The Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department‘s 2022-23 Mainstage Season continues with Dance Nation, running March 15 through 25 in Studio 404 of the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College, located at 72 E. 11th St. in Chicago’s South Loop. Student discounts are available. For tickets and more information (including COVID-19 protocols for this LIVE, IN-PERSON production), click here.

Alison Dornheggen

The production features an all-student cast and a production team composed of students, alumni, and faculty under the direction of Columbia College alum Alison Dornheggen ’01, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting. Dornheggen is an actor, director, fight choreographer, and arts administrator and advocate.

Written by Clare Barron, Dance Nation received its world premiere Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 2018. The play focuses on pre-teen competitive dancers on their way to the Nationals in Tampa Bay, Florida – navigating ambition, growing up, and finding their souls in the heat of it all. The play was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. “I wrote this play because I wanted to explore ambition and how that intersects with gender,” Barron says. “More literally, I was inspired by Dance Moms, a horrific reality TV show where a grown woman verbally abuses and bullies pre-teen girls and everyone’s kind of okay with it.”