Chicago Fringe Opera

Only 2 more chances to see Waking the Witch by Ashi Day. 🕯️

Tonight at 8PM
Tomorrow at 3PM

You’ve been accused of witchcraft. The verdict may already be decided.

Will you confess?

🎟️ Final performances at The Den Theatre.

HAPPY OPENING, WITCHES. 🔥🧙

The accusations begin tonight.

Limited tickets remain for Waking the Witch. Don’t miss your chance to face the Arbiter, meet your familiars, and discover what happens when you’re the one accused of witchcraft.

THE WITCH FILES № 03: The accused weren’t all women.

While women made up the majority of those prosecuted for witchcraft during the European witch hunts, men were accused, tried, and executed too. Who was targeted varied significantly by place and time.

In the Salem witch trials, for example, men were among the accused and executed, including George Jacobs Sr., who was hanged in 1692.

The history of witch trials is bigger, stranger, and more complicated than the image of “the witch” we’ve inherited.

Waking the Witch confronts that history and the forces behind it: fear, suspicion, moral panic, and what happens when accusation begins to stand in for evidence.

Tickets in bio 🎟️
WAKING THE WITCH
September 25–27 | The Den Theatre

Meet the arbiters of your fate. 🔥
Will they find you innocent… or guilty of witchcraft?

WAKING THE WITCH takes the stage this weekend.
🎟️ Use code ARTIST for $20 tickets to our Saturday performance.

Come meet our familiars. 🐈‍⬛🐇

📂 THE WITCH FILES № 02

How do you PROVE you aren’t a witch?

1️⃣ Deny the accusation? Your denial could be considered deception.

2️⃣ Confess? Your confession confirms the accusation.

3️⃣ Accuse someone else? The circle grows.

During historical witch trials, accusations could rely on testimony about alleged supernatural events. In Salem, this famously included “spectral evidence”: claims that an accused person’s spirit or apparition had appeared to harm someone.

When the accusation itself reshapes the meaning of every answer, how do you prove your innocence?

Waking the Witch puts you inside that impossible logic. The audience assumes the role of the accused, surrounded by interrogators in a world where fear, certainty, and authority collide.

What happens when there is no answer that proves your innocence?

Waking the Witch
September 25–27 | The Den Theatre
Tickets in bio 🎟️

Join Chicago Fringe Opera at The Den Bar & Lounge THIS WEEKEND for an immersive, spooky, witchy, chamber opera! 🔥💀

📂 THE WITCH FILES № 01

When we hear “witch trials,” Salem often comes first to mind.

But the persecution of people for witchcraft stretched across centuries and continents. The European witch hunts reached their greatest intensity during the early modern period, and ideas about witchcraft circulated through religious texts, legal systems, communities, and authorities long before the Salem trials of 1692.

Waking the Witch draws on the words of historical witchfinders to examine something that feels unsettlingly recognizable: what happens when fear becomes evidence, suspicion becomes certainty, and authority decides there can only be one truth.

⚖️ Join the persecuted:
September 25–27 | The Den Theatre, Wicker Park

🔥⚖️ What does it sound like when the verdict comes before the trial?

These words come from Ashi Day’s Waking the Witch, an immersive chamber opera where history, fear, faith, and accusation begin to blur.

And this time, you are the accused.

The trial begins in less than a week.
September 25-27, The Den Theatre, Wicker Park

You’ve been accused of witchcraft. Now meet the people deciding your fate. 🔥

Meet the cast of WAKING THE WITCH:

⚖️ Diana Stoic as The Lawyer
⛪ Caitlin McKechney as The Priest
📜 Angela Born as The Summoner

In this immersive new opera, you are the accused. Step inside the history, hysteria, and power behind the witch trial and see if you make it out unscathed.

🕯️ WAKING THE WITCH
September 25–27 | Chicago Fringe Opera