J. Nicole Brooks at Lookingglass Theatre Company
Playwright
J. Nicole Brooks (she/they) is an actor, author, director, gremlin, educator, and social justice warrior based in Chicago with roots in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. Brooks is an ensemble member at the Tony Award winning Lookingglass Theatre Company, and serves as Associate Artistic Director for Collaboraction Theatre. Works for the stage penned by Brooks include Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten, Shotgun Harriet, Fedra Queen of Haiti, HeLa, and Her Honor Jane Byrne. Directing and associate director credits include productions at Lookingglass Theatre, Second Stage Theater, and Roosevelt University. Stage acting credits include productions at Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass, Court Theatre, and Mark Taper Forum. In film Brooks appeared in Nia DaCosta’s film Candyman produced by Jordan Peele, current television credits include recurring roles on The Chi (Showtime), South Side (Comedy Central) and season four of Fargo (FX). @doctaslick
Theatre
"Oh my, how curious everything is!"—Alice
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
When Alice walked through the looking glass, she walked into a world beyond imagination. She walked into a world more involving and intoxicating than any movie or circus, more thrilling than a high-speed chase, more frightening than a child’s nightmare, and more beautiful than a thunderstorm on a hot summer night. She awoke with a new sense of herself in the world and her own power within it.
Reflected in Lewis Carroll’s achievement is the mission of the Lookingglass Theatre Company. Through theatre, which invites, even demands, interaction with its audience, our goal is to fire the imagination with love, to celebrate the human capacity to taste and smell, weep and laugh, create and destroy, and wake up where we first fell—changed, charged and empowered.
The Lookingglass Theatre Company combines a physical and improvisational rehearsal process centered on ensemble with training in theatre, dance, music, and the circus arts. We seek to redefine the limits of theatrical experience and to make theatre exhilarating, inspirational, and accessible to all.
