Projects & Artistic Teams

About The Play

We find ourselves on the outskirts – at the back of a clay building which signals us to stay away. Slack and Ro and Cameo divulge into monologue, tracing three pasts, a present, while portending a future. A lyrical project netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, border crossing, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.

About The Play

When she realizes that she's in love with her best friend Kofi, hopeless romantic Ariel sets out on a quest to tell him how she feels...and make a pilgrimage to the shores of Africa. Inspired by A Raisin in the Sun, Ariel seeks to heal a 400 year old wound through her journey toward selfhood. As she grapples with the gray space of being neither fully African nor fully American, she uncovers the darkest parts of herself and the sweet spots in her Black American identity. This choreopoem samples the old and makes space for the new as Ariel sails to Ghana to confess her love to Kofi.

About The Play

After a decade away, James returns to his hometown in rural Georgia with his girlfriend to check in on Walter, his father, whose erratic behavior has been the talk of the town. Something stinks, and it’s not just this pig-stye of a house. Hometown Boy is a story of outsiders, power dynamics due to race and class, and a rotten core at the center of this story that is at last making its way to the surface.

About The Play

Love investigates what true intimacy and love means later in life. When Phoebe (30's), sets her grandmother Em (80’s) up on a blind date with Walt (80's), the two "kids" hit it off, developing a courtship role-playing game in which their past traumas get re-imagined into their present. Playing the role of their respective deceased spouses, the two elders enact each other’s pasts in order to heal the memory and process their grief. The play asks the questions: Who says women in their 80’s can’t have the best sex of their lives? And can sexual awakening open us up to accepting, or at least acknowledging past sexual trauma as a way to heal?

To learn more: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/1023148/love

About The Play

The plague, dead husbands, love spells, and two women who finally get to be together. Our Black Death is a dark comedy about two peasants in mid-1300s England who explore their newfound power and take a chance on love as everyone around them dies.

To learn more: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/1066838/our-black-death

About The Play

After the death of her wealthy, far older husband, a young mother is left alone with her teenage daughter for the first time. Their newfound freedom initially creates a world of never-ending fun, but the two must reckon with their past when façades inevitably begin to fall.

For more information: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/1067271/poor-queenie

About The Play

It’s not the end of the world yet, but Sunday’s mom built a backyard fallout shelter just in case. Now t’s an underground clubhouse overflowing with tarot cards and the smell of hair bleach, ringing with chaotic queer energy and runoff full of gritty mud, fire ants, and oil. sad girl hours is a story of college admissions, found family, and potential energy in the face of torrential flood. What does it mean to aspire to something while planning and preparing how to die?

About The Play

Ted writes poems. Elizabeth tells jokes. Gina dances. Marcus conducts. With the Nockaquan Elementary School Talent Show coming up, these four special needs children are determined to show everyone that they are more than just the dummy class.

To learn more: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/907233/dummy-class

About The Program

This eight-day intensive program focuses on enriching the participants’ experience as a key resource to the playwright, dramaturg, and director of new work while expanding the participants’ understanding about the value the practice of dramaturgy can have on a new play and ultimately society.

To learn more: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/opportunities-for-artists/pre-professional-artist-training/kcactf/kcdramaturgyint/

About The Play

2020 Winner, Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition

Maneesh is a brilliant entry-level programmer at Athena Technologies, a data-mining firm deep in Silicon Valley. Content to work in the low-stress environment of User Experience, Maneesh has a crisis of conscience when he is offered a transfer to the more-central Data Analytics team, and learns the true nature of Athena’s work. Torn between the idealism of his friend Riley and the fierce company loyalty of his mentor Jonah, Maneesh is forced to come to terms with his own identity, and decide the personal and societal cost of his work — all while learning the extent to which Athena is willing to go to hide its secrets.

To learn more: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/810463/data

DATA's workshop will take place later in August 2020, with Susan Booth and Amanda Watkins serving as Director and Dramaturg, respectively.

About The Play

2020 MFA Playwrights' Workshop Alumni Project

After witnessing a woman plummet from the sky, five strangers in New York form a support group to process what they have seen. A melancholic dramedy about loneliness, loss, and the unending possibility of salvation inside human connection.

To learn more: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/407072/how-it-feels-fall-sky

how it feels to fall from the sky will have its workshop in August 2020, with Taylor Reynolds and Julie Felise Dubiner serving as Director and Dramaturg, respectively.