Readings/ Workshops

Dead Girl's Quinceañera

Writer|Phanésia Pharel

Director|Melissa Crespo

Being 15 is even more complicated when your best friend goes missing. Maria's besties are in a race against the clock to find out what happened to her and bring her home alive. A dark comedic thriller about secrets, sisterhood, and crime solving; Dead Girl's Quinceañera asks what it means to come of age in a messed-up world and what we need to do to survive

The Single Raindrop

Writer|Zachary Ezer

Director| Dominique Rider

When a senior center in Tell-Fara, New York gets a VR headset to stimulate the minds of its residents, everyone seems to love its most popular app: a virtual recreation of the town, as it was in the 1950s. Everyone, that is, except the center’s oldest, and only Black, resident, Harry Moore. Harry won’t stop jumping into the virtual lake at the center of town and screaming about mermaids. As the senior center tries to calm Harry down, the app's designers are embroiled in a mystery submerged deep in the town’s past.

“The Single Raindrop” is a play about the therapeutic potential of virtual reality for the elderly, as well as the power of technology to dictate our understanding of history. Each character contends with their place in the world: as user and designer, victim and oppressor, censor and historian. None think they are the most important part of their story, but as Douglas Adams said, “The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.”

The Corrido of the San Patricios

Writer|Beto O'Byrne

Originally commissioned by Watts Village Theatre Company, and currently in development in collaboration with Radical Evolution Performance Collective and El Teatro Campesino, this play uses a blend of traditional “teatro styles” devising techniques, and original source material to dramatize the story of Los San Patricios, Irish/American immigrants who defected to the Mexican Army during the Mexican American War. Utilizing era appropriate musical styles and a variety of theatrical techniques, this play uses this forgotten history to explore the themes of immigration, citizenship, and what happens when people follow their conscience to actively disrupt political systems.