Alumni artists
Assisted | Book by Adam Chanler-Berat, Composed/Lyrics by Julian Hornik, Directed by Annie Tippe
Richard has a play to make! Embarking on a docu-theatre project set in an assisted living facility, playwright Richard mines the residents of the memory care unit for the truth of their experiences; as he digs deeper — and grows closer to his subjects — he faces destabilizing revelations about himself and the community he has become enmeshed in. This meta-theatrical musical is a meditation on aging, purpose, and how we care.
Bangladesh | Written by The Lazours, Directed by Ritesh Batra
Bangladesh is a one-act musical theatre piece about the birth of a new nation from a bloody civil war. A nation forced into being by the audacity of a few good people up against powerful forces. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, it depicts the game of chess that is geopolitics, and countries and peoples that are its pawns. The musical will take us into rooms where the fates of nations are decided, and into the hearts of the people who decide them.
The Broken Ear Trilogy | Written/Performed by The Bengsons, Directed by Anne Kauffman and Caitlin Sullivan
The Broken Ear Trilogy (working title) is the culmination of 17 years of work by husband and wife duo The Bengsons and their collective of collaborators. In The Broken Ear Trilogy their memoir-musicals Hundred Days, Ohio, and The Lucky Ones — originally made each as standalone pieces — are reimagined into one larger work that tells the story of their lives from birth to an imagined death. With humor, grief, and wildness, this work explores faith, decay, love, and the possibility of intergenerational healing and change. At its heart, The Broken Ear Trilogy is a community celebration meant as an honest reckoning with who we’ve been, a dream of what we could become, and a hopeful gift to the next generation. May we fail as beautifully as possible!
The Bygones | Written by Sanaz Toossi, Co-created by Tala Ashe
How do we become a village again? The Bygones is set somewhere like here, post-something that divided people. Now, instead of retribution and score-settling, a society is trying to attain communal justice and rehabilitation. But one woman’s refusal to forgive threatens to burn down the whole again. Do we have an obligation to forgive? If we do it for the village, is it really forgiveness? What is forgiveness, anyway, and is it truly achievable?
The Carlisle Project | Book/Lyrics by Annalisa Dias, Composed/Lyrics by Ronee Penoi, Orchestrations by Danielle Jagelski
The Carlisle Project unravels the complicated legacy and trauma of Carlisle Indian Industrial School in an expressive song cycle, using both satire and ceremony to tell its harrowing history and the brutal assimilation enforced under its motto “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Indigenous descendants separated by time, place, and experience grapple with the generational trauma and erasure that Carlisle caused, and explore what it means to be Native American now and in the future. With this new musical ritual, Carlisle descendant Penoi (Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee) and Dias create bridges for understanding and intergenerational repair between Native and non-Native peoples living within the settler colonial US today.
Chosin | Written, Directed, and Choreographed by John Carrafa, Creative Consultation/Dramaturgy by Carey Perloff
When rookie reporter Marguerite (“Maggie”) Higgins hitches a ride aboard a military cargo jet headed to Seoul at the onset of the Korean War, she begins a journey that will take her to one of the most brutal and surreal battles in American history. Among the US Marines, The Battle at Chosin Reservoir is legendary; the story is passed on to every new recruit. The Chinese and North Koreans haven’t forgotten either. The battle was dramatized in two recent blockbuster films in China and impacts our relationship with those countries to this day. Yet oddly, most Americans have never heard of it. Why not? This new play by writer/director John Carrafa follows Maggie through the genesis and the insanity of Chosin, and examines why the men who were there, including his father, would never speak of it.
Devil in a Blue Dress: The Musical | Based on the novel by Walter Mosley, Music/Lyrics by Eisa Davis, Book by Walter Mosley and Jerome Hairston, Music Direction by Ben Moss
Devil in a Blue Dress: The Musical adapts the first in Walter Mosley’s popular series of Easy Rawlins novels, telling the tales of Black Los Angeles through the noir genre. Set in 1948, World War II veteran Easy Rawlins and his murderous friend Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander must solve the mystery of missing white woman Daphne Monet, a femme fatale sought by the most powerful white men in the city. Daphne likes the lifestyle of the Black side of town and recently unemployed Easy has a mortgage to pay. Dewitt Albright, a white gangster/fixer, puts these elements together and makes Easy an offer he can’t refuse. With songs by Eisa Davis (Bulrusher), and a book by Walter Mosley with Jerome Hairston, this new musical follows Easy through the juke joints, bars, hardworking, and hard drinking parts of LA — unearthing the raw poetry of a people, place, and time you won’t find in any history book.
The Female Pope | Book/Lyrics by Shannon Burkett, Composed by Heather Christian
The Female Pope is the highly disputed story about a woman, disguised as a man, in the 9th century who rose to the papacy. A young girl, desperate to go to school, agrees to dress as a boy with the promise of an education. In doing so, she unlocks a passion for learning that will propel her to the most powerful position in the world, a stunning achievement that could threaten the very existence of the Catholic Church itself.
Fork | Written by Mikaal Sulaiman
Fork is a drama exploring themes of retribution, the complexity of truth, and our biased assumptions. Brian Knight, a Black former NFL star, faces profound grief and turmoil after his son’s death due to medical malpractice. Suspected of murdering his son’s White doctor, Brian’s struggle with CTE from his football career adds intensity to his plight. The erosion of his mind manifests in surreal, avant-garde mise-en-scène portraying his memories and deepening struggles. Riffing on the chess strategy called Fork, the play unravels in dual timelines of police interrogation and state-sanctioned therapy to evaluate his mental fitness for trial. Fork is not a play about race, although that plays a part; it is a profound examination of justice. Utilizing intricate sound design and Jacques Lecoq’s approach to physical theatre, this piece challenges stereotypes and invites society to reflect on deeply ingrained beliefs and values, making it a crucial and immediate story.
Harlem Canary / Tokyo Crow | Written by Andrew Saito, Directed by Steven Sapp
Harlem Canary / Tokyo Crow is a comedic exploration of a little-known Japanese propaganda program during WWII, “Negro Propaganda Operations,” in which captured African American Prisoners of War recorded radio plays that contrasted the supposed joys they experienced living in Japan with the horrors of racism in the US. These recordings were intended for broadcast in Black communities in the US, to foment civil unrest.
He Who Has Ten Thousand Horses | Written by Nikki Massoud, Directed by Sivan Battat
A newly divorced, newly arrived billionaire is drawn into the tantalizing world of reverse-aging technology by a charismatic younger man. Will he invest in saving the world for the next generation or sacrifice everything in his pursuit of immortality? A science-based thriller inspired by the legend of Zahak e Mardoush, from Ferdowsi’s epic 11th century masterpiece Shahnameh (The Book of Kings).
Jury Duty | Created by Milo Cramer and Morgan Green
Many people think of jury duty as a pain in the ass — or worse: as a dated, problematic institution that fails to administer justice. But from a different lens, the system is a democratic triumph, and one of the average citizens’ few opportunities for impactful civic participation at a time when faith in our government is collapsing. Which is it? In 2018, director Morgan Green was summoned for jury duty. While she didn’t ultimately serve on the jury, she did become fascinated by the intertwined politics and pageantry of this strange, old-fashioned, and beautiful American ritual. Working with frequent collaborator Milo Cramer, Jury Duty dramatizes the voir dire process: the cross-interrogation of prospective jurors by competing attorneys. The whole thing feels like theatre: justice administered via theatre.
Least of My Children | Created by Jen Anaya, Dean Linnard, Caterina Nonis, Andy Peterson
Chicago, 1989: it’s the peak of the AIDS crisis and Mateo is dying. His mother believes that only a miracle can save him. But her faith is put to the test when she meets Mateo’s boyfriend and their dramatically different worlds collide. Least of My Children is a hypnotic chamber piece, a musical-opera hybrid that grapples with questions of queerness, family, and the supernatural. The piece strives to make a case for the existence of hope in the face of irreparable loss. After lying dormant for over thirty years, the score of Least of My Children was miraculously rediscovered in a dusty old box by Dean Linnard, the son of the piece’s late composer, Loren Linnard. Now Dean and the creative team are on a mission to revitalize this forgotten queer classic for the present day. A story of love, illness, and prestidigitation.
The Making of a Saint | Written/Performed by KJ Sanchez
KJ is agnostic. Her brother is very spiritual. In fact, he is the Catholic Petitioner of the Cause for the canonization of Sister Blandina Segale (1850–1941). In this Spalding Gray-inspired monologue based on interviews, KJ seeks to truly know her brother, who she thinks is a saint. Her brother seeks to have KJ’s help to spread the word about Blandina, who he thinks is a saint. Brother and sister are united by their history — but with a chasm of faith between them. A one-person investigative play written and performed by KJ Sanchez about what it means to be good and what it takes to be a saint.
The Missing Songs | Written by Linda Amayo-Hassan
The Missing Songs is an elegy, expressed through a tapestry of songs and scenes, each reflecting stories of missing Native women, children, and two-spirited peoples. Missing people, missing lives, and missing generations. The pain and anguish of these events are told through the stories of those who have been left behind to mourn and grieve the loss of family and shared history. The perspectives of Native mothers, sisters, and daughters drive the piece, as we experience their fears and desperation, as well as their love and hope. These Native women reach for each other to find connection, comfort, and acceptance as they yearn for connection with the loved ones and descendants who have been stolen from their lives.
The Monsters | By Ngozi Anyanwu
The Monsters is a sibling love story that
follows
LIL and BIG
as they reconnect
Wrestle with their demons
Fight with their fists
All through their love of MMA
Moonchildren: The Opera | Written by Christopher Sears
Long ago
There was a girl
She was the child
Of the world
And when she sang
We believed
We could do
Anything
Oh we could fly
Oh we could fly
But then one night
There was a sound
The girl was gone
And we came down
But two of us
Still hear her song
A river flowing through us all
The Fool built a box
to make us see
The Theatre he swears is the place we can be
And Grace belongs in the street
“Stay open”
she cries
let the river weep
Let them try
The stage is set
To make you remember before you forget
Remember the time
The time you said
Oh we could fly
Oh we could fly
The Orchards | Written by Jaclyn Backhaus
In May 1971, Yuba City’s flourishing Punjabi farming community is rocked by the discovery of a body buried in the peach orchards. And then another. And then another. Harprit, a senior in high school, wants to get the story right; her family just wants to survive. A story of the struggle to feel safe in your small hometown.
Port Isabel, Texas | Written by Lucy Thurber, Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin
Port Isabel, Texas, a brand-new play by Lucy Thurber, is a sweet, sad, and sometimes funny exploration of what it means to say goodbye. During Lucy’s time at The Ground Floor, she and her longtime collaborator Caitríona McLaughlin will workshop the play culminating in a new draft.
Real. American. Cowboy. | Written by Marvin González De León
More than just one night of televised competition. This is a way of life. Real. American. Cowboy. follows five hopefuls on the stage and behind the scenes as they go head-to-head in a Ms. America-style pageant to win the top prize, the “Golden Sheriff’s Badge.” As we witness the blood, sweat, and tears involved in the fight for the top spot as the roughest, toughest cowboy in this land of purple mountain majesty, we also witness the unraveling of the oldest American myth and find out what it truly means to be a real American cowboy.
Scrub | Written by Margot Bordelon
Scrub is the story of a mother’s life told through the objects in her overrun home. Woven between these tales are a daughter’s memories of growing up working class in the Pacific Northwest. Part memory play, part interview project, this new work of autofiction explores the intersection of feminism, class, and mental illness.
Sic, Heung, Mei 色香味 | Written/Performed by Phil Wong
What is the first meal you remember cooking for a loved one? Where does your mind go when you smell frying garlic? Why does ketchup taste like colonialism? Sic, Heung, Mei 色香味, Phil Wong’s very first full-length playwriting effort, is part cooking show, part food history, and part culinary seance. The play takes its name from the Cantonese cooking philosophy “Color, Aroma, & Taste”; the three cornerstones of a perfect dish as well as the three dimensions through which we perceive, receive, and enjoy our food. From the lost recipes and language of his Teochew Grandmother to the origins of his father’s San Franciscan Cioppino, to a dim sum fueled sexual awakening, Phil dives deep into the heart of our collective sense memory around food and the sublime act of cooking. Set a big table and come eat. There’s plenty for everybody.
That Girl | Book by Rehana Lew Mirza, Composed/Lyrics by Ari Afsar
That Girl is an intimate musical that explores the meaning of love and family across cultures and time, through the story of Maria and Samiya who find themselves in competition with one another as they vie for the love of charismatic musician Vijay. Thirty years later, their respective daughters (double-cast) must overcome the competitive mentality of their mothers in order to find the true meaning of sisterhood. With an epic pop rock singer-songwriter score, this musical explores what immigrants build, what women inherit, and what we’re ready to choose for ourselves.
The Almonds, or In Defense of Temporary Despair | Created by The Pack (Hansol Jung, Dustin Wills, Esco Jouléy, Lexy Leuszler, Christopher Bannow, Nicole Villamil, Brian Quijada)
The world is catching on rain, people are turning into nuts, fear and uncertainty reigns over the plains. Our main character H is assumed to have turned into an almond, (though yet hard to ascertain) and her community grieves her in varying stages. Meanwhile, H is waking up from a shameful but hot sex with a stranger, who we (and she) learn is Charon, the ferryman of Styx. Time and myth and metaphors collide in this collage story about despair where no one is safe, everyone is confused, and almond milk is diabolical.
Blue Cowboy | Written and performed by David Cale, Directed by Les Waters
A playwright receives a fellowship to live and write for a month in Ernest Hemingway’s home in Ketchum, Idaho. There to work on a specific play idea, his writing plans take an unanticipated turn after he has an unusual exchange with a ranch worker at the local sheep run. Following this chance encounter, the writer’s play subject shifts to becoming the story of an openly gay, fifty-nine-year-old playwright living for a month in Ernest Hemingway’s home, and his three-week affair with an elusive thirty-nine-year-old Idaho cowboy, who’s very much in the closet. Detailing their relationship in frank sexual and emotional terms, Blue Cowboy is a solo play that paints a portrait of two men from very different walks of life, who come into each other’s lives at a moment when both have a deep need to intimately connect to another human being. But living in Hemingway’s house, where the novelist committed suicide, raises ghosts from the playwright’s past, after an inexplicable happening one night brings them to the fore. Blue Cowboy is part love story, part ghost story. But then again, maybe all love stories are ghost stories.
The Cassandra Project | Created by Lauren Spencer and Erika Chong Shuch
We meet Cassandra post Trojan war, after being dragged to a strange land by her captor, rapist, and now-husband, Agamemnon, who is about to be murdered by his wife. The Cassandra Project cracks open this moment between silence and speaking — the moment of Cassandras choice — to speak or not to speak. In this liminal space, we enter the memory palace of Cassandra’s mind, as she attempts to “re-member” the events that led her to this moment. Through dance, song, and ritual movement, Cassandra contends with the past, transfigured by her grief, in order to liberate herself. The play asks: is Cassandra’s experience madness or the ecstasy of being a woman who belongs to herself?
Conversations with Ourselves: Two Neurotic Queer Jewish Dykes in Concert | Created and performed by Jo Lampert and Debra Barsha, Directed by Sivan Battat
Framed by the forms of vaudeville and variety shows, Conversations with Ourselves: Two Neurotic Queer Jewish Dykes in Concert is an exploration of intergenerational connection, told through music, scenelets, sketches, and banter. Conversations… regales with tales — personal, anecdotal, historic, current — dissecting how we love and remember across generations, how we define lived experience and identity, how we keep up with the ever-expanding language and landscape of queerness, and more. As outsiders navigating fixed systems with an unrelenting will to be themselves within and without, Barsha and Jo hope that the wisdom they offer each other might conjure new perspectives across the bounds of age and otherness.
Fremont Ave | Written by Reggie D. White, Directed by Ken-Matt Martin
Fremont Ave is a multi-generational story about three Black men who embark on a journey to choose love and the battles they wage along that journey.
Hanukkah Spectacular | Written by Max Posner, Directed by David Cromer, Featuring Kate Berlant
Hanukkah Spectacular asks what does it mean to be Jewish? Why are there no Holiday Smash Hits about Jews? Why is the word “Jew” avoided by the goyim, like a slur? Can the traumatic events of our childhoods make us sick in adulthood? Can we be victims to our siblings? The play is the raucous, uproarious unraveling of a torment between a brother and a sister. A brother who won’t let go, and a sister who has moved on, worlds away. But really, it’s a REHEARSAL COMEDY set in the glass conference room in the office of a Talent Agency in a skyscraper. An Ashkenazi-American writer is working on a commission: he’s promised to deliver a commercially viable play about Hanukkah, but he can’t until he exorcises the many permutations of my sister and halts the unraveling of his nervous system. The play is a realistic portrait of “workshopping” a new play that doesn’t yet exist — an ill-advised act of revenge and betrayal — only the actors are falling in love with each other, and the director knows the whole thing is destined for destruction of biblical proportions. Can they salvage a Hanukkah spectacular from the rubble of their present lives? Or should they give up?
Hold Me in the Water | Written and performed by Ryan J. Haddad, Directed by Danny Sharron
Hold Me in the Water is an autobiographical solo one-act about Ryan’s quest for sex, intimacy, and love as a gay man with cerebral palsy.
The Keening | Written by LeAnne Howe and Colm Summers, Music by Jerod Impichchaachaaha Tate, Directed by Colm Summers, Assistant Directed by Emma Denson
175 years ago, the Choctaw sent a $170 gift to the Irish in the worst year of the Great Famine, also known as Black ’47, beginning a generations long reciprocity between the two cultures. The story of the Choctaw gift at the height of the Irish Famine has touched the imaginations of people around the world. The Keening is a high-octane thrill-ride featuring traditional Irish and Choctaw music, dance, and poetry. In an increasingly atomized era of isolation and factionalism, The Keening invites audiences to celebrate the gifts we can give each other if we imagine we are all kindred spirits.
Rage & Reconciliation | Written and performed by Dan Hoyle, Directed by Michael John Garcés
Rage & Reconciliation is a new piece of journalistic theatre based on conversations with real people making change in their communities and finding a way to change themselves. Former violent extremists now working to deradicalize others, grassroots organizers in the South registering hundreds of thousands of new voters, former FARC Combatants in Colombia, remorseful mercenaries in South Carolina, new-age healers in Florida, and ex-Mormons in Las Vegas are among the characters encountered in this early workshop piece.
The Rumspringa Project | Created by Machel Ross, Sekai Abeni, Nina Grollman, Bubba Weiler, and Ellen Winter
The Pennsylvania Dutch word Rumspringa translates to “jumping or running about;” a near perfect word to describe the vessel of time when Amish youth “get the wild out” of themselves, before moving towards adulthood, marriage, and a lifetime commitment to the Amish Church. This rite of passage is an extreme contrast to the Amish way of life. A life that is anchored in the belief that the body and mind should constantly be kept busy, and in constant service of their God. The Rumspringa Project follows the story of two Amish teen girls as they move through arguably the most complex and dense time of their lives. As Anna and Mary’s journeys collide, an overwhelming connection and attraction makes them each have to choose: A life in pursuit of tradition and familiarity? Or blazing a new path of uncertainty, but ultimately of freedom.
Someone Over the Rainbow | Written by Ken Savage, Jessia Hoffman, and Kyle Ewalt
On a fundamental level, all humans want to find love — and because romance, sex, and partnership are paramount in our lives, we’re naturally obsessed with watching people date. Someone Over the Rainbow is a new super queer reality dating show musical (yes, you read that right!) wherein the audience is given the power to determine the fate of its cast of hopeful romantics. Set to the discography of dance/pop band Kyven and inspired by Sondheim’s Company, this musical invites audiences to ride the love life rollercoaster, and to choose whether or not there really is some ONE or MANY over the rainbow.
The Sore Loser | Written by Madeleine George
The Sore Loser, a Faustian comedy set in a bowling alley, is a play about power, domination, and the death of the patriarchy. It begins in realism, following mild-mannered loser Jamie as he bargains away his soul to the devil (who, it turns out, has a side-gig as a personal trainer and goes by “Paul”) in exchange for three back-to-back perfect games in a local bowling tournament. Things start to go wrong — and get musical — when Nicki, Jamie’s secret crush and bowling nemesis, shows up and starts racking up perfect games of her own, threatening Jamie’s hard-bargained domination of the lanes. By the end of the play, we’re in full-blown epic theatre, and Nicki has wrested the role of protagonist away from Jamie, setting up a final showdown between Nicki and the prince of darkness himself. All of this plays out with the assist of an ensemble of singing, dancing league bowlers. The play aims to delight and disarm, even as it draws us into an encounter with our own darkest impulses: the will to dominate that lives inside all of us, out of which the annihilating hierarchies of our world arise.
Spanglish Sh!t | Created by Samora la Perdida, Mobéy Lola Irizarry, Matthew Zweibel, Josiah Handelman, and Paloma Sierra
Spanglish Sh!t is a bilingual musical about Brujita, a transgender Puerto Rican witch who runs the most poppin’ restaurant in East Harlem. But when an old family recipe calls for a tablespoon of her Spanish, she must make a shocking confession…and wrestle with the demons of her whitewashed past.
Sunwatcher | Written by Isabella Dawis and Tidtaya Sinutoke
The brilliant Japanese solar scientist Hisako Koyama was as groundbreaking as Galileo, yet she has remained a “hidden figure” — until now. Sunwatcher is an inventive new musical about one woman’s unsung genius, and her drive to advance science in the face of immense obstacles. In 1944, a young woman in Tokyo dares to stare at the sun. Despite oppressive gender roles which limit women to the kitchen, and though the violence of WWII rages around her, Hisako fights for an impossible dream — to widen our understanding of outer space. Her struggle leads her to the guidance of an unexpected teacher, the mighty Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu. Through an innovative musical score which uses electronic live looping and traditional Japanese musical instruments, Sunwatcher animates Hisako’s story with a cast of all Asian women.
Sweet Chariot | Written by Eric Lockley, Directed by Shariffa Ali
When the prospect of a far-off place called Home seems more appealing than the terrors of Earth, Marcus, a down and out teacher, launches himself on a journey across planets and centuries. Marcus risks everything, and a dysfunctional space crew will stop at nothing to discover Home. But as they encounter mysterious alien figures, Afro-Bots, and a very uncertain future, Home may not be all that they expected. Sweet Chariot is an Afro-futuristic exploration of the fine line between escapism and unshakeable resilience, posing the question: is true liberation only possible for Black people beyond Earth?
Throwback Island | Written by Ro Reddick, Directed by Taylor Reynolds
Six “sexy singles” go to a secluded island for true love, nostalgia soaked #goodvibes, and a chance to win $100K. But when a strongman bachelor enters the villa there’s a lot more at stake than a pot of money… Throwback Island is a dark and eerie satire that explores good old fashioned American fascism through a bonkers reality dating show (Love Island meets the zero-sum cruelty of Survivor). It’s a play interested in how order is maintained through the performance of reality, a reality that rubs up against America’s professed values of equal opportunity, freedom, and democracy.
Untitled Acts | Written by Soomi Kim, Directed by Peter Kim
When David Bowie died, performing artist Soomi Kim was reminded of her own coming of age in the MTV generation and her adolescent desire to be the exotic Asian woman in Bowie’s China Girl video. MLCG (My Little China Girl) is a dance theatre solo performance that traverses Kim’s experiences as a first-generation Korean American navigating the sudden death of her mother, the confiscation of memory, and the attempts to replace them. Untitled Acts is an autobiographical dance theatre work, detailing the continuation of Soomi’s tussle with mortality and grief after the loss of her father in 2020.
Writers in residence | Joe Waechter, Harrison David Rivers, Carey Perloff
Monica Bill Barnes and Robbie Saenz de Viteri | Many Happy Returns
A physical version of a memory play, combining stories and dances that celebrate the disappointment inherent in returning, year after year. From the start, there’s little distinction between audience and performer as both navigate who is ultimately leading the show. Now that we are all here, who is it exactly that we want to be? Audience members will hear stories, set to the sounds of Perry Como, Bach’s Partitas, and Blondie. There are flowers, an attempted sing-along, and someone will give a toast. By the end, the stage is no longer empty, but ridden with mementos and dancing bodies, leaving the audience feeling fuller than when they arrived as if they, like the performers, finally found what they’ve been missing.
Julia Cho | Untitled
Julia will work on a new project.
Maya De La Rosa-Cohen | Untitled
Maya’s project is a semi-autobiographical play about her family. It’s a story about love, perseverance, and the legal battle to build a family.
Minita Gandhi | Nerve
Jyoti’s facile hands that raised four children and six grandkids, creating every meal from scratch, now feel like they have knives running through them…all the time. At 75 years old she has discovered that she has a severe case of peripheral neuropathy. The nerve damage is so severe that even if the pain becomes manageable, she will not be able to care for anyone, let alone herself. After years of caretaking, Jyoti finds herself questioning what her legacy will be. Determined to leave something behind and everyone too busy to listen, she finds herself in the kitchen with her youngest daughter, Meera. At 42, Meera begrudgingly attempts to create and document her mother’s home-cooked recipes. As their culinary journey commences, Meera begins to document not only the recipes, but the stories of her mother’s life in India and her journey to the U.S. to raise the family. Between the heat of the tawa and the healing of the spices, these two begin to hear each other for what is probably the first time. Nerve is a two-hander that explores identity and legacy through a cross-generational and multicultural lens. What is it that we truly leave behind? And what is our value in the world when we are no longer of service to people? It is meant to be an aromatic, and interactive production with the recipes being shared and cooked on stage, as well as served to the audience.
Franky D. Gonzalez | Heart Stop, or The Obesity Play
Catalyzed by two health crises that occurred close to each other, Heart Stop, or The Obesity Play is a solo show following the current, real-time journey of playwright Franky D. Gonzalez as he tries to find a way toward a healthier life while battling against depression, self-loathing, and his constant struggle with obesity.
Kathryn Grody | The Unexpected 3rd
Kathryn Grody’s new work is a radical rumination on the optimism of staying alive. Deep into her third and final act of being a person, Grody investigates an eclectic, devastating, and hilarious potpourri of shocking discoveries as she finds herself at 75 becoming…not quite old, but elder. “Old starts at 95!” she declares. “I’ve just completed my late youth.” Another boomer who didn’t think the aging process would apply to them, Grody enters elderhood with equal parts empowerment and utter bewilderment. Marching onward through crumbling democracy, a boiling planet, and an increasingly dead roster of friends and colleagues, she is buoyed by discovering parts of herself she didn’t know were in hiding. Perhaps these parts were waiting for this period to bloom. Mother, artist, wife, grandmother, friend, and accidental influencer, Kathryn Grody is astonished with her life, your life, and the stunning, deeply funny, heartbreaking impermanence of it all.
Dave Harris | Untitled
Could we lie if we didn’t have language? Is language always a lie? My mother hasn’t talked in a year, but she reads my press releases. My father was bad, but now he’s real. This has nothing to do with the play. Are people hornier these days?
Beth Henley | Down Stair’s Neighbor
A waning playwright, Old Low, is trying to write a play in seven days because her time is limited. The play is set in 1970s Tarson Mississippi. Sharon Bunn, a pornographic puppeteer, moves into the downstairs apartment below Wayne Purvis and Young Low. An escalating feud ensues, leading Wayne to kidnap Sharon with plans to murder her. Tilting between the struggle to write a play and the struggle within the play, a chaotic, horrific, and effervescent vision of creation is revealed.
Hanna Kime | Dogs
It is the Fourth of July sometime in the future, and history is about to be made. We are about to witness the annual Hot Dog Eating Contest. The five women invited to this stage have set out to conquer nature, destroy their own limits, and shatter our perception of what the human body is or isn’t capable of. Dogs is a dizzying, anti-plot, high-intensity exploration of capitalism, competition, and consumption that poses the question: how long can we keep all this up?
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble | BABA
BABA is inspired by real and imagined stories of Balkan sworn virgins (women who become men after taking vows of chastity and celibacy). The tradition of sworn virgins is rooted in a centuries-old social code of law present in remote rural regions of Albania, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia. Born as women, life circumstances — including the loss of male relatives in blood feuds or a desire to escape an oppressive arranged marriage — led these female-born individuals to become men to gain the honors, rights, privileges, and freedoms of revered community patriarchs. An innovative, non-narrative take on Balkan epic story-singing traditions, BABA explores themes of gender, otherness, choice, virginity, sexual identity, and the complexities of interpreting these Balkan gender-transformation stories through a contemporary, liberal, Western lens.
Danielle Levin | Whole Cloth
Whole Cloth centers on a woman with no siblings, spouse, or children, wrestling with questions of legacy and heritage. Stories are embroidered and woven, literally and figuratively, in conversation with her seamstress great-grandmother and with S. Ansky, author of the 1937 film The Dybbuk.
Ethan Lipton | What You’ve Done Is Moral and Bad for Me and Our Friendship
What You’ve Done Is Moral and Bad for Me and Our Friendship is a play about a 9th-grader in a love triangle at debate camp.
Jess McLeod | The Deciders
A theatrically insane joyride from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1965, featuring the white guys who decide all the things and the Asian & AAPI lives and futures they shape(d).
Mara Nelson-Greenberg | The Haunting at Camp Winona
The Haunting at Camp Winona is a dark comedy about a group of campers trying to get to the truth at the center of an old scary campfire story.
Lila Neugebauer and David Adjmi | Untitled
Lila Neugebauer and David Adjmi will work on a new project.
Joél Pérez and Benjamin Velez | Lost City Radio
After a failed political revolution, Norma is the on-air voice of hope to a country plagued by fascism and forced disappearances. When an orphan from the jungle, Victor, arrives at her radio station with a clue about her missing husband, they embark on a journey that weaves in and out of their memories to piece together two psyches torn apart by war.
Michael Phillis | Eat Pray Patty
Everyone’s favorite HR manager is back and zen-er than ever with a brand-new mandatory comic training. After years of getting fired and flipping tables, Patty From HR is ready to find inner peace at a silent yoga retreat. But when her sexual harassment prevention training reveals uncomfortable truths about the ashram, Patty has to choose between keeping the peace or blowing it all up in a spectacularly NSFW fashion. You’ll never guess which one she chooses! Content warning: sexual harassment, white lady cultural appropriation, Comic Sans. Don’t forget to sign in!
Nia Akilah Robinson and Leigh Rondon-Davis | Deadass (Pt.2)
A college prep classroom. Five Black youths navigating the hierarchy of pursuing higher education. And a rumor that a Black parent goes to great lengths to end.
Melisa Tien | Untitled
Melisa Tien is assembling text for a theatre-work about long-haul truck drivers and the moment their vocations become obsolete as a result of driverless trucks taking over as the predominant means of cross-country shipping. The text is based in part on interviews with truck drivers she made during a cross-country drive from San Francisco, CA to Teaneck, NJ along Interstate 80.
Minghao Tu | Factory 812
It’s 1999, after the Cold War and before the “Rise of China.” At the state-owned Factory 812 in Wuhan, a group of workers faces layoffs as China accelerates its economic reform — the ruthless swing from the Soviet model to global capitalism. Soon the workers will learn that there is no such thing as a “job for life.”
Bassem Youssef | Untitled
When the Arab Spring came to Egypt, Bassem Youssef was a heart surgeon, a respected doctor living with his parents. He was ready to live a quiet, normal life. After seeing a bootleg copy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he was inspired to start his own YouTube show satirizing hypocrisy in his country, including religious fundamentalism and the military dictatorship. His show became a hit in the Arab world, and he was offered a TV show, which was regularly watched by 40 million people a week. Hated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the military equally, it didn’t matter who was in charge, he took aim at hypocrisy, turned friends and family against him, and was ultimately forced to escape Egypt with his family. Bassem was a regular nobody who transformed into one of the most influential somebodies in the world, who then was forced to leave it all behind. Now he turns the power of satire on himself, exposing the hypocrisy of his own faith, belief, and truth. It is about the personal cost of disappearance and how to rebuild yourself with the pieces that remain after you have ceased to exist. It’s also about America, his home now, and the terrifying similarities to the country he lost.
Debórah Eliezer, Vidhu Singh, Noor Adabachi, and Cynthia Ling Lee | Burning Wild
How does climate disaster affect our sense of belonging? Burning Wild, created by Debórah Eliezer in collaboration with Vidhu Singh, Noor Adabachi, and Cynthia Ling Lee, is a devised performance, incorporating physical theatre and dance, created in response to the California wildfires of 2020. It began as a community-gathering circle to support Northern Californians affected by the wildfires. Recent 2020 fire survivors themselves, Debórah and Noor draw from their lived experience using personal stories of their relationship to home and placemaking from the Middle East to the Bay Area told through devised text, song, movement, documentary video, and puppetry to tell a collaged docu-myth about the land, displacement, trauma, and renewal, offering artists and audiences an opportunity for resilience, hope, and community healing in a time when a prolonged megafire season is an annual occurrence.
Bennett Fisher | Cry Havoc
Cry Havoc is a dark comedy inspired by the attempted kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. A hybrid of live and digital performance, the play unfolds across a series of platforms—Zoom meetings, phone calls, texts, chat boards, social media posts, video, and more—following a group of conspirators in far over their heads. With unexpected humor and biting satire, Cry Havoc explores the allure of conspiracy theories, the rise of far-right extremist groups, and the sense of desperation created by the pandemic.
Denmo Ibrahim and Kate Bergstrom | Beyond the Ocean’s Edge
May Ziadeh, an influential feminist of the 1920s, was a prolific writer, translator, and critic of Palestinian-Lebanese descent. Fluent in nine languages, her work paved the way for the Arab Renaissance. But May suffered a deep sense of isolation during her life. An advocate for women’s rights and a leading intellectual of her time, she was often undermined by her peers, being praised for her beauty alone. In love, she had many suitors but rejected them all for a man she never met. Her greatest love was with the Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran—a relationship in letters maintained over 19 years and until his death.
Josh Kornbluth | The Bottomless Bowl
The Zen Hospice Project of San Francisco was a remarkable institution—providing expert, loving comfort to people at death’s door. For several years Josh Kornbluth—haunted by his father's death—spent countless hours at the hospice, first as an artist-in-residence and later as a volunteer. His experiences with numerous “residents” (as they were called), nurses, and volunteers transformed his attitudes toward both death and life.
Jeffrey Lo | Delano Love Song
Set against the backdrop of the 1960’s Delano grape strike and the formation of the United Farm Workers, Delano Love Song is a sweeping romance about Lester, a migrant farmworker and one of the early Filipino-American immigrants, and Kathy, the daughter of one of the farm owners pushing back against the mounting protests led by Dolores Huerta, César Chávez, and Larry Itliong.
Leigh M. Marshall | The Rosaline Play
Rosaline Velasco, an A&R executive at a major music label, strikes platinum when she discovers a pair of young trap hitmakers who spin yarns about self-destruction—but when she uncovers true danger underlying the lyrics, she battles against a system that profits off of martyrdom to save her artists from themselves.
Ashley Smiley, Margo Hall, Sean San José, and Joan Osato | Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad
Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad is a statement and a deep-dive emotional state for the Black and Brown San Franciscans watching their home be overrun by silent harbingers of doom and sleek reflections of otherness.
Ari’el Stachel and Tony Taccone | Untitled
Untitled is a semi-autobiographical solo show about Ari’el’s pursuit to understand his lifelong battle with anxiety after winning a Tony Award. It examines his identity and the years he spent hiding his Yemenite Israeli American Jewish heritage in the aftermath of 9/11.
Madison Wetzell and Ciera Eis | Untitled Faust on 4Chan
A loose adaptation of Faust, in which jokes are very serious, things get out of hand, and the internet is a demonic Greek chorus. A young man in his Nietzsche phase makes an anonymous online joke that accidentally spawns a conspiracy theory. A YouTuber of questionable politics offers him fame, fortune, and endless entertainment to keep the conspiracy going—as a joke, of course. When his girlfriend’s graduate school roommate threatens to expose him, he sends his bloodthirsty following after them.
Dawn L. Troupe, Jeff Liu, and Adrienne Shamszad | Riding the Light
Riding the Light is a musical about a brilliant young Afro-German prodigy whose love of astronomy and astrophysics offers her a deep spiritual connection to her ancestors, the universe, and ultimately her greatest self.
Erika Chong Shuch, Ryan Tacata, and Rowena Richie | The Welcoming
The Welcoming is devised in collaboration with 12 elders and performed live for small audiences at sites throughout San Francisco specific to each elder. A shared theme of “returning” runs through each performance and recurring motif: for example, one character’s “welcoming gestures” are performed as neo-folk dances. The Welcoming serves as a theatricalized greeting ceremony that places those most vulnerable at the center of our creative embrace.
Chris Steele, Sean Owens, NJ Bice, and Nic Candito | Gaslit: A Trans Drag Parody
Gaslit: A Trans Drag Parody is an intentionally queer, trans, and feminist takedown of an accidentally impactful theatre classic: Angel Street. This immersive solo performance is told through the eyes of the unwitting ghost of Bella Manlyhands, formerly Bella D’Balle. It’s a full-length solo adventure that features drag lip sync, storytelling parlour games, murderous intrigue, and edible soap.
Molly Van Der Molen | Never Sink River
Never Sink River captures the relentless, tragic, and fervently loving story of Molly Van Der Molen’s grandparents through a series of “episodes” that culminate in an epic using non-linear narrative, American folk music, and mixed media.
The Bengsons | Ohio
Ohio is the third and final installment in the Bengsons’ trilogy which began with Hundred Days and The Lucky Ones. It is a concert musical about faith, doubt, and fatherhood, chronicling several generations in Shaun Bengson’s family, a line of music-loving pastors affected by congenital hearing loss. Through story, song, and sermon we ask how we transform trauma into transcendence.
Agnes Borinsky and Ezra Furman | Untitled Project for the New Jerusalem Tavern
We gather every week for a night of music and poetry at the New Jerusalem Tavern. A rare space for those with transangelicism. A transangelic person is a human being like any other, with one exception: they have grown, or are in the process of growing, wings. The world is increasingly threatening. We hunker down; eventually we’ll probably have to surrender the bar. When that happens, where will we go? A concert for our last seven nights at the New Jerusalem Tavern.
Mathilde Dratwa | A Play about David Mamet Writing a Play about Harvey Weinstein
Francesca, a playwright, has several Reasons to be Pretty Angry. Among them: David Mamet has actually, in real life, written a play about Harvey Weinstein. Francesca thinks that’s bonkers. So this is her play about David Mamet. He’s in it, and so are a bunch of other dudes named David who definitely shouldn’t even think about writing a play about Harvey Weinstein. This is a play about women. About Francesca. About Francine, who can do it all (parent, act, sing, fly, castrate, kill)…until she can’t. About Zoe, who shows up to audition and can’t stop talking. Turns out there’s a lot to say.
Jessica Fechtor | Book of Hours
Hunting. Taxidermy. Illness and intimacy. Magical thinking. Different kinds of guns in different kinds of hands. Book of Hours is a play about empathy, its power and limitations, and our varying responses to our own mortality.
Emily Feldman | Untitled romantic comedy for a new world
A contemporary American comedy in conversation with an ancient Greek tragedy. Topics to be investigated include: oracles, prophecies, free will, family, and love in a time of many different kinds of plagues.
Vanessa Garcia | 1000 Miles
In 1000 Miles, Solis, the play’s protagonist, has just arrived in The City from 1000 Miles Across the Sea. She’s searching for family, for a way to carve out a new life. But The City is changing, and the very skills Solis brings with her can either save or destroy this new place she’s beginning to call home. 1000 Miles is a play about what it means to migrate to a new place, try to find refuge. It’s a play about survival, surveillance, nationalism, and the nature of opportunity. About the walls that block our path and the new doors we try to open to save ourselves and those we love.
Dave Harris | Watch Me
How can I get over slavery if I can’t even get over my ex? Watch Me takes place in the subconscious void of an interracial couple from their first date, to their first time, to a reckoning with heritage, ancestry, and Black Jesus.
Jessica Huang | The Kim Loo Sisters Musical
The Kim Loo Sisters shared top billing with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Ann Miller, but today their names — Alice, Maggie, Jenée, and Bubbles — are all but forgotten. This new original musical depicts the true story of this hapa girl group from Minneapolis who toured their four-part harmonies around the world. Blending styles of the 1930s and 40s with contemporary sounds, the musical juxtaposes Hollywood glamour with the darker realities for artists of color during the era of Chinese Exclusion, internment camps, and anti-miscegenation laws. Through song, dance, and sisterhood, we imagine what could have been if these talented musicians were given an equal shot.
Julia Izumi | Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (With Live & Active Cultures!)
Tonight we welcome Akira Kurosawa, the acclaimed filmmaker, who will give us an exclusive peek into his brilliant mind and the thrilling world of his movies. But, you know, it’s so weird, every time he talks about his work, it kinda sounds like he’s talking about yogurt? Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (With Live & Active Cultures!) is a fantastical lecture/performance hybrid about identity, cultural imperialism, and “healthy” consuming.
Victor Malana Maog | tot: The Untold, Yet Spectacular Story Of (a filipino) Hulk Hogan
tot follows an immigrant boy who travels from the Ferdinand Marcos-ruled Philippines to the San Francisco Bay Area to meet his long lost parents. He journeys from a country full of strife and military rule only to find himself in his lonely American bedroom conjuring a pro wrestling fantasy to escape his new life.
Itamar Moses | The Ally
Asaf teaches creative writing at a prestigious university in a troubled city. When a student asks him to sign a document condemning an act of police violence he fully intends to do so…until some things in the document trigger a response in Asaf that he did not expect. A new play about the tribalisms that lurk in all of us and what happens when two of them are in conflict.
Sam Pinkleton and nicHi douglas with Pig Iron Theatre Company | House of Victory
House of Victory is a large-scale American Entertainment loosely inspired by Aaron Copland and Martha Graham’s wartime collaboration Appalachian Spring. A sweeping and epic dance-theatre ballet that aims to look and feel like (actual) America, where humans of all ages, experiences, and abilities crash into each other and find unexpected unison in a dizzy and joyful attempt to answer impossible questions like what we all share (or don’t share), what democracy looks like, what the hell “American Dancing” is, and what happens when words don’t quite do the trick.
Mason Rosenthal | Toys Are Us (working title)
Mason Rosenthal will lead fellow Lightning Rod Special Co-directors Scott R. Sheppard and Alice Yorke in workshopping a new piece of ensemble devised theatre in collaboration with theatre artist/puppeteer Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews and playwright/videographer Paul Kruse. Through historical research, contemporary interviews, and performative experiments with toys (plastic and digital), Toys Are Us (working title) will chart shifts in American identity through an exploration of the toys we’ve trashed and treasured. What can our toys tell us about where the culture’s been, the conflicts of the present, and what’s in store for the future?
Asha Sundararaman | India/Indiana
India/Indiana is a new musical that weaves together the stories of two women on opposite sides of the globe to explore identity, migration, and coming of age.
Caldwell Tidicue | Harriet Tubman: Live In Concert
Imagine if Hamilton was written by John Cameron Mitchell. The life, times, and impact of Harriet Tubman told through hip hop and storytelling.
Sanaz Toossi | Your Broken Racket
In Your Broken Racket, two friendships — one set in the present, one set in the past — unfold on a tennis court in Iran, where life is changing either too quickly or not quickly enough depending on who you ask. How do friendships survive as the schism widens between those who think things are getting better and those who do not?
Tom Toro | Yes, The Planet Got Destroyed
Yes, The Planet Got Destroyed is a theatrical adaptation of Tom Toro’s forthcoming graphic memoir by the same title. It tells the story of a young cartoonist who breaks into The New Yorker while battling depression. During a turbulent period in his mid-twenties, the cartoonist suffers a nervous breakdown, attempts suicide, then lands back in his childhood home in the San Francisco Bay Area where he must painstakingly rebuild his personal and professional life. Equal parts haunting and humorous, portrait and parody, the drama unfolds with a surprising, nonlinear structure like that of a cartoon brainstorm session. It depicts millennial malaise, a family’s hidden legacy of mental illness, an artist’s struggle to cultivate mirth within melancholy, and the redemptive power of the human imagination.
Ikechukwu Ufomadu | Ike’s Wonderful World of Leisure
Ike’s Wonderful World of Leisure is an evening-length, solo comedic performance structured as a Master Class on Leisure. Facilitated by a Master Practitioner of Leisure, the class will explore such topics as Hobbies, Leisure Sciences, the Politics of Leisure, Leisure’s Future, and more. The class will also feature live demonstrations of Leisure and tips on how to incorporate Leisure more fully into one’s daily life.
Avi Amon and Julia Gytri | Salonika
Christina Anderson | the ripple, the wave that carried me home
Andy Bayiates, Bilal Dardai, Genevra Gallo-Bayiates, Sharon Greene, Chloë Johnston, and Khanisha Foster | 45 Plays for America’s First Ladies
Eliza Bent | Indeed, Friend!
Andy Bragen | Summit
Marisa Carr | Punk Rock Mixtape Play
Carla Ching | Revenge Porn
Alexandra Collier, Heather Christian, and Mia Rovegno | Together
Erin Courtney | Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann
Shelley Doty | We 3
Ryan J. Haddad | Good Time Charlie
Naomi Iizuka and Paul Hodge | Okuni
Candrice Jones | Flex
Min Kahng | Calafia: A Reimagining
Kimber Lee | Untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon project
Leonard Madrid | Las Arañas
Baruch Porras-Hernandez | Love in the Time of Piñatas
Sarah Ruhl | Lock her up! (Becky Nurse)
Tina Satter | Untitled Reality Winner project: verbatim transcription
Zarina Shea | Just up the Road, Slightly
Joe Waechter | Breakaway
Arisa White | Post Pardon: The Opera
Christina Anderson | Untitled
Glen Berger | The New Frontier
Eugenie Chan | The Chan Family Picnic, A Nouvelle Vaudeville
Dustin Chinn | Colonialism is Terrible, But Pho is Delicious
Sarah DeLappe | Richard in 9 Poses
Donnetta Lavinia Grays | Laid to Rest. A Full Length Multi-Media Play.
Daniel Handler | Imaginary Comforts, or The Story of the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit
Martyna Majok | Untitled
Tony Meneses | Between Here and the City of Mexico
James Harrison Monaco and Jerome Ellis | Museum
Sylvan Oswald | TRAINERS, or The Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere of This Most Disagreeable Season
Lisa Peterson and Todd Almond | The Idea of Order
Max Posner | Giddiness
Kemp Powers | The Two Reds
Kate E. Ryan | Untitled
Diana Lynn Small | House Play
Jonathan Spector | This Much I Know
Mfoniso Udofia | Adia and Clora Snatch Joy
Lileana Blain-Cruz and Susan Soon He Stanton | Intimacy
Mia Chung | Bloken Engrish
Megan Cohen | Truest
Eisa Davis | Flowers Are Sleeping
Erin Edens | The Meaning of Ants in My Kitchen
Dipika Guha | The Art of Gaman
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble | Iron Shoes
Josh Kornbluth | The Bottomless Bowl
Aaron Landsman | Squares
Josh Lefkowitz | Poetry Project
James Magruder | Keep Your Forks
Lisa Peterson and Todd Almond | The Idea of Order
Tori Sampson | Cottoned Like Candy
Jen Silverman | My Father the Speeding Bullet: Nincest
Amy Staats | Eddie and Dave: A Fictionalized Tale of Van Halen
UNIVERSES | August Wilson Poetry Project
Joe Waechter | Untitled hockey project
Lauren Yee | Untitled Cambodia pop play
César Alvarez and Lucas Hnath | Castro
Christopher Chen and Mei Ann Teo | Passage
Julia Cho | Aubergine
Jackie Sibblies Drury | Untitled
Anne Galjour | The Alligator Ball (working title)
Rinne Groff | Fire in Dreamland
Eric Hoff, Will Davis, and SK Kerastas | Color Guard (working title)
Jamie Hook | Rules to Follow in Cloud Engineering
Naomi Iizuka and Ripe Time | Sleep
Hansol Jung | Wolf Play
Sean Christopher Lewis and Jennifer Fawcett | Ghost Story
Anaïs Mitchell | Hadestown
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and Danny Scheie | A House Tour of the Infamous Porter Family Mansion with Tour Guide Weston Ludlow Londonderry
Annie Smart | The Summer Play
Kara Lee Corthron | Welcome to Fear City
PearlDamour | Milton
Sarah Gubbins | AB1266
Joan Holden, Bruce Barthol, Daniel Savio, and Marge Betley | FSM
Aditi Brennan Kapil, Manu Narayan, and Radovan Jovićević | Untitled Balkan/South Asian musical
The Kilbanes | Eddie the Marvelous, Who Will Save the World
John Leguizamo | Untitled
Dave Malloy | Ghost Quartet
David Myers | The Culture Industry or How Yogurt Conquered America
Dominic Orlando and Brian Carpenter | The Barbary Coast
Jiehae Park and Tristan Jeffers | Here We Are Here
Abigail Rezneck and Barbara Babcock | The Lady Lawyer
KJ Sanchez and Jenny Mercein | X’S and O’S (A Football Love Story)
Anna Deavere Smith | The Pipeline Project
Stein | Holum Projects | Movers + Shakers
Hadi Tabbal | Untitled Oum Kalthoum–Abu Ghraib project
Lucy Alibar | Carl the Raping Goat Saves Christmas
Janet Allard and Nikos Tsakalakos | Alexander Supertramp
César Alvarez | The Universe is a Small Hat
Jeff Augustin | Krik? Krak! or The Last Tiger in Haiti
Sarah Burgess | Camdenside
The Debate Society | Untitled ski play
Jackie Sibblies Drury | The Theory of Rational Choice
Larissa FastHorse | What Would Crazy Horse Do?
Idris Goodwin and Adam Mansbach | Rage is Back
Lauren Gunderson | The Heath
David Hanbury and Andrew Rasmussen | Mrs. Smith & Carlyle: To Mars and Back Again
Victor Lesniewski | Kardal
Mona Mansour and Tala Manassah | The Wife
A. Rey Pamatmat | Untitled project about the abuse of power and magical narratives
Nicholas C. Pappas | Fatty: There’s No Place for the Fattest Man to Hide
Lisa Peterson | The Idea of Order
20 writers | The Food Project
Christina Anderson | Adam Bock | Julia Cho | David Edgar | Amy Freed | Jessica Goldberg | Rinne Groff | Lauren Gunderson | Danny Hoch | Naomi Iizuka | Kwame Kwei-Armah | Ellen McLaughlin | Richard Montoya | Itamar Moses | Janine Nabers | Peter Sinn Nachtrieb | Lynn Nottage | Keith Reddin | Erika Chong Shuch | Octavio Solis
Marcus Gardley | The House that will not Stand
Madeleine George | The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence
Kathryn Keats | The Hummingbird
Carson Kreitzer and Erin Kamler | Runway 69
Dan LeFranc | Troublemaker, or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright
Michael Mitnick | Little Boy Blue
Dominic Orlando | The Barbary Coast
Greg Pierotti | Apology
Amelia Roper | She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange
The Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project | After All
Heidi Stillman | The North China Lover
Meiyin Wang | motherland / foreign relations (we all here why you never call?)
Special thanks
Lead support for The Ground Floor has been provided by Bank of America, Frances Hellman & Warren Breslau, The John Logan Foundation, The Maurer Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
What artists say about the Summer Residency Lab
I did not know how much I needed those two weeks to focus on my project, but I really did. I made great breakthroughs and got closer to the core of what I was investigating. The steps I made forward felt monumental. So thank you for the TIME and SPACE!!! AND! Thank you for being so flexible and for giving me the opportunity to perform last minute! I am usually met with panic and doubt when I make such requests but you were so chill! It took a load of pressure off to be making work in a situation where the end really could be whatever the piece needed for the moment, which also made more space for creativity to flow.
Ground Floor has given me so much more than I could have imagined. I have been exhilarated and energized for the past two weeks because you created such a warm and liberating space for art to happen.
The reason artists find their story here is because you allow for that. You can have resources and not know what the story is yet. The resource is part of finding what the story is. In my experience, that’s how we (as playwrights) want to do it. But we don’t get allowed to do that very often.