DREAM HOU$E & More Set for Refracted Theatre Company 2025 - 2026 Season

Refracted Theatre Company has shared its 2025 season, including Dream Hou$e, written by Eliana Pipes and directed by Laura Alcalá Baker, running September 12 - October 25, and Role Call, Refracted’s series of free, community reading series, which is also being developed into workshops for corporate engagement and Chicago schools.

Refracted’s first Role Call for the community will take place Monday, April 14 and will feature Emma Gibson’s play Lumin. Refracted is also excited to introduce its roster of new artistic associates joining the company in 2025. Information on these productions and more is available at RefractedCo.com.

Says Artistic Director Tova Wolff, “Season Six is a bold leap into expansion and exploration. Our team is growing, our passion is unstoppable and our curiosity knows no bounds. We’re diving headfirst into magical realism at its finest—championing new voices, embracing fresh challenges and shattering every expectation along the way!”

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The 2025 season includes:

Dream Hou$e 

September 12 - October 25

Written by Eliana Pipes

Directed by Laura Alcalá Baker

Previews: Friday, Sept. 12 at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 13 at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 14 at 3 p.m. and Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Press Opening: Thursday, Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Performance schedule:Thursdays - Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m.

The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Tickets go on sale this summer. 

Two sisters are appearing on an HGTV-style reality show to sell their family home, hoping to capitalize on the gentrification in their “changing neighborhood.” As they perform for the camera the show starts to slip into the surreal: one sister grapples with turmoil in the family’s ancestral past and the other learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the family’s future. Dream Hou$e, which earned both the Kendeda Award and Steinberg Playwriting Award in 2021, is a crowd-pleasing comedy with a twist that asks: What is the cultural cost of progress in America? And is cashing in always selling out?

Role Call

In addition to hosting a number of free, community Role Call events in 2025, which will travel to multiple Chicago neighborhoods, Refracted plans to transform the program into a series of social/emotional learning and development workshops for corporate engagement and Chicago schools. Following multiple Role Call events hosted over the last two years, past attendees have affirmed the success of the program while also sharing that they feel the program is perfectly suited for both team building and educational environments. Refracted plans to channel this feedback and its resources into exploring how Role Call can increase empathic communication skills in corporate spaces and classrooms. Refracted will host several community Role Call events before launching its corporate and educational initiatives. 

Role Call: Lumin 

Monday, April 14 at 6:45 p.m.

The Understudy, 5531 N. Clark St. 

Ticket Price: FREE (suggested donation $10)

More information here: RefractedCo.com/role-call-2025

The first Role Call in the 2025 season will be for Lumin, by Emma Gibson. Role Call is part book club, part performance, part debate and part community healing. Refracted is calling together its talented artistic community together with the theatrically-curious Chicago community to investigate exciting works of theatre…in a setting where everyone has a role to play. 

ABOUT Eliana Pipes, playwright, Dream Hou$e

Eliana Pipes (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker and performer. Her plays include Dream Hou$e (world premiere co-production with the Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre and Baltimore Center Stage), Bite Me (South Coast Repertory Pacific Playwright’s Festival, NNPN National New Play Showcase), Unfuckwithable (Drama League DirectorFest), Cowboy and the Moon (Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, NNPN MFA Playwright's Workshop), Lorena: a Tabloid Epic (New York Theatre Workshop Dartmouth Residency, The Playwright's Realm Scratchpad Series), Stand and Wait (The Fire This Time Festival) and others.

Her writing awards include the Alliance Kendeda Prize, KCACTF Harold & Mimi Steinberg Award and Ken Ludwig Scholarship, Leah Ryan Fund Prize, National Latine Playwright Award, Dr. Floyd Gaffney National Playwriting Prize and a three-time finalist status for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwriting Conference. She holds new play commissions from Two River Theater and South Coast Repertory.

As a filmmaker, she was awarded the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women through the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was also awarded the inaugural WAVE Grant through Wavelength Productions to support the production of her animated narrative short film “¡Nails!,” which premiered at Outfest LA LGBTQ+ Film Festival and earned her the Outfest x Colin Higgins Foundation Youth Filmmaker Grant. BA Columbia University, MFA Boston University.

ABOUT LAURA ALCALÁ BAKER, director, Dream Hou$e

Laura Alcalá Baker (she/they) is a Chicago-based director and new play developer specializing in unearthing the missing canon and reimagining the existing one. Her work lives in the intersection of a mixed child, one and both – Mexican American. She has developed and directed new works such as Matthew Paul Olmos' a home what howls (Steppenwolf), Isaac Gomez’s The Leopard Play, or sad songs for lost boys (Steep Theatre), The Way She Spoke (DCASE, GTC), Omer Abbas Salem’s The Secretaries (First Floor Theater), RUST by Nancy García Loza (Goodman/New Stages) and the audio drama BRAVA (Make Believe Association), which is available on all podcasting platforms. Other select works include I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Denver Center for the Performing Arts), Somewhere Over the Border (City Theatre/People's Light), Anna in the Tropics (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company), Bull (Paramount) and The Pillowman (The Gift Theatre). She has also directed special events such as Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium’s Access Live, which provides theatre leaders a live example of theatrical accessibility practices and Chi Trans Cabaret (Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series), which celebrates Chicago’s trans and nonbinary talent without the limitations of traditional casting expectations. As a casting director, she’s worked for such organizations as Latinx Theatre Commons, Tellin’ Tales Theatre and Make-Believe Association. She also served as the casting director and artistic programs manager for Victory Gardens Theater under Artistic Director Chay Yew, for two seasons, leading programs such as The Access Project and Directors’ Inclusion Initiative. She is a Steep Theatre ensemble member and 2021 3Arts Make a Wave recipient.

ABOUT REFRACTED THEATRE COMPANY

Refracted Theatre Company was started by co-founders Graham Miller and Tova Wolff in 2019 in New York City. At the time of Refracted’s conception, Miller and Wolff observed a fractured nation, polarized and insular in its political/social motivations, a world inhabited by people deeply distrustful of those with whom they did not share ideological overlap.  Miller and Wolff ventured to create a theatre company that would challenge their audience’s biases, a space to become a mental and emotional fitness center where audiences could use theatre to grapple with the issues/feelings/forces in their lives. They wanted to inspire healthy discourse and empathic discussions, to encourage people to seek nuance and understanding again. 

In Refracted’s first season ever, they were able to produce a Refracted Reading...before everything came to a screeching halt. The pandemic changed the landscape of theatrical engagement in a way Wolff and Miller could never have predicted. But they stuck true to their mission, which seeks not only to provide Refracted content, but also Refracted form. While most theaters shuttered their doors, the co-artistic directors relied on adaptivity and innovation to continue to produce safety driven, live theatrical events that combined audio, immersive and movement theatre. In 2021, Refracted moved from New York to Chicago, where it continues to invite audiences to engage with new forms of storytelling, forms that are sure to upend their expectations. 

In the four years since its arrival in Chicago, Refracted has set a new standard for storefront theatre in a city renowned for its theatre scene. In 2023, the company was heralded as a “Rising Star in Storefront Theatre” by NewCity, nominated for the Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award, had sold out performances, received rave reviews and swept the Joseph Jefferson Awards, winning eight awards for its production of Tambo & Bones by Dave Harris, including Best Production. In 2024, Refracted’s production of Coronation, written by Laura Winters and directed by Tova Wolff, received the most Jeff Non-Equity nominations for a non-musical offering and won three Jeff Non-Equity Awards for lighting Design (Garrett Bell), projection design (Abboye Lawrence) and supporting actor (Jodi Gage). Refracted aims to always remain a home for people seeking to understand the world through a more nuanced, empathic lens. The truth, like a prism, has many sides and in order to see the light, Refracted asks to show the spectrum of colors that comprise it.

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