Chicago-based writer Martín Zimmerman will return to New Stages with The Solid Sand Below, a visceral examination of the intoxicating nature of war, which was first developed as part of the Goodman’s Playwrights Unit—a season-long residency program for Chicago-based playwrights—and which was featured as a staged reading in last year’s festival.

Julian Flores narrowly escapes a prison sentence and lands in Iraq where he’s anything but a model solider. But when an IED blast nearly costs him his life, something changes in him. Soon, the adrenaline, clarity, and intimacy of battle become something he can’t live without—even after he returns home.