Director’s Haven 7

Haven is thrilled to start off 2024 with its annual Director’s Haven, now in its seventh year. Featuring three emerging directors, this Director’s Haven 7 gives directors in the earliest stages of their professional careers a rare opportunity to take risks, hone their crafts and talents and share their vision through a fully staged production of a short play.

The 2024 directors are Leanna Oliveira, directing The Siren Song of Stephen Jay Gould by Benjamin Bettenbender, Gaby Labotka, directing Skyflint, by Cassandra Rose, and Faith Hart, directing Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett.

Hedwig and the angry inch

Written by John Cameron Mitchell with Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask

Directed by JD Caudill

This groundbreaking Obie-winning Off-Broadway smash that took Broadway by storm in its Tony Award®–winning 2014 revival also won multiple awards for its hit film adaptation. It tells the story of “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig Schmidt, a fourth-wall smashing East German rock ‘n’ roll goddess who also happens to be the victim of a botched sex-change operation, which has left her with just “an angry inch.” This outrageous and unexpectedly hilarious story is dazzlingly performed by Hedwig (née Hansel) in the form of a rock gig/stand-up comedy routine backed by the hard-rocking band “The Angry Inch.” Using songs and monologues, Hedwig tells her story, which began in the former East Berlin where as Hansel he meets Luther, an American GI who promises to take the young man to the States on the condition that he switch his sex. After the bungled operation, Luther abandons newly named Hedwig in a Kansas trailer park, where she turns to music and meets geeky Tommy Speck, whom she takes under her wing and soon falls for. Tommy steals her songs, achieves rock star fame, and Hedwig is once again cast aside. She decides to demand redress and stalks Tommy’s world tour, performing in the T.G.I. Fridays that are situated next door to his stadiums. Hedwig describes her life’s search for “The Origin of Love” and her other half. It’s a rocking ride, funny, touching, and ultimately inspiring to anyone who has felt life gave them an inch when they deserved a mile.

FESTIVAL AU CINEMA

FESITVAL AU CINEMA returns as Haven Chicago's platform for emerging and visionary media artists staking their claim in the future of storytelling, defying traditional conventions of style, genre and form. This new film and media festival supports with Haven's overall organizational mission to "embolden visionary artists to practice and hone their craft by providing an equitable haven of opportunity for the creation of innovative performance, theatre, and media arts." We welcome original video submissions in categories including, but not limited to, creative narrative features and short films, screenplays, documentary, animations, experimental media, and music videos. We look forward to platforming and exhibiting some of the most exciting filmmaking and new media work coming from innovative artists in Chicago and beyond.