime tips him over the edge. Frustration and fear eventually turn to rage and he teams up with his best friend to embark on a vendetta of sabotage and more, reasoning that if gays aren’t respected enough to win justice, fear will achieve what good intentions and politics cannot.

Stage Manager will attend all rehearsals and performances. Rehearsals in September/October 2025. In general, expect three to four rehearsals per week on weeknights or weekend days, to be scheduled according to cast availability.

Production Schedule:

Rehearsals in September and October 2025 on weeknights and/or weekend days

Tech week: Sunday, November 2 in the afternoon and Monday, November 3 through Thursday, November 6 in the evenings

Performances: Show will run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon matinees from Thursday, November 6 through Sunday, November 23, 2025

Strike: Sunday, November 23, 2025

Instructions to Apply: To be considered, please send resume and portfolio/website link to via Google Forms at this link.

Pay Rate: $400 stipend.

Job Posting: Production Team Positions for Angry Fags

Ghostlight Ensemble is seeking several production team roles for its fall production of Angry Fags by Topher Payne. Please review the following.

PLAY SUMMARY
An out lesbian state senator is up for re-election. Her female opponent is a moderate conservative who has aligned herself with right-wing extremists. They’re locked in a tight race in which each side caters to its base and any event can become instantaneously politicized. When a gay man is bashed with a baseball bat and left to die, his ex-boyfriend, a campaign aide for the incumbent senator, is enraged. But his boss’s unwillingness to label it a hate crime tips him over the edge. Frustration and fear eventually turn to rage and he teams up with his best friend to embark on a vendetta of sabotage and more, reasoning that if gays aren’t respected enough to win justice, fear will achieve what good intentions and politics cannot.

KEY DATES
Production team members will be available for virtual production meetings, in-person designer run, tech week, strike, and wardrobe fittings in September-October. Dates confirmed according to cast and production team availability.

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

  • Rehearsals in September and October 2025 on weeknights and/or weekend days
  • Tech week: Sunday, November 2 in the afternoon and Monday, November 3 through Thursday, November 6 in the evenings
  • Performances: Show will run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon matinees from Thursday, November 6 through Sunday, November 23, 2025
  • Strike: Sunday, November 23, 2025
POSITIONS

1. Costumer
Will dress 7 actors and 2 understudies in modern dress.
Pay Rate/Range: $300 stipend

2. Sound Designer
Pay Rate/Range: $300 stipend

3. Lighting Designer
Lighting Designer will have access to the rep lighting plot for Lifeline Theatre.
Pay Rate/Range: $300 stipend

4. Projection Designer
Pay Rate/Range: $300 stipend

5. Fight & Intimacy Choreographer
Will be responsible for choreographing a brief moment of intimacy and multiple scenes of stage violence including the use of a stage firearm.

Additional Key Dates: Fight & Intimacy Choreographer will be available for anticipated 3-4 rehearsals. Dates confirmed according to cast and production team availability.

 Pay Rate/Range: $150 stipend

6. Scenic & Prop
Pay Rate/Range: $300 stipend

Instructions to Apply: To be considered, please send resume and portfolio/website link via Google Forms at this link. (Select the position you’d like to apply for on the form)


Friday, June 20, 2025

‘Love As A Verb’: Ghostlight Kicks Off its Season Celebrating Otherness with Pride Fundraiser


Ghostlight Ensemble announces its Season 9 lineup, which includes the fall production of Angry Fags by Topher Payne, in a season that will focus on celebrating otherness and uplifting Queer characters and voices.

 “The climate we find ourselves in right now demands action. We cannot be passive in our support or love for communities that find themselves at risk. We, as a theatre company, are in the unique position with our art to center community building,” Co-Artistic Director Justin Broom said.

 The 2025-2026 season will feature two mainstage productions, a play for young audiences, staged readings, a three-part cabaret experience and ongoing collaborations with Chicago area museums. All productions center around love and relationships with an emphasis on queer characters and themes.

 “This is a thrilling season from Ghostlight, with bold and compelling artistic programming that includes full-length productions, theatre for young audiences, immersive performance and cabaret,” Co-Artistic Director Holly Robison said. “Now, more than ever, art is essential, and I hope our season will challenge, inspire, move and comfort our audiences. Art at its best can do all these things and more. I hope our audiences will feel that way too, that our work truly echoes our season’s theme ‘Love is a Verb’.”

Ghostlight will present its first full production, Angry Fags written by Topher Payne and directed by Jack Bowes, in November at Lifeline Theatre in Rogers Park.

 An out lesbian state senator is up for re-election. Her female opponent is a moderate conservative who has aligned herself with right-wing extremists. They’re locked in a tight race in which each side caters to its base and any event can become instantaneously politicized. When a gay man is bashed with a baseball bat and left to die, his ex-boyfriend, a campaign aide for the incumbent senator, is enraged. But his boss’s unwillingness to label it a hate crime tips him over the edge. Frustration and fear eventually turn to rage and he teams up with his best friend to embark on a vendetta of sabotage and more, reasoning that if gays aren’t respected enough to win justice, fear will achieve what good intentions and politics cannot.

 Angry Fags asks how far is too far to protect your community? Where is the line between helping and making things worse?

The production runs November 6-23, 2025, at Lifeline Theatre (6912 N Glenwood Ave, Chicago, IL, 60626).

 In mid-December, Ghostlight and the Driehaus Museum are excited to announce the return of Holiday Spirits: A Collectionof Victorian Yuletide Ghost Stories, a multi-story and multi-storied immersive, site-specific adaptation of classic Victorian ghost stories at the museum. In its second year, the production will expand from one night to three – one for Driehaus museum members and two for the general public. Be prepared to move through the mansion with the actors as they uncover these otherworldly visitors.

 In February, our Nightlight young audience series returns with The 8th Dwarf. The new work by Olivia Sieck tells the story of Binky, an outsider dwarf who, inspired by the kindness and motherly affection of Snow White, longs to find the courage to join the most special of their kind – the dwarves that get to work in the mines. The play shows that courage, kindness and wit matter more than anything and actions mean more than material goods.

 Ghostlight will close out its season in the spring of 2026 with The Dover Road by A.A. Milne (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame), directed by Co-Artistic Director Holly Robison. The Dover Road is set in the home of the eccentric Latimer, who waylays couples who are running away together and gives them a taste of what their lives together might be like by forcing them into sustained exposure to each other's habits and idiosyncrasies. The 1921 comedy is a not-so-subtle dissection of romantic love, but buried beneath is a less obvious commentary on the homosexuality, bisexuality and gender nonconformity that has always existed in society if you knew where to look.

In addition, Ghostlight will produce Ensemble Member Khnemu Menu-Ra’s, 3 Stages of Love, this season. The semi-autobiographical three-part cabaret experience features a blend of Shakespeare and song – along with original pieces. The company also plans a staged reading of Lady Lazarus, a new play in development by Ghostlight collaborator Haley Basil, and Ghostlight will continue its popular Live Movie Reading Series periodically throughout the season, as well as the For Your (Re)Consideration staged reading series, which explores the works of historically overlooked female writers.

“As a queer theatre artist, I think it would be irresponsible of me to not do everything in my power to meet this moment in a way that uplifts, not just our ensemble and audiences, but the community as a whole,” Broom said. “While we need to raise funds for our company to create quality entertainment, there are so many LGBTQ+ organizations that also need our attention and funds right now – particularly those serving our Trans siblings who are especially at risk.”

To meet that need, Ghostlight is also announcing its Love As A Verb fundraising campaign to support our most ambitious season to date and also raise money for two Chicago area LGBTQ+ organizations.

The fundraiser is live with a base goal to raise $5,000 by November. Donations from the fundraiser will go toward artist stipends and production costs with a portion of the proceeds going to local Chicago charities Brave Space Alliance and Gerber Hart Library & Archives.

Brave Space Alliance is a Black, trans-led center on Chicago’s South Side that creates and provides dignified essential services, develops programs and initiatives for individuals and families, co-creates community spaces of care and connection and conducts advocacy on issues that directly impact LGBTQ+ and Black communities.

Gerber Hart Library & Archives collects, preserves and provides access to the history and culture of LGBTQ+ communities in Chicago and the Midwest in order to advance the larger goal of achieving justice and equality.

Those interested in supporting the campaign can visit www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=T5TEKLEBFYFGY to make a tax deductible donation to Ghostlight Ensemble. Upon conclusion of the fundraiser, Ghostlight will publish the receipts of donations to other organizations.

The season’s theme, Love As A Verb, is inspired by a passage from All About Love by bell hooks: “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.”

Look for details about the entire 2025-2026 season and Ghostlight Ensemble at GhostlightEnsemble.com.

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Follow Ghostlight on BlueSky


Ghostlight is now on BlueSky! If that is your social media of choice (or just any one you’re a part of), you can find us at @GhostlightETC.bsky.social. Follow us for all the latest news and other Chicago theatre related information. 

 See ya in the Sky…or whatever people are saying!

Monday, September 9, 2024

Up Next: Hunting for Vampires on a School Night: A Live Reading of Buffy the Vampire Slayer


Ghostlight Ensemble presents the next installment of its live movie readings with Hunting for Vampires on a School Night: A live reading of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. 

Join us at 7 p.m. at Black Eagle Club (1938 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL 60613), as we spike the punch at the senior dance and then join together to burn down that high school gym full of vampires.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a 1992 American comedy vampire film (that predates the TV series). Blonde, bouncy Buffy (played in this incarnation by Kristy Swanson) is your typical high school cheerleader — her goal is to "marry Christian Slater and die" and nothing gets in her way when it's time to shop. But all that changes when a strange man informs her she's been chosen by fate to kill vampires. Buffy is soon spending school nights protecting L.A. from Lothos, the Vampire King and his determined gang of bloodsuckers. 

The reading is directed by John Gleason Teske.

There is a suggested donation of $5 at the door, which will help Ghostlight fund its upcoming season.

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Ghostlight Announces Cast for 'Alabama Story'

Clockwise from upper left: Tom Goodwin, Maria Burnham, Scott Olson,
Khnemu Menu-Ra, Haley Basil and Justin Broom.


Ghostlight Ensemble is pleased to announce the cast of Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones – the company’s first mainstage show since the global COVID-19 Pandemic brought arts organizations and productions around the world to a halt in 2020.The talented ensemble cast has a tremendous level of experience in both the theatre and film scene and will bring their talents to the stage starting in late September.

“This cast is truly fantastic, and I cannot wait to see the excellent performances that are sure to elevate an already meaty, timely script,” Robison said.

The cast includes two Ensemble Members, Co-Artistic Director Justin Broom as Thomas Franklin and Maria Burnham as Emily Wheelock Reed. Rounding out the cast is Scott Olson as Garth Williams, Tom Goodwin as Sen. E.W. Higgins, Khnemu Menu-Ra as Joshua Moore and Haley Basil as Lily Whitfield. Understudies include Adrian Campbell, Mary Jordan, Allison McCorkle and Derek Preston Ray. Ensemble Member and Co-Artistic Director Holly Robison directs.

Alabama Story is a fictional play based on very real events that took place in 1950s Alabama when a children’s book called The Rabbits’ Wedding by illustrator Garth Williams (known for his work on Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and Little House on the Prairie) was released. The book tells of two little rabbits – one white, one black – who decide to get married. Though not intended to be political, the book caused a firestorm in the Segregationist South with calls to ban and even burn the book.

The play, set in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama, is the story of a segregationist senator (the fictional-characterization-based-on-a-real-person, Sen. E.W. Higgins) and the state librarian (based on a very real Emily Wheelock Reed) who clash over the content of a children’s book about bunny rabbits. The play contrasts that story with a reunion of childhood friends — a Black man and a woman of white privilege — providing a private counterpoint to the public events swirling in the state capital.

Alabama Story is a drama about censorship, book banning and Civil Rights set within the framework of 1950s racial tensions that parallels the issues facing America today as book bans and book challenges overwhelm libraries and schools across the nation.

Ghostlight will open Alabama Story during Banned Books Week on Let Freedom Read Day, Saturday, September 28. Let Freedom Read Day is a day of action with a call for everyone who stands against book banning to take at least one action to help defend books from censorship. Ghostlight is proud to stand up for the library staff, educators, writers, publishers and booksellers who make books available to all. Learn more about Banned Books week (September 22-28) and Let Freedom Read Day at https://bannedbooksweek.org/let-freedom-read-day.

Alabama Story will take place at two site-specific, book-centric locations: After-Words Bookstore (23 E. Illinois St., Chicago) and Haymarket Books at Haymarket House (800 W Buena Ave, Chicago). There is a preview performance on Friday, September 27 at After-Words Bookstore, followed by performances on Sept. 28-29 and Oct. 4-6, 2024. Performances at Haymarket Books are Oct. 11-13 and Oct. 18-20. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and at 2:30 p.m. on Sundays.

Tickets are pay-what-you-will, with an average donation of $25, and are available at https://ghostlightensembletheatreco.thundertix.com/. More information about the show can be found at https://www.ghostlightensemble.com/alabama-story.

Ghostlight Ensemble acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Alabama Story is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection.

Ghostlight Ensemble is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit theatre whose mission it is to ask questions that challenge the status quo through timeless stories, immersive environments and unconventional staging. As an ensemble-based theatre, Ghostlight is made up of individual artists who are dedicated to collaborative creation and committed to working together consistently over years to develop a distinctive body of work. We welcome you to learn more about us at GhostlightEnsemble.com.

Monday, July 15, 2024

Join us for a Season 8 Kickoff Party


Ghostlight Ensemble invites you to join us for an evening of songs, drinks and general merriment at My Buddy’s (4416 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60640) to kick off our Eighth Season and long-awaited return to mainstage productions and a full season, post-COVID 19 pandemic!

We can’t wait to re-introduce ourselves to you and for you to meet our new artistic management team. At the event you’ll also learn all about our new season, which includes new partnerships with other Chicago institutions and maybe you’ll even see an excerpt from one of the new plays we’ll be bringing you this season. 

There will be karaoke. There will be snacks. There will an open bar from 3-4 p.m. And most of all, there will be fun. 

We’re also raising funds for our Season 8 programming, so we kindly ask for a donation of $10 (or more!) in advance via Eventbrite below or $15 at the door (cash, credit or PayPal). First 25 folks to donate $10 or more will G.E.T. a special Ghostlight Ensemble swag bag!