Connecticut Repertory Theatre continues its 2023 – 2024 season with Tlaloc Rivas’ world premiere adaptation, A DOCTOR’S DILEMMA, based on A DOCTOR’S DILEMMA by George Bernard Shaw. The play previews March 21 and runs March 22 – 30, 2023 in the Nafe Katter Theatre.

A doctor who has discovered a lifesaving cure must make an impossible decision: with only one precious dose remaining and two people in need, who should he save? Rivas’ adaption distills Shaw’s five-act original into a fleet, witty tale, emphasizing the playwright’s rich humor while engaging in an honest exploration of Shaw’s critical themes. The result is a scalpel-sharp satirical examination of the medical establishment, love and the value of art.

“A Doctor's Dilemma doesn’t merely serve as a platform for critical reflection, but also as a celebration of the healing power of laughter and communal joy. In times of strife and uncertainty, Shaw’s incisive wit and the ensuing laughter it provokes are not just an escape but a potent therapeutic force,” says Rivas.

A WORLD PREMIERE

College: a time of freedom, of frivolity, of friskiness. Freshmen Lulu and Marianne test their limits as they party through the school year in search of their place in the world: Marianne is newly eighteen, while Lulu tries to reignite a spark with her boyfriend of ten years. But when their drama-nerd-roommate Harriet brings in baggage from a student production of MEASURE FOR MEASURE, ideas of consent and manipulation start to seep into their lives. 

Seattle favorite Keiko Green brings her sharp provocation and biting humor to a new play that puts contemporary discussions in direct conversation with one of the most problematic devices in Shakespeare. In the grand tradition of the problem plays, THE BED TRICK has no answers, but will have you pondering the questions long after you leave the theatre.

JOIN US FOR THE WORLD PREMIERE OF MEXODUS!

Join The New Harmony Project and friends for the world premiere of MEXODUS on Saturday, March 30 at 8:00 pm (EDT). You’ll enjoy a pre-show dinner at a nearby restaurant, followed by MEXODUS at Baltimore Center Stage (Mosaic Theatre), and a special post-show reception with NHP and the authors of MEXODUS, Brian and Nygel.

Your reservation includes the pre-show dinner, a ticket to MEXODUS, and the post-show reception. Each registrant is responsible for their travel and lodging. More details will be sent to you via email once registered. For questions, please email info@newharmonyproject.org.

About the Show | Accessibility Info | About Center Stage

A WORLD PREMIERE CO-PRODUCTION WITH BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE and MOSAIC THEATER COMPANY

Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson blend Hip-Hop and history to tell a unique story about the Underground Railroad that led south, highlighting the power of Black and Brown unity. A groundbreaking, theatrical experience, MEXODUS is a live-looped musical, composed in real time, that explores the often-untold stories of enslaved people in the United States who sought freedom in Mexico.

A World premiere

WHERE FEARS COME ALIVE

Cue the horror music: We're headed to a cabin in the woods. Five friends have arranged a weekend trip in Eastern Oregon. One is pregnant, two are married, and two have a decision to make. When old grudges and new betrayals simmer to the surface, will the mysterious force trying to break in consume them all?

More about Keiko Green: https://www.keikogreen.com

A Rolling World Premiere by Aurora Real de Asua

Three retired women, decades-long friends who are pushing 70, are the focus of the world premiere of Aurora Real de Asua's poignant comedy WIPEOUT directed by Rivendell's artistic director Tara Mallen. Set on surfboards, WIPEOUT is a poignant comedy about friendship, grief, and the unpredictable tides of life. 

WIPEOUT tells the story of three women staring down the mouth of 70, friends for decades, who throw themselves into their first-ever surfing lesson with the help of a young instructor. As the women learn how to paddle and navigate the currents of the Pacific Ocean, they also learn how to navigate their friendships, their fears, and just how hard it can be to let it all go. 

The cast includes Glenn Obrero, Meg Thalken, Cindy Gold and Celeste Williams. The production is part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere.

A POIGNANT NEW PLAY ON THE DYNAMICS THAT LEAD US TO OUR HOME. 

FURLOUGH’S PARADISE by a.k. payne is a poignant new play examining the dynamics that shape our lives and lead us to where we make our homes. Cousins Sade and Mina, raised like sisters but now leading very different lives, return to their childhood town for the funeral of their mother and aunt. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina experiences a brief reprieve from her career and life on the West Coast, the two try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship. But traumas and resentments from the past, both real and surreal, threaten to pull them apart, all as time ticks towards the correctional officer's arrival.    

An apartment on the 19th floor. All Edith wants — it’s not too much to ask, is it? — is to sit and have some tea with her husband, someday, when he’s done with building his masterpiece. The kids don’t call enough, and when they do, they seem full of accusations. Meanwhile, outside their apartment, the waters are rising, rising, rising… This Chicago Premiere is a dynamic comedy about love and companionship across gender and generational divides.

Performances take place in Theater 1 at Theater Wit (1229 W Belmont) where Shattered Globe Theatre is a resident company.

Emmy Award-winner Dana Delany (China Beach, Desperate Housewives) stars in this new thriller—part love story, part ghost story—crafted from hundreds of tweets and DMs.

TIMESTAMP: October, 2012: “@DanaDelany, Are you married? If not, I’d marry you.” When Cam, a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation captures actress Dana Delany’s attention on Twitter, she’s quickly swept into an intense, around-the-clock online friendship. But when Cam starts receiving messages from beyond, Dana is thrust into a world where unexpected revelations raise the question of how far we go to love and be loved.

Playwright and Text Curator Jen Silverman
Based on the Digital Archives of Dana Delany
Created by Dana Delany, Mike Donahue, Dane Laffrey and Jen Silverman

 WORLD PREMIER

"Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say."
-Virginia Woolf

Dressed in drag, JUDITH heads to London to save her brother’s reputation. In a patriarchal, politically-charged, and deeply divided nation, she pursues work as a poet and discovers the pleasures and pitfalls of passing as the bard himself.

Gallivanting in and out of character, JUDITH is a solo show that questions identity, ambition, and self-worth.

Katie Bender (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer, and theater maker.  Her plays include JUDITH, SHE WOLF, THE SURVIVORS/LOS SOBREVIVIENTS, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A SEANCE, and HOWLING, TEXAS to name a few. Filled with games, physical exertion, and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems. 

Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD and Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre and All For One Theater. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne Award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center and is currently a Core Writer. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas. 

“I’ll be gone for a while. Possibly forever. It’s nothing you did.”

A tenured professor of psychology, Lukesh enjoys a life as organized and logical as his mind.  But then his wife vanishes, sending only a text message by way of explanation and leaving him to re-evaluate their relationship. He discovers she has embarked on an epic odyssey, crossing and recrossing Russia and delving deep into Soviet history on a quest to unravel a family mystery of which he was unaware – one in which Josef Stalin himself may be involved.

Jonathan Spector’s virtuosic entertainment is at once a love story and a kaleidoscopic primer in psychology, history, and the use and abuse of power. Spector’s other plays include Eureka Day (Old Vic) which won all San Francisco Bay Area’s New Play Awards and was nominated for a New York Drama Critics Award. THIS MUCH I KNOW is his most recent play and won the 2023 Glickman Award and also the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for Best New Play.

Belinda (Elizabeth Ramos) has done something bad. Very, very bad. After being bailed out of jail by her estranged sister, Rosalie (Anna LaMadrid), she must reconcile the person she was with the person she feels she's destined to become — that is, with the help of new friend Erica (Kim Griffin). RADICAL or, are you gonna miss me? tells the sweeping story of three women on the Mexican-American border who, more than anything, desperately want to be seen. And who will do anything in their power to make themselves known, no matter how great the cost.

Step into a sophisticated, slippery world where the line between truth and fiction is all in the packaging. It's 1936, and a pair of passionate filmmakers have landed their next big project: a sweeping Spanish Civil War film with the potential to change American hearts and minds. It just happens to be bankrolled by the KGB. This seductive and funny new play about the art of propaganda and the dangerous ongoing Disinformation Age explores how art can change the world—for better and worse.

SPAIN is the recipient of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund award and is generously supported with a gift from MacPac Entertainment LLC. SPAIN is a Second Stage commission, supported by the New American Voices Fund.

Jen Silverman is a playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Plays include SPAIN; COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES; THE MOORS; THE ROOMMATE; WITCH; and HIGHWAY PATROL.

Books include the novel WE PLAY OURSELVES and story collection THE ISLAND DWELLERS. Jen’s next novel is forthcoming from Random House in 2024. Jen is a three-time MacDowell Fellow and a member of New Dramatists. Honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. Jen also writes for TV and film.

Phoenix Theatre presents the world-premiere production of THE BODY by playwright Steve Moulds from November 2 through November 19.

While mom is away, Joe is determined to be the best dad ever for his stepdaughter Abby. But a giant crate appears on their doorstep, and Abby and Joe work to decipher its mysterious contents – a doll with no face, and an instruction manual with no words. The deeper they delve into this package, the more it threatens their family’s tenuous emotional equilibrium. Was this doll sent to strengthen their relationship? Or is it a harbinger of a more disturbing truth? Part domestic drama, part surreal thriller, THE BODY lives in that space between reality and dreams, where the things that haunt us most come from within.

The National Arts Club (NAC) announces Nancy Ma as one of its 14 new Artist Fellows for 2023-24. Nancy Ma is an actor, playwright, and filmmaker from Chinatown, New York. She studies grief, memory, language, and home in her art. Her work has been supported by NYFA, BRIC Arts Media, The New Harmony Project, Fresh Ground Pepper, Museum of Chinese in America, and more.

The NAC Artist Fellowship program, launched in 2019 and now in its fourth cycle, provides up-and-coming artists across all disciplines with one year of full membership in the historic club and access to its considerable array of resources. The Fellows are chosen after a rigorous review by an esteemed panel of judges composed of leaders in all artistic disciplines. 

The prestigious Fellowship spotlights the talent and promise of a diverse group of 14 artists working in visual art, moving image, writing, and music. Its mission is to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts.

Bishop Arts Theatre Center (BATC) kicks off its 30th Anniversary season with an adaptation of OTHELLO by BATC’s playwright-in-residence Franky D. Gonzalez.

When a woman shatters a glass ceiling what waits for her when she lands? Franky Gonzalez' adaptation of Shakespeare’s OTHELLO explores this question and centers on the difficulties of Imani Othello who has been named the first Black woman head coach of a major football team in Dallas, Texas. Immerse yourself in the brilliance of Denise Lee as she breathes life into the indomitable spirit of Othello.

A staff writer on Season Four of 13 Reasons Why, Franky most recently won the Judith Royer Award for Excellence in Playwriting, the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Grand Prize, the Crossroads Project Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative Award, was a co-winner of the MetLife Nuestras Voces Latino named the 4 Seasons Resident Playwright, a Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program Fellow, a Playwrights Center Core Writer, and the Bishop Arts Theatre Center Playwright-in-Residence. More information and tickets >>

Poetic Justice is an evening of two literary one-act plays  that passionately celebrate the literary life. 

 In You Must Change Your Life, discover how Ranier Maria Rilke mentors a young poet and his letters become legendary.

In Divine Madness, explore the tempestuous marriage of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick, whom he betrays in life and literature.

Lynne Kaufman (playwright) is the author of twenty full-length plays and four novels, most recently “Divine Madness”. She has had numerous plays premiered at The Marsh including “Acid Test”, “Two Minds” and “Who Killed Sylvia Plath”, which won best play in The Marsh’s International Solo Festival.

Her play “Daisy in the Dreamtime” was presented by The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles as a recipient of a Hot Properties Grant from the L.A. Arts Council and  The A.S.K. Foundation    It had its New York City premiere at The Abingdon Theatre and its university premiere at S.F. State University as the recipient of the  Rella Lossy Playwright’s Award. “Daisy in the Dreamtime” was published in Women Playwrights: Best New Plays and by Dramatic Publishing.  She was the recipient of The Otis Guernsey Outstanding New Voice in American Theatre Award from The William Inge Theatre Festival.  Her play “William Blake in Hollywood” won The Neil Simon Festival Theatre’s best comedy award.

Her play “Fakes” premiered at Florida Studio Theatre and was optioned for film by 20th Century Fox and for television by Jean Doumanian Productions. “Shooting Simone” premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville  Humana Festival and received six subsequent regional productions. It was published by Dramatic Publishing.

Four of her plays premiered at The Magic Theatre including “The Couch”, which won The Glickman Award for Best New Play in San Francisco and “Speaking in Tongues”, which  won a  Kennedy Center/NEA/  Fund for New  American Plays Award.  Her play “Our Lady of the Desert” won Theatreworks ‘Best New Play in California Award”.

The great-grandfather of Oregon Book Award-winning playwright and New Harmony Project alumni Andrea Stolowitz kept a journal for his descendants after escaping to New York City in 1939 as a German Jew. Following the complicated lure of genealogy, Stolowitz goes back to Berlin to bring the story of her unknown ancestors out of the archives into the light. The record keeps as many secrets as it shares; how do people become verschollen, lost, like library books?

In this complex, contemporary drama about the search for home, fragmented heritage, and Jewish diaspora, two performers scintillate between characters and locations at the border of reality and memory and the intersection of national history and private lives.

Produced by the Pool Plays in association with The New Group/New Works

Nathan is ditching class when he stumbles on Melody crying in a storage closet – he’s a white boy with family money and dangerous habits, she’s the lone Black girl on campus, excelling academically and grappling with feelings of isolation. They form an unexpected bond and it’s not long before the heat between them boils over. BITE ME explores the drama (and trauma) of trying to fit in at high school, and the unfinished business waiting for them at their reunion a decade later. This captivating dark comedy dares to explore the raw undercurrents of youth, and the unspoken truths that bind us.

Mashuq Mushtaq Deen was commissioned to write an essay for an anthology called Surviving Transphobia, which was curated and edited by Laura Jacobs, LCSW. The book, released on September 21, 2023, was conceived as a response to the rising anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation across the country, and within it 16 transgender people share their perspective on transphobia. In the essay, "Liminal Spaces," Deen questions the helpfulness of us/them narratives, and the complexity of forgiveness.

Surviving Transphobia is an anthology by transgender and gender nonbinary celebrities and experts on endurance during times of severe hostility. We share the moments when we were vulnerable, were bullied, had needs dismissed, or were discriminated against, revealing our determination and how we have (sometimes) managed to thrive.

Released September 15, 2023

A collection of prose poems that chronicles the family life of two cancer survivors.

SURVIVOR’S NOTEBOOK, a powerful companion to Dan O’Brien’s OUR CANCERS, catalogs the recovery of a cancer survivor, whose wife has recently survived her own cancer, as he returns to his daily life while raising a young daughter. This prose-poem sequence is a true survivor’s notebook, using photos and the tools of memoir to evoke how disaster can constellate our past, present, and future.

Dan O’Brien is a poet and playwright. His previous poetry collections include War Reporter, New Life, and Scarsdale. O’Brien is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and two PEN America Awards for playwriting. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

WORLD PREMIERE - DIASPORA! follows Sunny, a writer tracing her lineage to find a long-lost grandparent. Aided by her niece, her best friend, and her best friend’s new boyfriend, she searches for answers in history. Time begins to cross over, and we find ourselves in Boston during the rise of the civil rights movement and a certain young minister making waves at the Twelfth Baptist Church and Boston University.

Says Scott:“Sunny, an idealistic black millennial, is writing a history about the legacy of her family. Her younger sister, Janae wants to reject everything about her ancestry in favor of a created one. Sunny discovers the mystery of her grandparents and decides to confront her past head on in order to put the spirits in her life to rest.”  DIASPORA! was a SpeakEasy Stage commission as part of their Boston Project, developed and workshopped in Boston from 2017-2019.

From the author of DOWNSTAIRS and BERNHARDT/HAMLET, Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck returns with DIG, a new play about courage, redemption, and photosynthesis.

In a dying plant shop in a dying neighborhood, Roger receives a visitor from the past: Megan, the neighborhood screw-up, just out of rehab. He wants nothing to do with this disaster. Rebeck’s signature wit, intelligence, and depth brings us a riveting play that asks - can a soul beyond saving be saved?

You meet. You marry. You have kids. That’s the way it always goes. Or is it? What if your story changes? What would it cost? Another Marriage is an intimate and beautifully rendered portrait of an ever-evolving relationship that may never be quite finished. Ensemble member Kate Arrington’s playwriting debut upends the typical romantic comedy to explore the liabilities of falling in and out of love—and time.

Hailed as the “Godmother of Rock ‘n Roll,” Sister Rosetta Tharpe influenced rock icons from Elvis Presley to Jimi Hendrix. Bringing fierce guitar playing and sizzling swing to gospel music, Rosetta was a trailblazer, a young Black woman singing at church in the morning and the Cotton Club at night. This play with music chronicles Rosetta’s first rehearsal with a young protégée, Marie Knight, as they prepare for a tour that would establish them as one of the great duet teams in musical history.