The Mix

Zakiyyah Alexander

Susan Weaving, WME

Two years after slavery has been abolished, three recently freed girls play with the only game they know: history. As the era of Reconstruction begins, these characters contend with the world that they have inherited and the society that they must reconstruct. Inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids.

Brittany Allen

Emma Feiwel, WME

Meg and Drew, an otherwise peachy interracial couple, get thrown into crisis when Meg’s Uncle Stevie discovers that his would-be nephew-in-law is heir apparent to the family that owned his own relatives in antebellum Kentucky. What ensues is a time and space bending dramedy of manners (+love, hip-hop, and Ancestry.com...) gone very far South.

Augusto Amador

roughwriters@gmail.com

Thirty years after the dirty wars waged by the General Pinochet regime on the Chilean people. Two strangers; a mother and father, search the Atacama Desert for their buried loved ones and discover there are darker truths awaiting them underneath the hard sands of the Atacama.

Christina Anderson

Olivier Sultan, CAA

A queer story of spiritual possession against the backdrop of decaying economic prospects, Good Goods centers on Stacy, who is still getting the hang of running his late Dad's store. Stacy agrees to hold a birthday party for his friend Wire, and the event is crashed by Wire's twin sister Patricia (a former comedy team with Stacy) and a woman she just met, Sunny. As their relationships unfold, and tales from the community seep in, the action leads to a climax in which a double-exorcism is required. At one point a man possessed by the spirit of a woman wrestles with a woman possessed by the spirit of a man.

Christina Anderson

Olivier Sultan, CAA

A wrongly convicted man is released from prison after 25 years. As he settles into a new life, he begins the quest to become a father. Spanning more than 40 years, this play explores family, connection, parenthood, and the right to start over.

Will Arbery

Di Glazer & Sam Barickman, ICM Partners

Bob and Pepish are married. They live in Wyoming. Bob's the opposite of claustrophobic. He wants to be surrounded. He wants to fill his big empty property with as many people as possible before the volcano erupts. Meanwhile, Pepish wants to create civilization from scratch, which she might pull off... unless she's trapped inside this terrified/terrifying white man's dream. It's a tiny-enormous non-epic about fusing with everyone.

Kevin Artigue

Michael Finkle, WME

What begins as a love story about two Cleveland cops​—an African-American woman who falls for her white male partner​—changes when he shoots a young black man in the line of duty. Amina loves Ryan. But can she trust her heart when the truth about the shooting, and her man, grows more and more uncertain?

Jeff Augustin

Michael Finkle, WME

There once lived five kids in modern-day Haiti, all entangled in a dark history of servitude. Huddled in a tent on Mister’s land, they’d spin spellbinding folktales, vying for the title of best storyteller—and dreaming of their freedom. When two of them reunite 15 years later, the boundary between reality and fiction vanishes, revealing secrets of their past more haunting than any of the tales they told.

jeff augustin

Michael Finkle, WME

The newly radicalized mixed-race daughter of an interracial gay couple yearns to break out of her small town and become a legend, like her hero Lauryn Hill. Meanwhile, one of her dads reconnects with his high school love and the other fights for an idealized suburban family life that never existed. Told over the course of seven nights, great clarity comes when there’s nothing to see but trees and nothing to do but contemplate silence.

Jaclyn Bachaus

Derek Zasky, WME

Men On Boats, by Jaclyn Backhaus, is a joyfully anachronistic retelling/revision of the mapping of the Colorado River into the Grand Canyon, which was chronicled in William Powell’s personal journal, on which the play is based. It’s an examination of masculinity, of discovery, of camaraderie and historiography—a riff on the many dubious claims that are often the keystones to our understanding of our nation’s history. Its cast of ten features the kinds of people who were not included in Powell’s narrative: women, queer people, people of color, and genderfluid people. That this kind of experimentation and social critique is accomplished with such hilarity, inclusivity and without any finger wagging is a testimony to the skill and huge spirit of the playwright.

Matt Barbot

matt.barbot@gmail.com

With Mamá long gone and Papá catatonic (and only able to sing old sitcom theme songs), aspiring baseball player and high school super-senior José finds himself in charge of his video game-obsessed little sister, Clara. Scraping by together on the Lower East Side, the siblings try to stay distracted from their bleak reality through José’s fanciful stories. However, when José discovers the fairy tales he’s been telling might be true – that Clara was a fairy princess of a magical realm, left in Central Park for their parents to find – he is forced to fight a magical battle for her destiny. "Loisaida" is a term Puerto Rican migrants still learning the language used for the neighborhood.

Matt Barbot

matt.barbot@gmail.com

Jo's grandfather—a decorated veteran—has died, leaving emotional wreckage and unpaid debts in his wake. As she prepares for the funeral, Jo's heart is set on keeping grandpa's burial flag; to get it, she'll have to deal with her despondent mother, an attempted exorcism, and competition from a secret aunt young enough to be her little sister. It won't be easy, but it's nothing an aspiring saint like Jo can't handle.

Bleu Beckford Burrell

Bleu.Beckford@gmail.com

A year in the life of PS 365, an at-risk school up for quality review in Far Rockaway, Queens, NY, told from the perspective of its security, custodial, and after-school staff.

Maria Alexandria Beech

mariabeech@me.com

Rey, a Venezuelan undocumented landscaper, lives with his high school sweetheart Geanna-May in a trailer adorned by flowers. After Geanna-May dreams of ships falling off the earth, Rey buys lottery tickets. Will a fortune change their lives for the better or will they learn the truth about the American Dream?

Benjamin Benne

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Marina is being haunted. Every night, she dreams about drowning. Every week, she makes catfish soup. But when this ritual meal is disrupted by the disappearance of her fishmonger, she can no longer swim in the routine circle of her solitary life. She embarks on a surreal quest all the way to the ocean floor to confront the ghost that is holding her captive.

Benjamin Benne

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

What's a boy to do when his favorite fruit is banana in a world that says he's gotta love mangoes?

"q u e r e n c i a" (a Spanish word having to do with the longing to find or return to a place that feels like home) is a magical coming-of-age story about a young boy named Milo’s search for belonging as he grapples with friends, family, and his sexual identity.

Kate Benson

Beth Blickers, APA

With a sprawling and varied (age, gender/identity, race and cultural background, economic status, education) cast of at least 13, SUPER MAGIC WILD FOREST is Noises Off if it were reinterpreted by Robert Altman and Spike Lee. The play is the backstage story of a play produced in a church, performed by a diverse group of amateur and professional artists. Eavesdrop as a group of people who are rarely accidentally in a room together try to put on a play, leading up to the first run-through. No one knows how it goes--what will spill out of this container?

Eliza Bent

Emma Feiwel, WME

Set in the basement office of an undergraduate art and literature magazine, "Indeed, friend!" looks at artistic collaboration, the creation of one's aesthetic self, and dreams deferred. While the country is splitting apart and seeds of Islamophobia are being sewn during the 2001-2002 academic school year, the editorial board, made up of misfits, dissects each other's poems, which feels like the most vital thing of all.

Hilary Bettis

Ally Shuster, CAA

72 miles. It’s the distance between Tuscon, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico—and the distance between deported immigrant Anita and her American-born husband and children. Spanning a decade, the play takes us to the US-Mexico border and into the life of one family struggling to gulf an ever-growing divide.

Hilary Bettis

Ally Shuster, CAA

Emerald and her twin brother, Ty, are orphaned ‘gator wrestlers living in the backwoods of the Everglades. One night, a doe-eyed runaway shows up with promises of unlimited whiskey in exchange for Emerald's friendship -- but this plan quickly backfires, leaving a trail of broken hearts in its wake. Alligator is a play that weaves together sex and enemies, blood and whiskey, hope and murder. It is a play that asks the question: How do we truly love one another in the face of our deepest, darkest monsters?

Hilary Bettis

Ally Shuster, CAA

It's Art Basel, Miami's week-long festival where the rich and famous party with impunity. Julie reigns queen at the South Beach hotel owned by her real estate mogul father. Tonight, he’s thrown a decadent blowout, but when her fiancé breaks up with her in front of the crowd, Julie hides out in the storage kitchen, humiliated and devastated. She is comforted by Christine, a cocktail waitress from war-torn Venezuela, whom her father has paid to get her home discretely. Christine calls her fiancé, John, an Uber driver from the Miami slums. But Julie refuses to let the night end unless it’s on her terms… A bold and contemporary take on Strindberg’s Miss Julie from a writer of the Emmy-nominated The Americans.

Jocelyn Bioh

Rachel Viola, UTA

Paulina, the reigning queen bee at Ghana's most exclusive boarding school, has her sights set on the Miss Universe pageant. But the arrival of Ericka, a new student with undeniable talent and beauty, captures the attention of the pageant recruiter--and Paulina’s hive-minded friends. This comedy explores the universal similarities (and glaring differences) facing teenage girls across the globe.

Alex Borinsky

Di Glazer, ICM

Of Government is a play that takes up the tradition of theater as civic ritual by way of middle-school pageantry. It moves from a one-room schoolhouse in Montana to a lodge in the Swiss Alps and back, and focuses on five women. Staged on a high platform, with a bare minimum of props, it unfolds in five scenes. Each is a modern parable about an individual’s relationship to “government”—community, social services, capitalism, or the supernatural. With songs.

David James Boyd, Chad Kessler, & Kori Rushton

stepchild@irttheater.org

Inspired by the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Stepchild is a full length original musical about Orella, a young Deaf woman whose courage to communicate with sign language saves her kingdom from evil and prejudice. This all new, ground-breaking musical has featured roles for 6 Deaf (4 female, 2 male) and 7 hearing or hard of hearing performers (4 female, 3 male).

Thomas Bradshaw

Olivier Sultan, CAA

Welcome to a new era in American politics.

The Republican Party is looking for a more progressive identity leading up to election season. Enter Carlyle Meyers, an ambitious African American lawyer working for the party who agrees to share why he became a member of the GOP. The result is hilarious and startling satire—an insightful and bold examination of the hot-button racial issues facing America.

Diana Burbano

dianaburbano@icloud.com

When punk rock exploded in L.A., Sally and Lou were there: feminists, Latinas, queens of noise. One went pop, one stayed punk, but sparks from their tumultuous friendship remain. Decades later, can they overcome old wounds, forgive each other, and rock as hard as they ever did?

Darren Canady

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

Two social workers who share an office (and often each other's beds) become emmeshed in the life of a young boy named ONTARIO who may or may not be being raised in an unsafe home environment. As much about incredible stress and the toll the job takes on people who care as the tragic fate of the young man.

Charise Castro Smith

Rachel Viola, UTA

A beautiful play inspired by The Tempest that takes place in Miami the night before Hurricane Andrew and 30 years later the day after another seismic hurricane. The play looks at Alzheimer's and its impact on a family through the lens of three generations of women and asks the question, "Are there some things that are unforgivable?"

Sam Chanse

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

Mel and Arjun have embarked on a last-minute camping trip to take refuge from the brewing storm of their lives. Georgia is studying the impact of climate change on the imperiled Joshua tree. As the world heats up and the wilderness forces Mel and Arjun to question their symbiosis, what can they learn about survival in the face of annihilation?

Sam Chanse

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

Tara serves as a gestational surrogate in a Gujarat clinic for Denise, thousands of miles away in California. Each woman is set on realizing her dreams in a rapidly changing world, but complications only intensify as a deeply personal experience becomes a global transaction.

Sam Chanse

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

When Lee recognizes childhood friend Allie in a video of a racist rant that goes viral, Lee’s sister, Grace, urges her to reach out. As Lee becomes uncomfortably reacquainted with Allie, a deteriorating domestic situation and sudden crisis explode the world around her. In a time of heightened fear and anger, how can Lee connect with others, and contend with her own rage? A play about this country and this moment, the fury around and within us, and what happens next.

Hammaad Chaudry

Michael Finkle, WME

The events of the night before have thrown the Bhatti family into disarray, just as the recently married Azeem Bhatti is on the cusp of a promotion of a lifetime. Set in West London in 2011, An Ordinary Muslim explores the family, personal and political dramas of British Pakistani Muslims across generations.

Christopher Chen

Rachel Viola, UTA

Inspired by E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Passage is set in the fictional Country X, which is a neocolonial client of Country Y. B, an X doctor, and F, an expat Y teacher, begin to forge a friendship that is challenged when B is jailed after an outing in which Q, another Y expat, panics and shoots at him. Passage is particularly noteworthy in that it is written in a way that allows a director great latitude in casting the central roles by race, ethnicity, and gender, with different casting highlighting different aspects of how these factors play out in contemporary capitalist society.

Christopher Chen

Rachel Viola, UTA

An innocuous comment at a dinner of two interracial couples leads to a surreal escalation of cold war-style paranoia. A psychological exploration of Chinese and American foreign relations, and of the personal relations we hold most dear.

Dustin Chinn

Jonathan Mills & Kevin Crosby, Paradigm Talent Agency

Hanoi, 1890 / Ho Chi Minh City, 1999 / Gentrifying Brooklyn, present day. A triptych about the ownership and authorship of food following the journey of Vietnamese noodle soup.

Tearrance Chisholm

Beth Blickers, APA

Washington, D.C., 2049 AD: the feral cat population in Anacostia has been neutralized, and now the M.A.N. turns its attention to the “undesirables” in the human population. But twins Fable and Korinna and their Grandthang don’t intend to go down without a fight. American Expressionism meets speculative fiction in this portrayal of a future Anacostia, D.C. where fear of African-American sexuality has created a bizzarre system of regulated sterilization. Thrilling and unexpected.

Dillon Chitto

dchitto909@gmail.com

This play from brand-new voice Dillon Chitto (Mississippi Choctaw, Isleta, Laguna Pueblo) is an ensemble piece with tremendous humor and heart. Bingo Hall celebrates commonalties amongst Native communities as well as the uniqueness of Native experiences.

Wisecracking Edward Anaya makes all the calls in his Pueblo community – at least, he calls the numbers at the senior center's bimonthly bingo gathering. But college acceptance letters kick-start an identity crisis. Who will Edward be if he leaves home and the bingo behind?

Julia Cho

John Buzzetti, WME

An estranged son, a father who’s ill, a visiting uncle carrying their memories in tow, a woman without an appetite, and a refugee from a forgotten country—they all prove potent ingredients in this bittersweet and moving meditation on family, forgiveness, and the things that nourish us. When language fails, when the past fades, the perfect meal transcends time and culture and says more than words ever can.

Naveen Bahar Choudhury

naveen.choudhury@gmail.com

Joseph, a Bangladeshi American college freshman, falls in love with his dormmate, Lee, a closeted Southerner from a conservative family. While Joseph encourages Lee to come out about his sexual orientation, Joseph has secrets of his own that threaten their relationship. An exploration of homosexual identity in the context of Muslim culture, pre-9/11 Islamophobia, the intersection of multiple identities, and the concept of closetedness in various contexts.

Vichet Chum

Beth Blickers, APA

After their mother's recent passing, sisters Him and Sophea duke it out to determine what the next step will be to say goodbye. In their messy collision, tightly guarded secrets begin to come to light from their shared history, ranging as far back as their survival from the Cambodian genocide. Two bald sisters tear each other apart to get to the truth.

Mia Chung

Emma Feiwel, WME

The Phelans and the Lavecchias grew up in each other’s homes in a tight-knit working class community, sharing the good times and the bad. But when Tim Phelan comes home with some news, a shifting crisis is set in motion that tests the bonds and identities of each member of this extended family. Catch as Catch Can employs the theatrical convention of character doubling in an unconventional way to help us look again at the roles we play with family.

Kristiana Rae COLÓN

Samara Harris, Robert A. Freedman Agency

at the intersection of tear gas and teddy bear memorials, at the intersection of darren wilson and michael brown, at the intersection of looting and liberation, florissant & canfield refracts the realities of ferguson in the wake of the black lives matter movement. colliding in the unlikely eden of a civil rights renaissance, a newly formed alliance of protesters is forced to put its nascent ideologies to the test in the quest for new visions of justice.

Clarence Coo

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

Magdalena dreams of being anything other than a housemaid. But luckily for her, it's 1901 and the Americans have arrived in the Philippines, bringing along the English language and the possibility of change. When she discovers the American governor is coming to town, she knows what she has to do -- convince the others to help her mount a theatrical adaptation of a book about self-determination called "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Clarence Coo

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

A gay man obsessed with birdwatching awaits a meeting with the man who sexually abused him when he was a child. Meanwhile, he navigates through a series of encounters with his mother and with sexual hook-ups in between giving lectures to the audience about the birds of New York City.

Clarence Coo

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

Leaping back and forth between the very beginning and very end of two men's decades-long romance, THE GOD OF WINE adapts the story of the career, carnality, and murder of British playwright Joe Orton and reimagines it in a changing contemporary Brooklyn.

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas

Emma Feiwel, WME

A writer believes that an episode of The X-Files he saw while growing up in Puerto Rico has been mysteriously altered since its broadcast, but no one believes him. A dark and compelling tale that explores Puerto Rico’s current political status. Why is that families, and nations, keep circling the places that haunt them?

Mark J. Costello

markjohncostello@gmail.com

WAITING FOR RAIN offers a prismatic portrait of a romantic relationship. Jenna and Ryan have broken hearts that almost fit together. Navigating physical disability and mental illness, they search for a deeper connection to one another and themselves. Through a fragmented chronology, we come to discover that honesty is actually the most imposing hurdle for them to overcome.

Inda Craig-Galván

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

Sabrina Jackson cannot cope with the death of her 14-year-old son by a White cop. Rather than herald the Black Lives Matter movement, Sabrina retreats inward, living out a comic book superhero fantasy. Will Sabrina stay in this splash-and-pow dream world where sons don’t die, or return to reality and mourn her loss?

INDA CRAIG-GALVÁN

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

A suburban couple hosts a welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner party for their new neighbors — a couple recently (forcibly) relocated from Chicago's roughest housing project — and it's anything but welcoming. A dark intra-racial comedy about reverse gentrification and how we deal with the "other" when the other looks just like us.

Michael Yates Crowley

Max Grossman, Abrams Artist Agency

When Grace B. Matthias is raped, her world spirals into chaos. Between navigating emotionally unstable guidance counselors, overbearing lawyers, an angry championship football team, and useless Wikipedia answers, Grace tries to make sense of her world anew. A complex collision of satire and dark comedy, The Rape of the Sabine Women, By Grace B. Matthias fearlessly explores rape culture in America.

Nathan Dame

dame.nathan@gmail.com

Siblings Michael and Darryl never had it easy in the foster care system, and the adult world isn't much better. Darryl is adrift, doing less-than-legitimate odd jobs to get by, while Michael has finally hit bottom with her own aimlessness and abusive boyfriend. She is close to giving up on life altogether when she finds hope in the form of two young, female Mormon missionaries. And while their way of life may not be what Michael thinks she wants, she is surprised to find they might be exactly what she needs to survive. But it turns out the thing that is saving her life might be the thing that destroys her relationship with her brother.

Adrienne Dawes

me@adriennedawes.com

Denim Doves is a dystopian feminist farce with a large, intergenerational, diverse ensemble cast (originally developed with Salvage Vanguard Theater). It's a play with music (5 original songs written by Erik Secrest and Cyndi Williams) and is pretty aptly described as "Handmaid's Tale . . . but with dick jokes."

Mashuq Mushtaq Deen

Susan Gurman, The Gurman Agency

Draw the Circle is a funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking story told entirely from the point of view of Deen’s family and friends, bringing to life the often-ignored struggle that a family goes through when their child transitions from one gender to another.

Mashuq MushtaQ Deen

Susan Gurman, The Gurman Agency

Set during the three days of anti-Sikh massacres in India in 1984, the play explores the motivations of heroism amidst violence, the transgenerational transmission of trauma, and the way immigrants fleeing from other countries are re-traumatized when they come to an often anti-immigrant America.

Guadalís Del Carmen

guadydc@gmail.com

Tirsio Armando Gonzalez and his wife Juana are the pillars of their community, in the Dominican Republic and in their new home in Chicago. But Tirsio’s sudden death causes family secrets to come to light. Dealing with the their father’s truth and double life, Mondo and Sofía must learn to lean on each other like never before while figuring out how to best honor their father. The Gonzalez family must define what secrets are worth keeping and which ones aren’t worth the trouble.

Zayd Dohrn

Olivier Sultan, CAA

The Profane is an intimate portrait of two Muslim American families. The play explores a universal tension between the secular and the fundamentalist. Emina's family is secular, even assimilated – her mother is a dancer, her father a novelist. Sam's family is traditional, even fundamentalist. When the two meet at college and fall in love, their union challenges the values of both families. Both families are trying to maintain love and dignity in a new country that is filled with both animosity and opportunity. And both families feel judged and threatened by their compatriots. Ultimately, The Profane examines the sacrifices one must make to emigrate to and succeed in the US and asks whether or not the trade-offs are worth it.

Colman Domingo

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

Where do you get SOUL? From watching your parents sell the house you grew up in? From discovering the family secret about your crazy cousin? Or from the childhood records found in your parents’ basement? From Stevie, Aretha, Marvin, Chaka, Barry, Gladys…and Colman. Propelled by the beat of classic soul, smooth R&B and disco, this is the soundtrack of a boy’s coming of age in 70s and 80s Philadelphia.

Yussef El Guindi

Samara Harris, Robert A. Freedman Agency

Struggling writer Gamal hates the way his fellow Arab-Americans represent their culture on American media. It’s easy enough to take out his frustration on literature superstar Mohsen and local mosque leader Sheikh Alfani. But when his own girlfriend and novelist Noor gets an offer from a major publisher backed with a national media campaign, how will Gamal manage his frustration?

Goergina Escobar

gesco33@gmail.com

A bilingual play inspired by the book "Flatland" by Edwin Abbot. The year is 2089 in Tierra Plana, a new nation of squares, walls, and all sorts of boxes; a place where individual categories are pre-determined. Four friends, Fig, Noir, Isa, and Hex, are preparing for the day they receive their identity bracelets. Nervous about not fitting in, they escape to the desert and discover the mystery of the past hidden in boxes from the U.S. 'Memory' Census Bureau. A piece about expansive thinking, amplification through simplification, and the idea that bi (dual) is the right place to start.

Georgina Escobar

gesco33@gmail.com

Sweep is a sci-femme and ultra humanism story that follows two women of color—sisters Luna and Siri, hit women of the splintered worlds—whose initial snafu with Adam & Eve catches up with them lifetimes later. Fighting for a last chance to reset humanity’s imperfect patterns, the women of Sweep hunt their targets from biblical times to modern-day in order to accelerate humanity’s evolution. As these female sweepers battle with history and destiny and contend with the consequences of trying to revise the past in order to find a new future, Everywoman (Eve) is forced to face the reality of a lifetime(s) battle to remind her partner Adam of the need for balance and equality.

Kim Euell

kyeplaywright@msn.com

The Dance is a play that uses spoken word poetry, choreography, music and visual art to help tell the story of three ambitious young people and how their lives and relationships are forever impacted by epic events during the early nineties. The three main characters include an African American visual artist (male), a female African American dancer/choreographer and an Anglo American activist attorney (male) all struggling to define their identities, values and commitments. Set in the San Francisco Bay Area against the backdrop of the Anti-Apartheid movement, the Crack Epidemic, The War on Drugs and The Golden Age of Hip-Hop, the play marries form and content in order to tell a unique story inspired by Nelson Mandela's release from prison and historic visit to the Bay Area. The cast also includes an African American dancer, an African American male age 9-11, and a DJ of any race and gender.

Amy Evans

aev@scriptingrage.com

It’s 1962, and Nina Simone and her trio, fresh off tour, are holed up in a snowstorm in a small-town café in North Carolina. As tempers flare and secrets start to surface, the bandmates soon discover they are in hostile territory, and getting home will be harder than any of them bargained for. Based on real events, The Champion is an intimate portrayal of a cultural icon, her star musicians, and the turbulent era during which they rose to fame.

Emily Feldman

Di Glazer & Ross Weiner, ICM

Pick a Color follows four women taking refuge in a local nail salon to momentarily escape the stresses, heartbreak — and joys — of the busy winter holiday season. Playwright Emily Feldman uses her consciously theatrical storytelling style to present intimate portraits of women digging within themselves for the strength to fight off an army of reasons to despair. Shot through with humor and arresting imagery, the play celebrates the resilient emotional lives of women of middle age living in the American present.

L M Feldman

Beth Blickers, APA

A fully bilingual play (English & American Sign Language), ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE tells the story of Evan, a writer who -- after a decade of marriage to her composer husband -- finds herself falling in love with an artist named Chap, who is already partnered herself. Set in modern Greece with its bedrock of myth, this intimate, physical, lush, and theatrically spectacular play follows the two couples (Evan & Peter -- both hearing; and Chap & Ana -- hard-of-hearing & Deaf, respectively) along with their four Souls, as they confront the hard questions in long-term partnership, the challenges of communication, the transformative nature of desire, and the mysteries of a changing self.

Lindsey Ferrentino

Ally Shuster, CAA

Set on 18 consecutive New Year's Eves - performed in reverse chronological order - THE YEAR TO COME is a beautiful, painful, funny, clear-eyed portrait of America through the lens of one sprawling, diverse family that gathers together each year to celebrate the promise of a new year.

Kevin R. Free

kevinrfree@gmail.com

Night of the Living N-Word!! is a dark comedy and racial satire about an interracial family who retreats to a secluded island in the U.S. south to celebrate their biracial teenage son's birthday. One by one, party guests meet grisly fates. Who is behind all the deaths? Is it the N-Word, or something more sinister at work?

Sarah Gancher

Di Glazer, ICM

Klauzál Square tells the story of Klara, a precocious preteen new to Budapest’s seedy 7th District. Ostracized and humiliated by the neighborhood mean girls, she starts hanging out with a strange companion: the ghost of a thirteen-year-old girl. With the ghost’s help, Klara strikes back at her tormenters and takes over their group. But over time, the girls’ adolescent power trips and mind games morph into something much older and darker. Inspired by a real Budapest playground built on what was once a Nazi mass grave. Part of the larger 7th project.

Marcus Gardley

Susan Weaving, WME

An intergenerational story about loss and redemption set in the Deep South that incorporates biblical themes.

Joanna Garner

joanna.b.garner@gmail.com

It's 1972 and John signs up for the Peace Corps to avoid the draft and impress a girl. To his surprise, he winds up in Iran. Exiled from his buddy who shipped off to Vietnam and his girlfriend in Florida, John is swept into a swirl of poetry, dervishes, and the growing fire of the coming revolution. When he is forced to return to America, he finds himself a foreigner in the place he once called home. Winner of the 2016 Keene Prize for Literature.

Diane Glancy

glancy@macalester.edu

Cut Bank, Montana. Blackfeet country. Here, a hard-working family scratches out a life running a salvage yard. A deadly accident throws them into a turbulent world of doubt, recrimination, and vengeance, pushing their lives into horrific new territory. Can traditional ways pull them back to safety or will their lives be torn apart forever?

Keli Goff

Beth Blickers, APA

Erica Reynolds, an idealistic African American woman, has just accepted her dream job as Vice-president of the cosmetics company owned by a prominent white Southern family that once employed her mother as a cook. The job represents just how far Erica and her family have come in achieving the American Dream, and the level of trust between the two families. But this trust is tested when Erica discovers the company is being sued for racial discrimination, raising complicated questions for all of them about love, loyalty and race.

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Amy Wagner, Abrams Artists Agency

Bottle Fly is the tale of a Florida Gulf Coast couple, their disabled young ward, two lesbian tenants, and the bonds between them that stick like honey. It is an earthy, cruel and hilarious multi-generational family drama of profound and reckless love.

Isaac Gomez

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

It's just another day at PerKup Elkhorn, the hottest local coffee shop in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where happiness is sold per the cupful. Lori and Vicki gab about the latest town gossip, Jeff and Eric argue about the latest sports news, and the new cold brew is selling like hot cakes. But when a newcomer, Pedro, stops by the shop to borrow WiFi for work, a collision of differences leaves irreparable damage. PerKup Elkhorn is an experiment on assessing how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

Isaac Gomez

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

It's Christmas Eve and Wally World employees are about to lose it. On the one day of the year this mega department superstore is to close its doors for the holidays, secrets come to life as store manager, Andy, does everything in her power to keep her store in line and her employees in check. But can hard truths from her past ruin everything she's ever worked for? Wally World is a hysterical examination of finding magic in the mundane as eleven employees do everything they can to find purpose in a place that has never seen purpose in them.

Idris Goodwin

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

Frontman Pinnacle and his hype man Verb have been making Hip-Hop together since they were kids. Now that they’ve got top-notch beatmaker Peep One in the mix, the group is finally on the verge of making it big—until the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager shakes the trio to its core, and forces them to navigate issues of friendship, race, and privilege.

Morgan Gould

Rachel Viola, UTA

Samantha and Leo are a team—best friends and roommates, fat girl and gay guy against the world—until a new friend upends their cozy co-dependent diet of mutual self-loathing and Grey’s Anatomy marathons and they are both forced to look at how the cruelty of the world lives inside their supposedly sunny relationship. An ode to the complications of friendship in its many fucked-up forms, with a special nod to a kind of love that sometimes looks a lot like rage.

Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Evan Morse, The Gersh Agency

When his fatal shooting stirs a community into fevered protest, Vanda's son Clarence becomes yet another hashtag in the ongoing fight against police brutality. Social media overwhelms and recreates Clarence's story beyond even Vanda's recognition. While struggling to find a sense of peace, Vanda meets Grace -- a well-meaning yet casual armchair activist -- and the need to mourn Clarence's death and reclaim his story in the concrete offline spaces of the real world becomes ever more urgent.

David Valdes Greenwood, Music by Eric Mayson

davidvaldesgreenwood@gmail.com

Two working class parents navigate their daughter Vi's gender transition while juggling their opposing parenting styles and her impulsive nature. Vi's more concerned about the BFF she wishes was her boyfriend, and when nothing goes the way she wants, she makes a YouTube video that pushes everyone’s buttons. Parents and kids alike wrestle with whether they're really who they aspire to be--and, if the answer is no, how to become that person. The Mermaid Hour is a 90 minute stage play; Mermaid Hour: ReMixed is a two act musical.

Allison Gregory

allisongregory101@gmail.com

A self-made woman does her crafty best to protect her wayward children, keep her food truck business competitive and thriving, and impart a kind of moral code in a city battling the War on Poverty. Funny, forceful, and tragically timely, in MOTHERLAND grit, guile and guns are everyday parenting tools in some communities -- and hope comes at a cost.

Dipika Guha

Michael Finkle, WME

When Tomomi’s steamer pulls into San Francisco, her arrival coincides with the first wave of west coast Japanese internment. So when an old man on board offers to arrange her marriage to his son, who lives out of harm's way in New York, Tomomi knows she must accept. At once funny, intimate, and deeply theatrical, The Art of Gaman is an account of one woman’s struggle for independence and self-expression through her life and American history.

Dipika Guha

Michael Finkle, WME

Yoga apparel giant Jojomon are at the top of their game when a terrible scandal sends them into freefall. Newly hired CEO Joan stakes everything on a wild plan to recover their earnings and their reputation. YOGA PLAY is a comedy about enlightenment in a world determined to sell it.

Christina Ham

Chris Till, CAA

When a mysterious man stumbles into the office of private eye Thelma Higgins looking to warn her husband that his life might be in danger, she soon discovers that the man she’s been married to for ten years is not who he claims to be. As her investigation leads her on a tangled trail of deceit, corruption, and treacherous backroom deals, she and her husband must learn to trust one another again to find out who’s trying to kill him and why in this fast-paced noir.

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

How do you function in a world that is evolving without you? Katherine’s old-school methods as a teacher have come under new scrutiny. She struggles to handle a disturbing event between two of her students; her only son is getting married and she can’t decide on a pair of shoes; and she is still working to recover from the break up of her marriage 17 years ago after her husband transitioned genders. As Katherine attempts to navigate a new culture using all the old rules, the fragility of her world-view becomes painfully clear. The Quiet Ones explores what is lost or gained as we evolve as people and as a society.

Adi Hanash & Patrick Vassel

ahanash@gmail.com, pvassel@gmail.com

A young man sets himself ablaze in rural Tunisia, setting off a wave of revolution in the Arab world. As it turns out, the political is personal, and the Arab Spring began (as so many springs before it) with a love story.

Aleshea Harris

Ross Weiner, ICM

"Is God Is is a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge. Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award, Aleshea Harris collides the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, and Afropunk..." -Soho Rep

Dave Harris

Rachel Viola, UTA

BONNIE and TODD, a cage-free, kale-bred white couple, have just moved into a new home when an exiled KKK Member kicks in their front door with a rope and a loaded revolver, mistaking them for the Black couple that just moved in next door. Naturally, there is a dinner party. Dave Harris's WHITE HISTORY contends with the violence of America's foundation and the comedy of American progress.

Jeremy O. Harris

Ross Weiner, ICM

The old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation—in the breeze, in the cotton fields...and in the crack of the whip. It’s an antebellum fever-dream, where fear and desire entwine in the looming shadow of the Master’s House. In this provocative and explosive new play, Jeremy O. Harris rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender and sexuality in 21st century America.

Charity HEnson-Ballard

charity@charityhensonballard.com

Petrice Kincaide, an inner-city, troubled and androgynous teen, finds a promising future in world domination when she teams up with Vera, a brilliant and disillusioned agoraphobic scientist living in her housing project. Vera offers her scientific genius, while Pete sacrifices her body to fulfill “the prophesied shaming of the machine" by secretly creating softball techniques such as the base-stealing "sonic leap", and “the perfect swing” for grand slam home runs. The only obstacles standing in the way of Pete and Vera’s guaranteed financial success and political power: Vera and Pete.

Ike Holter

Michael Finkle, WME

Just outside of Chicago. Fall. In only 24 hours, a first date turns into a life-shaking adventure against the clock as two people are thrust into circumstances outside of their control. Equal parts romantic comedy and old school thriller, this play explores new beginnings at the end of the world.

Ike Holter

Michael Finkle, WME

Rightlynd is Chicago's 51st Ward. The L doesn't run here anymore and it is full of abandoned storefronts, crumbling apartment buildings, and its fair share of crime. A powerful real estate conglomerate is planning a massive redevelopment project that would gentrify the neighborhood and change Rightlynd forever. Only one woman stands in the way: Alderman Nina Esposito. In award-winning playwright Ike Holter's ambitious new work, one woman tries to use her street smarts and raw determination to save the Chicago neighborhood she loves. But will the political machine turn her into the very person she is trying to destroy?

Phillip Howze

Emma Feiwel, WME

By executive order, the country is in a perpetual state of mourning. Grief, like war, seems destined to become endless. To break the silence of normalized misery, a single citizen organizes an epic, unlikely reconciliation. As strange indignities mount and shrouded intentions are revealed, a revolving history of unresolved violence erupts into a feast of comic, calamitous consequences. A comedy of epic (and bite-sized) proportions.

Phillip Howze

Emma Feiwel, WME

At the corner of a country that feels both foreign and familiar, three orphaned, stateless youth have built a simple life out of recreation and mischief-making. Their world is rocked as a parade of immodest strangers slowly invades, offering gifts of language, medicine, art and commerce. In a comic spectacle to question the pretense of altruism and civilization, FRONTIERES SANS FRONTIERES inventively explores the power of language, the pains of friendship, and the challenges of self-reinvention.

Jessica Huang

Max Grossman, Abrams Artist Agency

During the Chinese Exclusion Act, Harry Chin, a Chinese national, entered the U.S. by buying forged documentation. Like other "Paper Sons," Harry underwent a brutal detention and interrogation, and lived the rest of his life keeping secrets—even from his daughter. Told through the eyes of a middle-aged Chin, THE PAPER DREAMS OF HARRY CHIN reveals the complicated loves and regrets of this Chinese immigrant who wound up in Minnesota. Through dreamlike leaps of time and space and with the powerful assistance of ghosts, the story of the Chin family reveals the personal and political repercussions of making a group of people "illegal."

Chisa Hutchinson

Di Glazer, ICM

An upstart documentarian builds his success on the death of one of his teenage subjects, and faces the consequences, in this discomforting play about race, privilege and ambition.

Chisa Hutchinson

Di Glazer, ICM

A man takes an ancestry test as part of his initiation into a white supremacist group and gets an unsettling surprise.

James Ijames

Ron Gwiazda & Amy Wagner, Abrams Artist Agency

Gus, a young artist trying to get into a major contemporary art museum exhibition, hires Vanessa to claim his work. When these two cross paths, both of their assumptions about art, race and gender are dismantled and they are both forced to reckon with what it means to be a black artist.

Geraldine Inoa

A. B. Fischer, Literate Management

2015: a year when the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on marriage equality coincided with a record number of trans women being murdered. Reckoning: Furies from a New Queer Nation examines the most pressing issues affecting Queer America today: gay white male privilege and the systemic oppression of trans women. Because when a Supreme Court ruling like marriage equality passes, we must ask: what did we accomplish and who did we leave behind?

Michael R. Jackson

Derek Zasky, WME

Usher is a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson’s blistering, momentous new musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to break out of this strange loop.

Laura Jacqmin

Derek Zasky, WME

When the milestone date on their new video game is suddenly moved up--the week before Thanksgiving--a team of game developers camps out at the office for seven straight days. Exhaustion sets in, tempers flare and modern day workplace grievances rise to the surface as they crunch to meet an impossible deadline.

C.A. Johnson

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Keyonna and her older brother Samuel are much more than siblings; they’re best friends. So when they suddenly find themselves on the brink of eviction, this brother/sister pair harnesses everything from their fleeting trust in an alcoholic mother to an imagined friendship with a certain Hollywood starlet in their endless pursuit of happiness at the poverty line.

C.A. Johnson

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Marge is a photographer, and her wife Tiffany has been her sole photographic subject for seven years. When Tiffany goes on a month-long hiking trip to get away from it all, both women are forced to question everything from their professional and personal past to the true meaning of a moment captured in time.

C.A. Johnson

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Samira and Greta lead a peaceful life. They have their own clearing in the woods, their own hut, and their son Kalil to keep them laughing. When Kalil returns home one day without their water rations, however, Samira and Greta find themselves in conflict with their local political leader. Set in a tense segregated society, Thirst is a complex look at race and love in war-time.

Ben Jolivet

benjolivet@gmail.com

With their young daughter in surgery, Ellie and Jane play a playful and poignant waiting game, with the future of their child and their relationship at stake. As the timer ticks, they face questions of science, faith, and their weirdest pet peeves. A socially awkward nurse could help them beat the odds, but Jane's faith in an experimental treatment, and the realization that nobody wins in this game, could leave them all out in the cold.

MJ Kaufman

Beth Blickers, APA

Max is a trans guy who recently transitioned, and to celebrate, the men of his family decide to throw him a big Super Bowl party. But what if the guys in his family aren’t the kind of men he wants to be? MASCULINITY MAX is an irreverent comedy that follows Max as he stumbles through dating, navigates trouble with roommates, and boosts his career at the bike cooperative, all while struggling with the gender traps he once fought against.

MJ KAUFMAN

Beth Blickers, APA

Archer (still Angela to his family) returns home to the forests of eastern Oregon to care for his sick father. At night under the oldest Ponderosa Pine, he meets a stranger who knows the history of the forests. Sagittarius Ponderosa reveals the enduring ties between the roots beneath our feet and the mysteries of the human heart.

MJ Kaufman

Beth Blickers, APA

Is it enough just to be “working on your sh*t?” In the safe spaces of a small liberal arts college, the student-led Men’s Peer Education Group and Survivor Support Group work together on an ambitious plan to eradicate all sexual violence everywhere in just five years. They've got it all together -- until an incident throws their ideals into question. Five female and non-binary performers inhabit both male and female roles in this play about complicity and what it really takes to face the patriarchy.

Sylvia Khoury

Ally Shuster, CAA

Taroon once served as an interpreter for the United States military in Afghanistan. Now the Americans – and their promises of safety – are gone, and Taroon spends his days in his sister Afiya’s apartment, hiding from the increasingly powerful Taliban. Desperate to escape with his wife and newborn son, Taroon must navigate a country left in upheaval, in which everyone must fend for themselves and few can be trusted.

Anchuli Felicia King

Jean Mostyn, The Yellow Agency

At the Singapore headquarters of the cosmetic brand Clearday, the millennial management team scrambles to deal with PR fallout after a leaked racist advertisement for their latest range of whitening cream goes viral on YouTube. Casual blackmail, allegations of corruption and a clash of philosophies fuel this dark comedy about toxic ideas and the complexity of Pan-Asian relations.

Basil Kreimendahl

Derek Zasky, WME

A drag family studies the art of passing as upper-class.

Paul William Kruse

paulwkruse@gmail.com

Told through the bodies of four chickens, this story follows a gay couple as they journey from the families that made them to the family they choose to make together.

Young Jean Lee

Olivier Sultan, CAA

Lee's play puts a family of straight, white men under a microscope.

Mike Lew

Beth Blickers, APA

Albert and Jennifer Chen were at the pinnacle of academic achievement. But now they suck at adult life. Albert's just been passed up for promotion and Jennifer's just been dumped by her loser boyfriend. So they do what any reasonable egghead brother and sister would do and go on an Asian Freedom Tour! From California to Shenzen, "Tiger Style!" examines the successes and failures of tiger parenting from the point of view of a playwright who's actually been through it.

Casey Llewellyn

publicemotions@gmail.com

O, Earth is a reckoning with the cultural and theatrical inheritance of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town from the perspective of expanding our our. Everyone in a motley crew of characters drawn from Wilder’s play, gay pop culture, and trans and queer artistic and political lineage goes on their own journey to understand something about our connection to each other and this world. O, Earth is an interrogation of the “universal” and an investigation of the promise of gay liberation, the politics of marriage, and the radical possibilities of every day.

Patricia Ione Lloyd

Beth Blickers, APA

In the aftermath of a messy divorce and a daughter coming out as queer, Deborah is trying to keep things normal at home. But as black people continue to be killed beyond their four walls, the outside finds its way in, blurring the lines between family dynamics, politics, and the spirit world. How long can family dinners keep the dangers outside at bay? Filled with dark humor and boiling suspense, EVE’S SONG examines our present racial climate through the eyes of a regular American family.

Patricia Ione Lloyd

Beth Blickers, APA

Lea, a biracial seven-year-old girl with an epic imagination, takes us on a journey of growing up as she realizes that her babysitter is actually her father and that she is actually Black. Guided by her imaginary friend Bette Davis, Lea explores what it means to be a woman of color and how to come to terms with both of her parents and the baggage they carry with them.

Donja R. Love

Olivier Sultan, CAA

A mother mourns the violent loss of her son sequestered in the boy's room. The women of her family dive in to pull her back to the world of the living: the mother who loved and, at times, neglected her; the sister who loved and, at times, betrayed her; and her pre-teen, mute daughter. As she weeps, outside her window the rain pours relentlessly. Finally, she is visited by her son's lover, who brings her world full circle. In The Middle is the third play in a trilogy which unfolds a century of African-American history through a Queer lens.

Nancy Garcia Loza

ngarcialoza@gmail.com

A love letter to imperfect Mexican American pocha sisterhood. MACHA follows three intragenerational, rule-breaking hermanas from the same chaotic family. Julia is in her 30s working hard for everyone but herself, Elena is in her 20s juggling fuckbois and a pre-med program, and Lucy is in high school chasing straight girls all day. The sisters collide one weekend when a crisis disrupts their sister pact.

Martyna Majok

Olivier Sultan & Ally Shuster, CAA

Eddie, an unemployed truck driver, reunites with his ex-wife Ani after she suffers a devastating accident. John, a brilliant and witty doctoral student, hires overworked Jess as a caregiver. As their lives intersect, Majok’s play delves into the chasm between abundance and need and explores the space where bodies—abled and disabled—meet each other.

Abhishek MAJUMDAR

majumdar.abhishek@gmail.com

'Muktidham' is a play which at its core is about the rise of violent right-wing politics. The play tells the story of a Hindu 'Matha' (a school of learning) which teaches Hindu Philosophy and ritual in the 6th century, and examines how a society that believes in learning and philosophical discourse can turn into an anti-intellectual one for political gains.

'Muktidham' is the hindi word for a site of salvation. A place where Hindus believe that one would receive salvation upon dying. As the head of the Matha awaits his death in the Muktidham of his temple, his entire life's views are stirred by the actions of his various students, who by then have formed a right-wing organisation that in the name of protecting its culture becomes increasingly militant towards the Buddhists and the lower castes.

Muktidham looks closely at this moment of betrayal, when a society, in the name of cultural or religious protection, thinks of everyone else outside its supremacist identity as the enemy.

Mona Mansour

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

The Vagrant Trilogy follows the life of a displaced Palestinian family spanning four decades, and the trenchant pull of home. This trilogy beautifully illuminates the struggle of identity over time and place.

MONA MANSOUR

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

While trying to navigate the currents of the Pacific, a woman of Arab descent and her nephew, who has enlisted in the military, dip into the treacherous waters of identity, family, and allegiance. Structurally adventurous and playful, We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War takes the form of a literal conversation on stage, and expands into a nuanced dialogue about what it means to be American, Arab, and Arab-American at our current moment in time.

Gia Marotta

gianna.marotta@gmail.com

It’s 2015, and Meg--an avant-garde choreographer in her early 60s--has just been priced out of the West Village apartment where she’s spent her entire adult life. When her sister, Ellen, shows up with her son, David, to help Meg pack, the two women must reckon with a snarl of old wounds connected to their brother’s battle with AIDS in the 1980s.

James McManus

Susan Gurman, The Gurman Agency

Sky Hook and Crazy Marjorie have lived on the streets for decades. Their hearts and bodies are tired, but after a chance meeting at a basketball court, they will give love one last try. In a swirl of addiction, poverty and lyricism, Love on San Pedro is a story of hope and survival on the streets of Los Angeles. It explores the intertwined lives of the people who populate the intricate and vibrant community of Skid Row.

Nina Angela Mercer

nina.mercer@gmail.com

GUTTA BEAUTIFUL is an episodic and satiric multi-media interactive stage play exploring gender, sexuality, class, and race in the 21st century. The play tells the story of Lola, a Black woman born to her ancestral mother, Mama Say, and the cosmic trickster Papa G. After her birth into womanhood, Lola meets Mike, a lyricist and seeker inside life’s circumstances, while hanging out on the block with her best girlfriends, Suga Sweet and Orchid.

Together, they all dare to make it beyond mere survival in the bitter sweet landscape of Gutta Beautiful, a contemporary obstacle course, where choices often find them confronting illusions and a troubling history complicated by the ever-present Sam Slick, a carnivalesque embodiment of white supremacy and patriarchy who stays on patrol.

In GUTTA BEAUTIFUL, home is a high stakes political battle-ground where the choice to fall in love and raise a family is a revolutionary act with no easy path to triumph. It is ultimately a battle Lola and Mike must wage with the power of their own imperfect wills, whether together or apart. What they remember matters as much as what they forget.

Eric John Meyer

Jonathan Lomma, WME

The final days of Michael Jackson seen through the lens of rumors, lies, speculations and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Rehana Lew Mirza

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

A local Michigan literary professor seeks out a famous Muslim-American novelist to find out if he's a self-hating Islamophobe or a really good lay. But they find that getting under each other's skin can easily become a habit, for better or worse.

Lenelle Moise

Samara Harris, Robert A. Freedman Agency

This is a play about young Americans, economic inheritances, and emotional baggage. When “around-the-way-girl” Lala meets brainy, affluent Dani, they muddle through their class differences to have an unforgettable and inseparable summer. Fueled by a mutual love of visual art and old school music, they flirt and debate in museums, forests and on the hood of Dani’s car. It seems romantic. So why aren't they K-I-S-S-I-N-G?

Ramiz Monsef

Max Grossman, Abrams Artist Agency

The 3 Farids of the title are three actors of Middle Eastern descent who -- while auditioning for the role of a stereotypical, evil terrorist -- are plunged into a dystopian Hollywood machine that threatens to subsume their identities. 3 FARIDS is a wild, savage, theatrical and funny play about the way we create -- and consume -- popular culture in America.

Desi Moreno-Penson

actorswithoutspaces@gmail.com

On the night of July 13, 1977, three men meet in the basement of the abandoned Concourse Plaza in the Bronx for a night of drinking, male camaraderie, and a game of Dominoes. The sudden sound of falling pebbles on the steps, the sobs of a woman long dead, and an angry apparition will be among the highlights of their supernatural night of the soul in this haunting and provocative new play by Desi Moreno-Penson. Then, of course, there’s the blackout.

Janine Nabers

Derek Zasky, WME

During the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 1980s, a mother whose son is among the missing brings a stranger into her home. He brightens her life until he falls for her underage daughter.

Mary Kathryn Nagle

Michael Finkle, WME

Nagle's play shows the parallels between the Dutch "purchase" and taking of the Lenape homeland on the island of Manahatta, and the crash of the housing market in 2008 when millions of Americans lost their homes.

Mary Kathryn Nagle

Michael Finkle, WME

This documentary theater piece explores a group of Native American women and advocates who work to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013 with a provision that restores a sliver of the tribal criminal jurisdiction the United States Supreme Court erased. The women bravely tell their stories of domestic violence, rape and abuse perpetrated by non-Natives.

Mary Kathryn Nagle

Michael Finkle, WME

Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her Nation's jurisdiction, must confront the ever-present ghosts of her grandfathers and their fight to survive Andrew Jackson.

Nahal Navidar

NNavidar@gmail.com

The war that rages outside does not inhibit four-year-old Parvaneh from a whimsical life inside the confines of her home. Her days are full of adventures with her imaginary toy dog and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who speaks to Parvaneh through the television. As Saddam's games become ever more daring, however, the line between play and the realities of war is dangerously blurred.

Jennifer L. Nelson

canarylou@gmail.com

What will make Johnnie and Beau happy?

Between them, African Americans Johnnie Tyler and her younger brother Beau have five degrees from prestigious universities, six phone numbers, and a family pedigree that reaches back to 19th Century Virginia. Johnnie also has a frustrated (white) Danish husband who dreams of Sunday pancake breakfasts; while Beau’s vision of success includes a trophy girlfriend and designer clothes. Middle class African Americans’ attitudes about race, social status and community activism are put under an ironic lens as two Washington couples set off on a very civilized weekend camping trip for much needed rest and recuperation. But while away, work-obsessed Johnnie finds it difficult to leave her social activism behind, while Beau’s hot 20-something girlfriend challenges his notions of appropriate behavior.

The unexpected appearance of a misunderstood hip hop poet who knows how to pitch a tent, a very old tree and a large bottle of vodka complicate and ultimately illuminate their inner and outer lives.

Don Nguyen

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

THE SUPREME LEADER is a coming of age story centered on Kim Jong-Un’s early days at an international school in Switzerland. While in school, North Korea’s heir apparent learns how to become a dictator by spying on his classmate Sophie under the guise of friendship. To his dismay, the more he spies on her, the more he discovers the genuine friendship they share together. This ninety minute political comedy compares Eastern and Western cultures through the snow globe lens of neutral Switzerland and explores the folly of two clashing cultures as Kim Jong-Un learns what it takes to become the next Supreme Leader of North Korea.

Christina Nieves

nieves.christina@gmail.com

After years of living the struggling artist life in New York City, Tiny's filmmaking career is finally on the rise. Her first full-length documentary is almost finished and the buzz is already brewing. But as she navigates her career and her love life, Tiny finds herself questioning everything. Featuring an all-female cast, The Only One explores what happens when you finally get everything you thought you wanted.

Mel Nieves

cyranosheart@gmail.com

For a group of working class families and desperate dreamers in the Frederick Douglass Housing Projects, the struggle to hold on till morning is a way of life.

NSangou Njikam

Max Grossman, Abrams Artist Agency

At Langston Hughes High School, Gordon Morris is the quiet kid in class, but deep down he is called to the sacred art of the Emcee. His quiet time quickly ends when he expresses his true desire out loud, and a group of African Ancestral Spirits, disguised as classmates and teachers, intervene to show him that not only is he meant to become a "dope emcee," but the power of his tongue will help him save the life of a family member and reconnect him to his past... and his future destiny in the Cypher of Hip Hop.

NSangou Njikam

Max Grossman, Abrams Artist Agency

In the midst of a heated and divisive election year, a Black Congresswoman fights to uphold America's values while struggling to gain justice for her people, but one incident or policy move after another leaves her feeling defeated. Then, everything comes to a halt when an anonymous organization claims to have the ultimate solution for Black people in America... Return to Africa. Now, this Congresswoman must choose between duty to her country and to her people, and that choice could make...or break...her family and her nation.

Jonathan Norton

nortonj@mail.smu.edu

Summertime 1988. Growing up in a candy house sounds like every kid’s dream. But for 12-year-old Jon-Jon, helping his father run Paw Paw’s Candy Tree out of their run-down one-bedroom apartment isn’t quite a dream come true. As their neighborhood sees a surge of violence fueled by the growing crack epidemic and an increasingly hostile police presence, the business begins to fail and danger looms immediately outside Jon-Jon’s front door. Oh, and then there’s the looming threat of Vacation Bible School. Worst summer ever! Penny Candy follows one family as they seek to balance their responsibilities to their community and to one another.

Christopher Gabriel Núñez

Di Glazer, ICM

Who is Amon El-Hashem? When no one is who they seem to be and fear is the enemy of truth, can two daughters struggling to cope with the abrupt deployment of their mother on a dangerous overseas mission trust a seemingly kind-hearted stranger who suddenly enters their lives and tries to make their family whole again?

Antoinette Nwandu

Di Glazer, ICM

In Antoinette Nwandu’s “love letter to black women,” Margaret uproots her life, including her dead-end job and fizzling relationship, after finding out that she is unexpectedly expecting. She finds support and humor from her sassy and sharp Aunt Sylvia and her new friendship with Carolina, a pregnant cleaning lady at her office. BREACH is a smart comedy about friendship, motherhood, and family, and tackles the mother of all challenges: learning to love yourself.

Beto O'Byrne & Meropi Peponides

betoobyrne@gmail.com

Loving and Loving is inspired by the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from rural Virginia who were arrested in 1958 for the crime of being married. Their decade-long legal struggle resulted in a landmark civil rights case decided in 1967, which upheld their right to live as husband and wife and struck down all remaining state bans on interracial marriage. Beginning in the present day and delving into the historically rich 1950’s – 60’s, Loving and Loving looks at this nearly 50-year-old story from a 21st Century perspective, exploring the enduringly complex nature of intimacy, identity, and the impact of the law on our most personal decisions.

Ryan Oliveira

ryanohliveira@gmail.com

It only takes three seconds for Trevin and Carlos to lock eyes. But how many minutes, months, millennia will it take for them to remain in love in the middle of the woods – in the middle of an America determined to pull them apart? Can they truly keep the tiny house they've made for themselves forever?

Ryan Oliveira

ryanohliveira@gmail.com

An accident separates Telma and her son, Caio, in a small Brazilian town. Caio is taken in by a stray dog, with no memory of his life beforehand. Telma takes in a stray cat to keep her company as she recovers. Both Telma and Caio move on from their accidents, discovering new familial connections that painfully draw them back to the hazy scene of the accident – and the dangerous conditions that precipitated it.

Marisela Treviño ORTA

mariselaorta@gmail.com

In the sixteen years since her father left, Marta has felt trapped in her family's double-wide in Texas. She gave up college and stayed home to take care of her siblings and mother. Just as a secret online relationship reignites Marta's dreams and curiosity about the world outside, her siblings each decide they will do anything it takes to escape their home lives - even if it means leaving Marta behind.

Azure D. Osborne-Lee

azure.fae@gmail.com

Crooked Parts is a family dramedy set in yesterday and today. Freddy, a black queer trans man, returns to his family home in the South after his fiancé breaks up with him. Once there, Freddy must navigate the tension created by his transition and his brother’s serial incarceration. Meanwhile, in his past, 13-year-old Winifred struggles to balance her relationship with her mother with her desire to better fit in with her peers. Crooked Parts is poignant, queer, funny, and definitely definitely black.

Sylvan Oswald

Rachel Viola, UTA

When Kid's grieving father shows up at his Brooklyn doorstep and asks to move in, Kid has no idea what to do. As his father slowly reveals the details of his girlfriend's disappearance, we discover that he is also grieving the loss of his daughter -- which at one point was Kid, a trans guy. Kid's romantic relationship falters as he becomes consumed with his father's troubles, and a meta-theatrical number locates the humor and the music in the characters' existential isolation. The story jumps through time to explore questions about how gender and loss shape who we are.

Lily Padilla

Michael Finkle, WME

A support group for sex and love addicts meets weekly to “heal in community.” But is communal healing possible when each person carries different wounds and different privileges? Any illusion of safe space shatters when Matt, a ciswhite guy here on a court order, shows up. Ruth Santos knew it was bullshit — in this capitalist patriarchy, you can only trust yourself. Faith, a chemist with a Craigslist addiction, hopes to make strictly platonic friends — maybe even be in a band! The calm-seeming Jace puts up with Matt’s misgendering — to a point. Veena, the intern therapist, is doing her best, but her supervisor abandoned her and her son is googling rape porn. Every Monday at group, they breathe in, breathe out, and try to love in a world that’s taught them hate — especially the kind turned inward.

A. Rey Pamatmat

Beth Blickers, APA

Star-crossed lovers, fractured time, and a lusty troll are all connected to the violent, buried history of Cora’s family. In her quest to find out how, Cora discovers an enchanted tree that might have the answers tangled up in its roots. But once she digs up the past, what will she do with it?

A. Rey Pamatmat

Beth Blickers, APA

Rod thinks the game is fixed. Momo’s still learning the rules. Twee doesn’t think winning is enough. JJ hates his hand. And why the hell is Henry still playing? Two families (and some guy named Henry) panic with hilarious and heartbreaking results when they realize their parents won’t be around forever. Can anybody prepare for the inevitable moment when they’re the ones left holding all the cards?

A. Rey Pamatmat

Beth Blickers, APA

An astounding revelatory trilogy centering on political and social changes and upheavals from 2000-2015 through the lens of a Filipino gay man. Three plays, Picture 24, Beautiful Day and Here Are Our Monsters, provide an in-depth view of the journey from social pariah to the unwillingly co-opted social center. Beautifully told with intelligence, humor, and empathy, Pamatmat excavates uncharted territory. He is the Tony Kushner of our generation!

Novid Parsi

novidparsi@gmail.com

Having just fled Iran, where he was imprisoned for being a gay man, a damaged Razi Gol arrives at his sister's Chicago home only to disrupt the life that she and her white American husband have built together. With echoes of A Streetcar Named Desire, Through the Elevated Line is set against the backdrop of two notable milestones of 2016: the Chicago Cubs' historic season and the nation's rising anti-immigrant sentiment.

Lina Patel

Dan Erlij, UTA

The Ragged Claws examines the value of history and art in a time of crisis through stories of people adapting to unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances. As Manhattan is being relocated upstate due to rising sea levels and a feared tsunami, a British mother, American father and their adopted Indian son must confront the wounds of history, even as the future rises up to meet them.

Ming Peiffer

Olivier Sultan, CAA

On an elementary school playground, a boy threatens to tell on the girls for swearing—unless one of them kisses him. Before lips can touch, Kyeoung tackles the boy to the ground, but the victory is short-lived. This hilarious, explicit gut-punch of a play bursts with playwright Ming Peiffer’s bold, explosive voice.

Kemp Powers

Seth Glewen, The Gersh Agency

“We is shadows. And shadows is seen, not heard.” In pre-Civil war Georgia, Toy and Colis spend long days on the plantation silently serving adolescent twins Mittie and Daniel. But in the dead of night their world comes alive, as they lie beneath their masters’ beds whispering stories to each other through a vent in the wall. When Father announces the family is moving to Louisiana, the children face uncertain futures. Do they dare come out of the shadows? A testament to the enduring power of the human spirit.

Christina Quintana

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

At age nine, Yadra left Castro’s Cuba. Now, as Alzheimer’s sets in, her mind returns to that time and place, and her American-born daughter, Zelia​, brings family secrets to light​. With her wife, Zelia embarks on a journey​ to understand the love that led her mother’s beloved tia-abuela to stay behind—and to better understand herself. Spanning two countries and three generations, AZUL​ fuses music and memory to ask: what is the true language of love?

Christina Quintana

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

A Texas transplant with big dreams, Teo works as a bank teller and goes on mediocre online dates, ​all while navigating the tangled shelter system. Using structural elements of choral music and theatrical magic, EVENSONG is a tale of survival, growth, and faith in moments of loneliness and solitude. Featuring a​ diverse cast that is​ multi-generational, multi-ethnic, of varying sexual orientation, and differing class background​s​, the play highlights the untold story of the working class homeless population with humility and deep compassion.

Christina Quintana

Katie Gamelli, Abrams Artist Agency

Abigail Bauer, a New Orleans native and resident, must confront the clash between the life she has created with her long-term girlfriend and her career as a devoted teacher in a repressive Catholic school. Through her struggle, Abigail receives pressure from the school's shape-shifting, personified P.A. System and guidance from the figures of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Roosevelt's devoted lifelong friend and once lover, Lorena Hickok. Quintana's inspired play combines present and past and shines a light on the importance of following your own path.

Vickie Ramirez

ramirev@gmail.com

Life on a Haudenosaunee reservation in upstate New York is simple but bleak. Money is scarce and suicide rates are high. When Brewster, a recovering alcoholic with a checkered past, returns as a success after almost a decade’s absence, he brings along inspiration. He works for a large water conglomerate that wants to license and sell the Rez’s water supply. In exchange, the company will build the factory on tribal land, offer jobs and share profits. To Brewster, this is a chance for the Rez to gain independence, but for Connie, his old flame, it’s environmental and cultural destruction. Soon, loyalties are divided, as is the Rez.

Randy Reinholz

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

In Madame Overdone's Stewed Prunes Saloon, the clientele prepares to audition for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The Mayor leaves town, leaving the newly arrived Indian boarding school superintendent, Captain Angelo, in charge. Angelo orders Momaday, a young Pawnee boy, to be hanged for impregnating his love. Momaday’s sister, Isabel, begs Angelo to spare her brother's life. Angelo agrees in exchange for her chastity. Isabel and Madame Overdone hatch a plan: the dancehall girl Mariana will secretly take Isabel's place in bed. The trick is successful, but Angelo nevertheless keeps Momaday's sentence. Mayor Gatt returns and prepares to retake his authority. Angelo is called before the townsfolk. Can Isabel stop the proceedings and get justice for her brother?

Harrison David Rivers

Michael Finkle, WME

In an unnamed hospital

In an unnamed city

Hecuba and her daughters

Await a diagnosis.

This dramatic re-telling of Euripides' The Trojan Women tells the story of a family fighting for survival in the midst of a mysterious plague.

Harrison David Rivers

Michael Finkle, WME

Neil is a passionate white activist and advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. Jesse is an introspective black playwright coming to terms with his own activism, or lack thereof. As racial tensions mount with the extrajudicial killings of black men throughout the country, the young gay couple is forced to contend with the politics of their love in these turbulent times.

Jackie Roberts

jr3638@gmail.com

Lick O’ the Knife is a Black swashbuckler. Set in 1837 Paris, this comedy revolves around the friendship between Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas (pere) during a wild 12 hours of drinking, poetry, love-making and wrestling with their African heritage.

Cynthia G. Robinson

cynthiagrobinson@gmail.com

A young Sudanese woman meets an African-American doctor who brings her to the U.S. Bonded by grief and personal loss, these women struggle to heal, find peace, and find the courage to love again.

Stacey Rose

staceyrosewriter@gmail.com

America v. 2.1 is a day in the life of a troupe of historical re-enactors charged with telling the tragic story of the American Negro, a woeful race once featured prominently in the American landscape, but whose time has been extinguished at their own foolish hand. The troupe finds themselves at odds with the state of their own existences while being painfully oblivious to the parallels and intersections their lives draw to that of the very Negroes whose story they are bound to tell. As this oblivion fades and they are faced with their stark reality, this day in the life of actors becomes a day of reckoning.

Abby Rosebrock

Di Glazer & Ross Weiner, ICM

At a church-sponsored halfway house in Southern Appalachia, a progressive high-school English teacher with a rage problem attends to everyone's recovery but her own.

Andrew Rosendorf

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

A young gay American soldier, Kyle, returns from Afghanistan after losing his left leg to an IED and suffering genital mutilation from the blast. This type of injury has become the signature wound of the war, which soldiers have started referring to as...a paper cut. This play is a raw exploration of the physical and emotional toll of our returning soldiers and how they navigate their way through another minefield – returning home. Diversity categories: sexual orientation, physical and cognitive ability.

Andrew Rosendorf

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

A suburban family's resilience and existence is tested when their 9-year-old, who was sex-identified at birth as a boy, reveals that she’s a girl. Told with Andrew's typical economy, humanity and honesty, MERMAID examines the fluidity of labels, gender, sexuality, and the way our beliefs are tested when hypotheticals become realities that land too close to home.

Sharyn Rothstein

Di Glazer, ICM

Marti, a self-made landlord, and her new tenant, Christine, strike up a complicated relationship in this compelling world premiere by Sharyn Rothstein that examines our current affordable housing crisis. Faced with impossible dilemmas of fairness versus kindness, honesty or eviction, these two women reveal the vulnerability as well as the ingenuity of people who know the value of having a home, and the threat of losing one.​ The play is inspired by Matthew Desmond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted. ​

Tori Sampson

Ally Shuster, CAA

On the day of a much anticipated speech by Rosa Parks during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, four activists working in a Virginia civil rights office wonder whether the proclamation of equality amongst mankind includes women. With remarkable insight and unexpected humor, Cadillac Crew reclaims the stories of the forgotten leaders who blazed the trail for desegregation and women’s rights and asks: when will the world be ready to embrace women in all their capacity?

Tori Sampson

Ally Shuster, CAA

Told like a West African Folktale, this play centers on four girls and the idea of what beautiful means. AKIM, the one deemed beautiful, is trapped under her father’s protective gaze and isolated by her own beauty from the other girls. This causes the other three girls, ADAMA, MASSASSI, and KAYA, consumed by frustration over Akim’s beauty and what that means for them, to try to kill Akim. Things spiral out of control.

Tanya Saracho

Mark Orsini, Bret Adams Ltd.

20 years after the death of Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, her writings are found by young women of three different classes whose lives are forever connected and transformed by this discovery.

Saïd SAYRAFIEZADEH, 

sayrafiezadeh@gmail.com

Saïd has written a play about growing up Iranian and Jewish-American during the Iran hostage crisis. As he and his well-meaning collaborators try to stage his script, things go quickly and hilariously from bad to worse. Will Saïd ever be able to just fit in? Whiting Award–winning writer Sayrafiezadeh (Brief Encounters With the Enemy, When Skateboards Will Be Free) brilliantly pokes fun at the complications of hyphenated identity in America.

Madhuri Shekar

Beth Blickers, APA

In an Imperial Harem in India in the 17th Century, a young female bodyguard wakes to the oppression in her midst and decides to do something about it. Come for the skullduggery and stay for the swordplay in a mythic, swashbuckling action-romance for the ages.

Jackie Sibblies Drury

Derek Zasky, WME

The Frasier family is gearing up for Grandma’s birthday, and Beverly needs this dinner to be perfect. But the silverware’s wrong, the radio’s on the fritz, Jasmine is drinking, Dayton isn’t helping, and Tyrone might not show up at all! And someone may be listening... This is Jackie's take on A Well-Made(ish) Play.

Charly Evon Simpson

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Philomena is a pregnant slave woman assisting her owner, Dr. George Barry, as he tries to find the cure for fistulas. Everything changes when she has to become one of his patients. This is a play based on the story of Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey and Dr. J Marion Sims.

Charly Evon Simpson

Allison Schwartz, Paradigm Talent Agency

Scratching the Surface is a play about one woman’s nightmare, one couple’s dream, and the nice woman next door who likes to stop by with pies.

LANE MICHAEL Stanley

lanemichaelstanely@gmail.com

Lipstick is a silly, sweet farce with a heart of gold and a drawer full of sex toys. Anna has invited Kelly over for dinner, but is it a date? Or just hanging out? How could Anna know?! Is Kelly even gay?! Kelly wears earrings AND boots! Just in case that wasn’t confusing enough, a cavalcade of visitors crashes their evening - an ex-girlfriend, a nebby bestie, a handyman, a mom, and a parade of potential suitors. Hijinks, of course, ensue, in this play-shaped love letter to the queer community.

Caridad Svich

Elaine Devlin, Elaine Devlin Literary

A soldier waits for another to come home. They were teacher and student once. A town waits, too, deep in the heart of coal country, while the one who roams wrestles with what home even means. A story about the stories we tell ourselves, the songs we sing to get by, and the maps we make of our warring lives.

CARIDAD SVICH

Elaine Devlin, Elaine Devlin Literary

You pick through trash, you are trash, says someone. How do you find your worth in a land that tells you otherwise? This is the ballad of the hurting kind – those displaced from their homes, looking for work and sent to places in the middle of the country to make their way.

CARIDAD SVICH

Elaine Devlin, Elaine Devlin Literary

You live in a place that reeks of gasoline. You run on fuel. You don’t know anything else except living hard and surviving, but one day that fuel is gonna run out. How are you gonna know who you are, then? This is the story of Baby and their people living in a town left for dead. This is also the ballad of Baby and Girl in this here mad America. A trans love story for dark times.

Megan Tabaque

mtabaque@gmail.com

In the Santos home, an alligator stalks, a mother talks to her car, a prodigal daughter binges on cereal, a devoted son raises lizards, and a neighbor's dog vanishes. Funny, surreal and strange, Decapitations is a ghost story exploring multi-racial Filipino identity in the wilds of central Florida.

Travis Tate

travisltate@gmail.com

Seneca follows the story of Seneca Village, a town of freed slaves and immigrants in the mid-1800s, that once stood where modern day Central Park now stands. Bridgette, the town Governess, and her precocious children are surprised by the mid-day arrival of Rose and Lawrence, a runaway family sent on the Underground Railroad. In present day, a attractive interracial gay couple, Jon and Todd, are headed out on their monthly date to Central Park. The music of the two worlds blends, bends, and collides with one another as the play continues. Seneca is a historical fictive play that explores blackness, freedom, and the ever rising situation of gentrification within many of our cities across America.

Cori Thomas

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

Cora travels with her ailing, elderly father and constantly complaining sister to Liberia for the inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. During the trip, their father--suffering from dementia--befriends a former child soldier and gets lost in one of the largest and most dangerous slums in the world. Cora, her sister, and some new friends must do everything they can to find him.

Jennifer Joan THompson

jenniferjoanthompson@gmail.com

Kirsten is the youngest state senator in Texas history and is about to announce her candidacy for governor. All she has to do is take care of that little green card marriage she agreed to in college – and convince the state’s biggest political donor her administration will be good for business. If only they both hadn’t shown up on the same day... as well as a writer and photographer from the Times. Can she toe the middle line? Be all things to all people? Keep everyone from falling in love with her gardener? Turning Texas Blue is a farce about the all-too-real insanity around debates over immigration, gay rights, north and south, red and blue.

Melisa Tien

tienmelisa@gmail.com

Four female soccer players in a small Muslim town in Northern Cameroon prepare for a championship that will determine the future of the team, and the trajectory of each girl’s life. Incorporating movement based on the games and practices of a real-life Cameroonian girls’ 'football' team, Yellow Card, Red Card explores what happens when young women in a socially and culturally restrictive environment begin to recognize their own agency.

David Emerson Toney

Harris Spylios, Davis Spylios Management

The touching and comic story of two inner-city African American garbage-men, Darnell and Cedric in 1970's Cleveland Ohio. In hopes of bringing their own dreams to life, they keep the most valuable things on their route to resell. One day they bring home an old trunk and discover a young African-American woman inside. She is possessed by two lost souls: an old Jewish man who believes he is still Frank Sinatra's agent, and a young Japanese girl who died in the Nagasaki atom bomb. They learn they must help these souls find peace or suffer bad luck of biblical proportions.

Minghao Tu

tuminghaotu@gmail.com

In a family dye house, an aging Chinese mother is determined to cure her visiting American daughter-in-law Marie's infertility with pseudo-medicine, which turns out to be poisonous. Her son Wa, compelled by his pursuit of the "American Dream," yields to his mother's plan. A comic-drama, DYE HOUSE examines the troubled legacy of the American Dream from a far-away land, where the hanging fabrics are swaying in the wind.

Alice Tuan

altuan@gmail.com

Kim, a Korean-American Los Angeleno, falls in love with Mank, a biracial Los Angeleno, after his car hits hers. Kim must contend with Sharon, an obese Anglo woman and her adoptive mother; face her complicated relationship with Luc, her mother's European lover; and deal with her friend Serena, an African-American musician who performs with Kim in a punk band. Cultures, genders and bodies collide as Kim strives to fight for her place in the world.

James Anthony Tyler

Jonathan Mills, Paradigm Talent Agency

Jornay is a professional cuddler who learns that her new client Ruben needs more than her touch. Through Ruben, Jornay also learns that she must do what she can to repair her relationship with Tiffany, her 17-year-old daughter. Old wounds are reopened when Jornay attempts to get a ticket to Tiffany’s high school graduation. Love, resentment and the journey to becoming the best version of oneself are explored in this new play.

Mfoniso Udofia

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

Married couple Disciple and Abasiama Ufot have been living the exact same day over and over again for many decades. A sudden burst of frustration breaks their pattern and time suddenly rushes forward while also reeling backwards, forcing Disciple and Abasiama to finally navigate the treacherous waters of illness, memory and love. The survival of this 30+ year marriage depends on building new vocabularies and daring, once again, to live moment by moment.

Mfoniso Udofia

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

THE GROVE is the story of a young Nigerian woman struggling to hold both her sexuality and her Africanness as she returns home, facing her secrets alongside those of her family, past and present.

Enrique Urueta

enrique_urueta@hotmail.com

A bold comedy follows a young, talented Lebanese-American woman named Hanan as she embarks on an attempt to become a pop star by passing as Latina.

Analisa Velez

analisa2012@gmail.com

Moving through a Latinx neighborhood alive with bachata, hip hop, and oppression, The Lovelies explores Leslie and Bo as they struggle to make a decision on their relationship and as they fight for Love in an environment where everything is stacked against them.

Emma Weinstein

emma_weinstein@mac.com

Come My Beloved is a new play about race, intimacy, and Detroit, Michigan. Based on true stories, the play chronicles one Friday night in the lives of three Black and Jewish couples: communists Solomon and Sophie (1930’s); Noah, a PhD student, and Susan, a classical violinist passing as white (1970’s); and Maya and Julia, recently relocated Brooklynites (present day). Through glimpses into lives of these three couples, Come My Beloved explores the intersection of race, faith, and identity during the downfall and resurgence of one of America’s most important cities.

Corbin Went

corbin.went@gmail.com

Ida and Firefly ran away together when they were kids.

Since then, they've kept running, living on empty trains and traveling across the American landscape, seeking nothing and leaving nothing behind.

Alexis is a teen runaway with a romantic notion of freedom. When she hops on a train one night, she comes face to face with the reality. As the weeks pass, Ida and Alexis develop a powerful bond that threatens to knock everything off track.

Calamity West

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

Calamity West is thinking about writing a new play. A fantasia. She imagines that it's 1986, and The Playwright is writing his next play. Or, rather, struggling to write it. Or, rather, struggling to start it. After an ugly breakup with his boyfriend, The Playwright is left to face his own creative inertia as his best friends grapple with freshly-exposed feelings of romance, sexuality, and heartbreak. Caught inside a maelstrom of secrets, lies, and ghostly premonitions, he begins to find inspiration for his new work ... but his own "gay fantasia on national themes" starts to look a little too familiar for his friends' tastes. In writing a play that might just make it big, The Playwright must untangle the conflicting responsibilities that come with being an artist and being a friend.

Josh Wilder

Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency

Jalil and Kwamaine just want their family to be “Cosby Show Happy,” but that kind of life doesn’t seem to be in the cards—until an enormous dandelion sprouts in front of their South Philly home and wishes start falling from the sky. Seizing the possibility of no longer feeling like the city's leftovers, the brothers begin to dream their way out of the cycle of poverty that has governed their lives, and find themselves on an adventure they never could have imagined.

Leah Nanako Winkler

Beth Blickers, APA

God Said This is a provocative and surprisingly funny new drama about five Kentuckians facing mortality in very different ways. With her mom undergoing chemotherapy, Hiro, a NYC transplant, returns home to Kentucky after years away, struggling to let go of the demons she inherited. Sophie, her born-again Christian sister, confronts her faith while tackling inevitable adversity. James, their recovering alcoholic father, wants to repair his fractured relationship with his daughters. And John, an old classmate and thirty-something single dad, worries about leaving a lasting legacy for his only son. Wry and bittersweet, God Said This is a portrait of five Godless and God-loving people finding that their struggles bring them together in unexpected ways.

Ray Yamanouchi

yamanouchi.ray@gmail.com

An Asian American rookie police officer accidentally fires her gun in the stairwell of a housing project, killing an innocent black teenager.

Lauren Yee

Di Glazer, ICM

Discover Cambodia's lost surf rock scene through the eyes of a young Cambodian American woman and her father, a Khmer Rouge survivor who begrudgingly returns to his home country for the first time in thirty years. This thrilling story toggles back and forth in time, as father and daughter face the music of the past. An intimate rock epic about family secrets set against the dark chapter of Cambodian history, featuring actor/musicians who perform the show's mix of contemporary Dengue Fever hits and classic Cambodian oldies.

Lauren Yee

Di Glazer, ICM

San Francisco, spring 1989. Manford Lum, locally renowned on the sidewalk basketball courts of Chinatown, talks his way onto a college team just before they travel to Beijing for a "friendship" game. When they arrive, China is in the throes of the post-Cultural Revolution era, and Manford must juggle international politics and his own personal history. Inspired by events from the playwright's father's life and (short-lived) basketball career.

Torange YEGHIAZARIAN

torangey@gmail.com

Inspired by the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s 1963 tour to Iran, Isfahan Blues imagines an unlikely friendship between an American jazz musician and an Iranian film star. As they travel together to Isfahan, “the most beautiful city in the world,” Jazz inspires them to test the limits of freedom, creativity, and experimentation.

Zhu Yi

Ron Gwiazda & Amy Wagner, Abrams Artist Agency

A dark comedy that explores the multicultural reality and identities of many people living in America through the crazy journey of a Chinese Mitten Crab, a sea creature who has been declared an “invader” by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, but nonetheless seeks to come to America and be treated like everyone else. He is, after all, considered a delicacy in his homeland.

Ariel Zetina

zetina.ariel@gmail.com

British Honduras Fantasy is the inspiring story of Frida, a young trans girl who journeys from Florida to Chicago in search of herself, and in doing so mirrors her own mother's journey from Belize to the United States. The play asks the questions: what parts of ourselves do we leave behind when we become who we need to be? What sacrifices do we make in following our happiness?

David Zheng

dzheng1816@gmail.com

A dual love story for the ghetto. Stacks is saying fuck the hood, there’s a bigger world out there. And Chino is saying fuck what’s out there in the world, the block is home. A look into the destructive relationship we have with home and our loyalty to what is toxic. An explosive play that challenges the stereotypical depiction of Asians in America.

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