Readings

Written by Gay Walch
Directed by Jamie Gallo

Featuring: Rob Nagle, Lizzy Kimball, Lilli Passero, Hilary Bass, Janet Chamberlain, Mark Irvingsen, Kris Frost

A Theory of Seduction is about the psychological seduction of Sigmund Freud by his closest friend and ally, Wilhelm Fliess. The Freud of the 1890s is eons away from the world-famous figure who will be revered throughout the 20th century. During the pivotal year of 1896, Sigmund is filled with self-doubt, teetering on the edge of total failure because of his radical discovery — The Seduction Theory. Complete ignominy and financial ruin await him if he doesn’t renounce his new theory. Wilhelm, also a physician, consumed with ambition, sees his own path to fame and immortality in “saving” Sigmund from himself. He sets about to steer Sigmund away from the difficult truth which his new theory has uncovered and toward a more palatable fantasy that society will accept…and which will catapult Sigmund to success. The play explores the cost of self-delusion, denial, ambition, the attraction of lies, and the ever-present threat of being seduced away from socially inconvenient truth.

Written by Jennie Webb
Directed by Jen Bloom

Featuring: Jessica Jade Andres

After meeting her troubled, recently deceased mother—who gave her up for adoption as an infant—Terra starts to navigate a little-known California State Compensation Program and runs into more of life’s surreal hurdles. Wound Care is, in part, a crack baby reparations play about searching for what will make things right and perhaps healing what you didn’t know was broken.

WRITTEN BY GREY SMITH
DIRECTED BY RYAN MCREE

FEATURING:  Jessica Jade Andres, Lizzy Kimball, Jordan Moore,  Clifton J. Adams and Ethan Haslam

Lyssa is making a podcast about Danny’s new solo show. Ian is getting engaged to Tara. Ian and Danny used to be roommates. Danny and Tara are blowing up on TikTok Danny thinks Ian is gay. Tara wants to be famous. Danny wants to be loved. Ian wants what he wants. Lyssa wants to tell the story.

WRITTEN BY Michael Meija
DIRECTED BY Michael John Garces

FEATURING:  DawnMarie Ferrara, Gabriel Palma, Julian Armaya, Frank Collison, Christian Telesmar, Kathy Bell Denton

Maria and Chris’s lives collide when they uncover chilling similarities between the unsolved murders of their brothers. After years of relentless searching, their journey for answers leads them believe they have found a potential serial killer – a retired business man named Richard. Now Maria and Chris must decide if they will pursue justice or exact revenge. Are Maria and Chris about to catch a monster, or are they losing control of the case…and their minds?

WRITTEN BY RACHEL BORDERS
DIRECTED BY CARLYLE KING

FEATURING:  Taylor Gilbert, Kate Huffman, Nick Apostolina, Paige Simunovich, Alaska Jackson and Robert Axelrod

A family is surprised to learn their patriarch is dying and even more surprised to find he hired a Death Doula to assist them through the transition. A dark comedy about death, inheritance, and the decisions that define our legacies.

WRITTEN BY STEVE HARPER

DIRECTED BY ANDRE G. BROWN

FEATURING:  Jon Gentry,Gerard Joseph, Christopher W. Jones, Patrick Zhang and Teresa Hegji

When Mark, an Ivy League grad looking for love, meets Kyle, a free spirit with a wandering eye, they forge a complicated relationship with an uncertain future. After a steamy video with a porn star unearths hidden truths and forces a painful confrontation, Kyle goes missing. Mark is desperate to track him down. Along the way, morality wavers, monogamy blurs, and every choice carries the weight of no return. True Adventures for Men is a provocative and unexpectedly funny exploration of love, identity, and self destruction, where nothing is ever as simple—or as innocent—as it seems.

WRITTEN BY Fiona Gorry-Hines
DIRECTED BY Velani Dibba

FEATURING:  Carolyn Crotty, Tally McCormack, Laura Gardner, Frank Collison and Christian Telesmar.

Following the untimely death of their recently-retired coworker, a small group of employees at Libirdy Farms, a massive poultry producer, gathers to stage their late friend’s musical adaptation of the German fairytale, “The Brementown Musicians.” As they prepare to present the play at The Roost, Libirdy’s annual company picnic, and as news begins to circulate about the circumstances surrounding its author’s death, the ensemble begins to question their loyalty to the company.

WRITTEN BY CAMILLE SIMONE THOMAS
DIRECTED BY INGER TUDOR

In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham enterprising hotel owner John J. White is willing to do keep his dream alive while co-owner Irving Roane isn’t too sure that every end is worth the means and doesn’t know what to dream for anymore.

In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham naive but ambitious June Gholston dreams of becoming a lawyer to take care of her people in a city under attack while lounge singer Delores Miggins dreams of touring internationally and only taking care of herself

In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham dreams are inflated, popped, and patched back
together year after year but, just how many times can a dream be deferred until utter
destruction?

A speculative historical fiction play based on some very real events from 1957 – 1963.

WRITTEN BY LOUISA NICKEL

DIRECTED BY

In 1978 over 900 members of The Peoples’ Temple ingested poison in a small isolated promise land in South America. Only three people were found with gunshot wounds, their leader Jim Jones, my second cousin Annie Moore, and their beloved pet chimpanzee Mister Muggs. “MISTER MUGGS” is a partially verbatim play that retells the downfall of the people of Jonestown from the perspective of an undercover chimpanzee television host, Mister Muggs. In a reverse National Geographic this nihilist reality show uses primary documents to uncover the line between dreamers and extremists.

WRITTEN BY Robert Axelrod
DIRECTED BY Ann Hearn Tobolowsky

Featuring:  Carlyle King, Stephen Tobolowsky, Taylor Gilbert and Clay Hollander

Desperate to get his life back on track, a depressed gay thirty-something returns home for the summer, where he winds up taking a job as an unconventional sober companion to his alcoholic former neighbor as she attempts to make it to 90 days of sobriety.

WRITTEN BY PETER PASCO
DIRECTED BY

Some plays are about grand questions: love, tragedy, or loss.  Some plays are educational and teach you about a time in history or important figure.  Others fill you with joy with catchy, heartfelt music.  This play does none of that.  This play is about how are people supposed to literally deal with life when everything feels like it’s falling apart around them.  Alan Garcia, a mid thirties Latine male, is about to get married and start a more adult chapter of his life only to discover there is a lot he needs to understand before he can do that.

WRITTEN BY SAM MUELLER
DIRECTED BY GARRETT BAER & BRANDON BAER

FEATURING:  PATRICK JOSEPH RIEGER AND BEX TAYLOR-KLAUS

Mountains. Wyoming. Big game hunting season. Brothers Caleb and Cain are reunited to hunt a Bighorn Sheep during the day and go through their deceased father’s extensive record collection in the evening. Lurking outside in the darkness is something caught somewhere between a man and an animal. Could it be possible that the Bighorn they’re trying to hunt is actually hunting them?

WRITTEN BY DOM MARTELLO
DIRECTED BY JACOB DAVID SMITH

POW POW POW KABOOM! Or, How Do We Get People To Care follows a focus group reviewing reality TV pilots that struggle to see eye to eye, being followed by a presidential candidate as she gets frustrated with her chief of staff because he isn’t collecting data fast enough, being followed by a group of mysterious entities who get to decide the fate of life as we know it. This political satire is a case study cracking open the absurdity of the mass consumption of (and indifference to) violence, catastrophe, and loss of human life.

WRITTEN BY  KAYLIN JONES
DIRECTED BY

In 1922 Louisiana, the Claibornes, a prominent Creole family, sit atop a social hierarchy where segregation is reimagined. Led by the patriarch, The Blue Vein Social Society is a club exclusive to a great caliber of college educated Black men with skin color no darker than a brown paper bag – the same prerequisite dictating the marriage arrangement of the society president’s docile daughter, Catherine. But when Catherine meets the opposing Pearlie Morrow, a stranger she’s meant to hate, a stranger she has loved and has known many lifetimes before, her reality shifts.

WRITTEN BY EMMA SCHILLAGE
DIRECTED BY ELANA LUO

In a small Louisiana mobile home park, best friends Wren and Lylah play games of chicken, hide in the trees, and share scary stories about Mae, a reclusive widow who only leaves her house to take out the trash. But when a Star crash-lands on their dead end street in search of a lost love, the lives of Wren, Lylah, Mae, and the Star are thrown together unexpectedly. As Mae takes in the Star, Wren and Lylah find their evolving relationship strained, confronting what it means to grow up and navigate new feelings for the first time. Together, they embark on a journey of self-discovery, sparking an exploration of identity, friendship, gender, sexuality, beauty, and the weight of expectations. GROSS! explores the beauty and cruelty of nature and the ways we struggle to be seen and understood.