Amelia-Marie Altstadt
Playwright & Actor
Solo Show In Progress
Stealing Your Stare, as presented here, was developed through a practice-based performance studies course on solo performance at Northwestern University in Fall 2025, taught by Dr. Natsu Onoda Power. This recording was taken as a remote rehearsal for our final performance. As of this preview, there are three pieces included in this solo show in progress. They carry themes matched with disability culture concepts and disability studies-related texts.
The current conceptualization behind this solo show is to write scripts that can be mixed and matched during performance based on audience interaction, as an experiment in form and access. These pieces are developed with accessibility in mind and are meant to be performed with access copies of the script in hand, as well as copies of the script or captioning provided to the audience.
This show is in progress and available currently to be performed as a 30-minute piece.
Full Play:
ADHD Ballet
5 Characters: 4 any gender, any race, 20s-30s.
1 femme, Latine, any race, 20s-30s.
Notably, all characters are referred to with they/them pronouns throughout, and casting across any gender and racial identity is encouraged as an exercise in form and how it changes understanding of the show.
Centering this story around the carefully planned routines or dance of an ADHD couple, they are disrupted by medical systems, ephemera, grief, the needs of your community, and what emerging adults do to build and repair relationships when they can no longer leave them behind.
Cold read at Naked Angels’ Tuesdays at 9 Chicago series in full.
One Act:
Up The Five
7 Characters: 4W, 3M, 2 any gender, multiple ages and races. Double casting possible.
An autoethnodrama with data sourced from my experiences growing up as a Child of Disabled adults, or CODISA, I share the foundations of a disabled cultural lens. This play took place along the 5, an interstate in California, while on a road trip with disabled parents and my younger sibling to look at different potential colleges. Through this autoethnodrama, you experience the spaces and societal interactions I experienced, such as experiences with kindness, forced intimacy, stigma, and the ways physical space made me feel at home or like a stranger.
Received a staged reading in March 2025 through Chicago Dramatist’s Youth Commons.
Acting
Free Shakespeare in the Park is a long theatrical tradition, bringing great theatre to the masses. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed in the Summer of 2023 in Trago Park, Lincoln, Nebraska. This was my local park at the time- I lived across the street!
One of the wonderful aspects of Shakespeare’s place in theatrical tradition is that it can be reimagined, making productions accessible to a wide variety of audiences through performance. This production reimagined the divide between society and the forest as a post-apocalyptic world, where Athenians ran an energy company that ruined the forest’s ecology, with set pieces crafted secondhand from barrels and trash.
This was my first lead role since playing Molly in Annie as a child. I delighted in playing “little but fierce” Hermia, who never strayed or pretended to stray from her Lysander in this version. She trudged confidently in the woods, diligently searching for her love while arguing for her right to marry whom she preferred. One of my favorite moments of this performance was seeing neighbor kids riding bikes and becoming so enraptured they didn’t leave until their mother came out to wonder where they were!
Development
Investing in my craft as a playwright and actor comes easily, as a frequent attendee and member of the Naked Angels’ Tuesdays at 9 Chicago. I am cast in something every week to cold read, engaging with local playwrights at the beginning stages of their works.
I have been featured in solo performance slots 3 times to read my in-progress works.
