PLAYS

Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams

Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters

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? Respondents: Don Nguyen, Hansol Jung Dramaturg: Jihye Kim Director: Wai Yim Cast: Celina – Roni Shelley Perez Inky – Adam Bassing Ajumma – Yoon Cho Ajusshi and the Koreatown men – David Rhee Stage Directions – Cecilia Poon

Coco Queens

LaDarrion Williams

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

oh, to be pure again

Kira Rockwell

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

Rx Machina

Caity-Shea Violette

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

Culture Shock

Gloria Majule

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

Deadass

Nia Akilah Robinson

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?

In the Canyon

Daniel Hurewitz

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 escape the inferno

stains

Sarah Cho

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

No Nothing

T. Adamson

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 to their painful and codependent present

Body + Blood

Shannon TL Kearns

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

Diaspora!

Phaedra Michelle Scott

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

Greater Illinois

Stephen Stafford

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

Neighbor Jane

Tina Esper

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

Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 – 2020

Jennifer Maisel

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

Big Black Sunhats

Mallory Jane Weiss

Forty years ago, Penelope, Bobbi, and Evelyn last waved goodbye to their husbands (Owen, Percy, and Hugo), as the men embarked on a perilous journey. It’s now forty years later, and the women, now all nearly 70 years old, receive a phone call. It turns out, their husbands aren’t dead after all. The men are coming home. They come bearing tales, talismans, and a dangerous proposition: youth. Oh, and the men haven’t aged a day since they left. BIG, BLACK SUNHATS is a play that explores time — how we pass it, the stories that live outside of it, and what we do when it’s handed to us in new ways. It’s a play that asks questions about youth, marriage, friendship, waiting, and womanhood

witch play

Erika Phoebus

It’s 1563…ish, and Anny Chapman wants to get pregnant. No wait, Anny Chapman is SUPPOSED to want to get pregnant, or else she could be tried as a witch. Problem is, Anny Chapman has never… had… an orgasm? And everyone of the time knows a husband and wife must both do such a thing in order to conceive. As secret fertility treatments from the local alewife, Besse, births an unexpected love between them, the world outside threatens to knock down their door. Meanwhile, the Virgin Mary has arrived on the scene, and she wants her autonomy back… A dark comedy, a love story, a ritual, a spell; Witch Play searches for all the places our pleasure may go, after we’ve chosen to unleash it

Organized Chaos

Pravin Wilkins

A university is shaken by a battle between workers, their union, and their bosses, over a new contract. Meanwhile, students in the university theatre program begin to question their responsibilities to the workers, as indirect beneficiaries of their labor. As workers begin to face reprisal for organizing, and faculty face unexpected consequences for aligning with the movement, each character must ultimately pick a side: to strike or not to strike. Organized Chaos explores the intersections between workers’ struggle for fair wages and benefits at a university hospital and the exploitation of graduate students and adjunct professors at that same university. By centering the perspectives of union workers, students, and faculty, this piece calls into question the positionality of the academic world in conversations about capitalism and labor rights

El Mito or The Myth of My Pain

Andrew Rincón

The play follows Los Villegas, a Colombian American family as they produce a local access telenovela in Miami, Florida. As the Villegas deal with grief after losing their Abuela Rosmira, the youngest daughter of the family Michelle discovers a special ability to travel to worlds outside of the real. As she begins to learn how to use her new gifts from a mysterious mentor, demons from Colombian myth begin to appear in Miami hunting for her older brother Flaco. It will be up to Michelle to protect her brother and the rest of her familia from danger. But she’ll have to unlock secrets from her Abuela’s past in order to confront what’s coming. A story about familia, traumas and the myths we pass down

What a Time to Be Alive (You Say That Every Time)

Paul Michael Thomson

It’s 2004, and a state senator named Barack Hussein Obama is running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. On the South Side of Chicago, his field team includes: Dan, a hot, smart white guy (“politically incorrect”); Clark, a spritely base coverer; and Porsche, an environmentalist who loves humanity but is meh on humans. When newcomer Aisha joins the team, her candor, quick smile, and comfortability with voters rocket her to the top of the organizing food chain. But how will the other members of her team react to this fast ascent? Can white men cede power when they really, really think they deserve it? And, dear God, will Mr. Obama win his Senate race?!

Dharma

Three first-generation, South Asian American siblings in their 30s ask their immigrant parents to get a divorce so that they can fulfill their dharma, or cosmic duty: to house their parents during their sunset years. But none of the siblings wants to take both parents for fear that the dysfunctional marriage which informed their formative years will prey upon their adult lives. But, when the request is made, invectives fly, secrets spill forth, and each family member must come to terms with the role s/he sees in the Sahgal family, his/her role as the family sees it, and coping with the divide between the discrete points of view

Annelies

Oded Gross

The present collides with the past in the drama Annelies. Mourning the loss of his father, a bereaved man in 2020 begins to keep a journal, only to find himself in correspondence with the famous and tragic diarist, Anne Frank. A play about grief and friendship, Annelies explores the strength and legacy of the written word, and its power to change our lives forever

Lola

Miles Orduña

Middle-aged, Filipino – American Rey is having an identity crisis. He’s stuck on an underwhelming rung in the corporate ladder at his mediocre, Silicon Valley job. His woke teenage son, James, is disappointed in him and his failed marriage – and is now acting out in school. Nora, his aging immigrant Mother, is getting worse. She’s glued to Fox News and EWTN (the Catholic channel) and her hoarding is reaching new heights. And on top of all that he can’t stop dreaming about his Father, whose death 30 years ago upended Rey’s life. However, the comfortable distance between the three is erased when Nora becomes the victim of a violent, anti-Asian hate crime. Both Rey and James put their lives on hold to come back to Rey’s childhood home in Des Moines, IA to help nurse Nora back to health – a process that proves that healing is sometimes more painful than the injuries themselves. In Lola, three generations of a Filipino-American family collide in the name of healing and self-discovery

Without a Formal Declaration of War

Anya Pearson

The War in Vietnam rages, a revolution brews, and the FBI targets a community while Clytemnestra finds herself, and the world, on the brink of great change. Set in the section of East Oakland that will come to be known as The Killing Fields, Anya Pearson places characters from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in 1969

for the fish

Surrey Houlker

‘for the fish’ sets out to explore the experience of growing up alienated and queer in the countryside. How can we find (and keep) safety as queer people? What even is ‘safety’? Do fish have feelings? Somewhere deep in rural Massachusetts in the 70s, 13-year-old Susanna goes fishing with her Uncle whenever she gets bored. Or overwhelmed. Or terrified. Susanna’s big heart and quick temper keep her precariously perched between normalcy and disaster. Her Uncle, grappling with their addiction and Susanna’s math homework, finds themselves caught up in this wave of teenage turmoil. As 1974 comes to a close, Susanna and her Uncle draw closer, bonded by an understanding very few in their town will ever hold

In the Basement

Bailey Williams

Dingus is disgusting. Her sister Teenie is perfect. Her boyfriend is Jard and Jard is Christian and Jard is also Dad. Mom is Dad too, if that clarifies things. Anyway, Dad and Mom talked and decided the basement is now an office. Don’t go into the basement. Seriously. Final warning

More of a Heart

Dave Osmundsen

Mary-Ellen’s son Zachary is diagnosed with Autism at a youngage. After years of being his fiercest advocate, she finds herself challenged when Zachary grows up and begins to have his own thoughts and feelings about his upbringing. When Mary-Ellen receives her own fatal diagnosis, the two must say the things they need to say to one another before time runs out.