2022 New Play Conference Program and Schedule

2022 New Play Conference Public Events Schedule

If you are interested in taking a workshop please go to the workshops page for full descriptions and registration information by clicking here.

Monday, May 30

9:30am –11:10am PlayLab 1 Neighbor Jane by Tina Esper (100 minutes)

Respondents: Anne Washburn, Don Nguyen

Dramaturg: Khalid Y. Long

Director: Amy Lane

Synopsis: Margaux and Philip are hoping to spend a quiet weekend on the river when a loud, mysterious bird and a terrified neighbor interrupt their evening and alter the course of their plans—possibly forever.

Synopsis: Set in a small town called Helena, Alabama, Coco Queens is a riveting play that forms an unbroken bond between four African-American women as they navigate their way through deep seated, sometimes painful challenges of love, forgiveness and black womanhood in the 1970s.

Synopsis: Set during one hot Texas summer at a Charismatic Christian church camp, this earnest drama follows the senior girls’ cabin along their journey to make an authentic connection with something bigger than themselves. A new play about female desire, submission, rebellion, and growing up in a religious culture that’s obsessed with your sexual purity.

Tuesday, May 31

9:30am – 11:20am PlayLab 4 Rx Machina by Caity-Shea Violette (110 minutes)

Respondents: Kate Busselle, Anne Washburn

Dramaturg: Miriam Weiner

Director: Beth Thompson

Synopsis: An ambitious pharmaceutical sales representative’s relentless pursuit of a rigidly principled pain management doctor leads to an intoxicating, forbidden connection that comes with a cost. Ethical boundaries are blurred in a literal manifestation of doctors being in bed with drug reps, forming a love triangle fueled by money, sex, and power. Illuminating the everyday impact of pharmaceutical marketing in the opioid epidemic, Rx Machina searches for humanity in a healthcare system that profits from pain and asks who gets to get better and who gets left behind.

1:00pm – 2:30pm PlayLab 5 Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams by Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters (80-90 minutes)

Respondents: Don Nguyen, Hansol Jung

Dramaturg: Jihye Kim

Director: Wai Yim

Synopsis: Celina has moved home to Philly’s Koreatown to take over the neighborhood beauty salon. DIY reno keeps her busy, but discovering a secret about her high school buddy, Inky, and gossiping chorus of aunties and uncles keeps her busier. However, Celina has a secret of her own; a secret that dragged her across the country, only to return home empty handed. Will Celina prevent the rumors, ghosts, and aunties from chaining her down or will she drag Inky into the dark web she’s brought home?

Synopsis: Two African students, Zahra from Tanzania and Hawi from Kenya, start school in an Ivy League institution. They are placed in Salama House, an all-black dorm and affinity space for black students. Faced with cultural, academic and economic challenges, Zahra and Hawi try to make it through Freshman Year, while facing the reality of what it means to be black in America.

Synopsis: A riff on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic domestic horror story about a woman driven crazy by the rest cure for post-partum depression, YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 2020 is about a female adjunct professor trying to thrive in Covid quarantine despite her toddler and demanding husband outside her bedroom and the personal demons she faces within.

Synopsis: In February of 2010, a New Jersey Principal was placed on a temporary leave of absence for touching Aisha Wilson’s Afro. A new African Vice Principal arrives a few days before the shortest month of the year expires and requests Drama Chorus with students who are 99% (White) & 1% (Aisha) to perform for their inaugural Black History Month assembly. Between 2019-2020, seven states have dedicated anti-discrimination laws towards hair texture…and it’s 2021 now. Do we see the problem?

Synopsis: Lena and her father, Alan, arrive at her grandmother Pat’s Brentwood hills home for dinner just as a fire breaks out at the bottom of the hill. As the fire grows, blocking Lena’s mom from joining them, tensions

seethe between them about Pat’s apparent disdain for Alan and Lena’s impatience with her grandmother. By the time they learn that evacuation orders were issued, it becomes apparent that they won’t all be able to

Thursday, June 2

10:00am – 11:20am PlayLab 10 stains by Sarah Cho (75 – 80 minutes)

Respondents: Don Nguyen, Virginia Grise

Dramaturg: Jihye Kim

Director: Hansol Jung

Synopsis: An impoverished Korean-American teenager struggles through her first period, with the help of an imaginary friend… who happens to resemble a wisecracking witch from a popular ‘90s sitcom. “Stains” is a

coming of age comedy about a Korean American girl whose family sees her first period as a burden. A play about growing up poor, female, and Korean American in Los Angeles.

Synopsis: Middle-aged realtor Gwen lives with her dying mother, Martha, in small home in rural East Texas. Together they must confront the histories of resentment, despair, and racial violence that have brought them

GATHERING: PROGNOSTICATIONS, HOPES AND PRACTICES FOR MOVING FORWARD IN AMERICAN THEATRE – Seth Gordon moderator

Synopsis: As whispers become a roar and threats mount, Joshua stands in front of his congregation plagued by doubts. He knows he is called and yet he can’t help but wonder if it makes a difference. If he can make a difference. If he’s enough. Or if maybe he’s too much of too many things– transgender man, bartender, priest—too fractured to heal the suffering souls of others. But when, in a moment of chaos, he calls out in despair the answer is clear: there is more to this story.

Synopsis: Sunny, an idealistic Black millennial, is writing a history about the legacy of her family. Her younger sister, Janae wants to reject everything about her ancestry in favor of a created one. Sunny discovers the mystery of her grandparents and decides to confront her past head on in order to put the spirits in her life to rest.

Saturday, June 4

9:30am – 11:50am PlayLab 14 Greater Illinois by Steven Strafford (140 minutes)

Respondents: Hansol Jung, Josh Wilder

Dramaturg: Alex Vermillion

Director: Matt Gutschick

Synopsis: Greater Illinois is the story of Donielle, a Black woman who lives with her husband. She and her husband keep being offered more and more money (and ultimately threats) to move from their apartment in the South Side of Chicago out to a new government sponsored suburban community. When Donielle pushes back against what feels like a sinister government agency, a tragedy is inflicted on her. Donielle seeks to make right what has been wronged. Greater Illinois is also the story of Patrick, a White Gay man who is being moved into the same South Side apartment a year later. The move into this new space is contingent on him signing papers that dissolve his marriage and agreeing to never marry someone of the same sex again. Haunted by memories of his possibly dead husband and caught in a bit of romantic intrigue, Patrick’s world is turned even more upside down when a mysterious person arrives at his door. Greater Illinois is the story of the decisions we make to fight, flee, or freeze. It is the story of the ramifications of those decisions.