NHP alums Abigail Onwunali and Sarah Galante have been selected as semifinalists for The Relentless Award, which celebrates Philip Seymour Hoffman’s relentless pursuit of truth in theatre. More about the award here: https://www.americanplaywritingfoundation.org/the-relentless-award.
About Iju by Abigail Onwunali: Chika has never seen anything like it. A creature without eyes, without bones, without flesh—something that shouldn’t exist, yet does. Pulled from the sterile walls of her hospital room and into the unknown, she takes the creature home, determined to understand it. But life has a way of unraveling plans. As Chika confronts her own struggles, she forgets the silent, hungry thing lurking in the shadows. Forgotten but not gone, the creature learns to survive—by any means necessary. IJU is a ferocious, uncanny fable about survival, appetite, and the terrifying cost of being remade by something we cannot fully understand.
About Melinda by Sarah Galante: Melinda has just gotten out of rehab after an... incident on the road. Melissa is baking reams of cookies to sugar it all away. And melody plays games with dolls and writes poetry—the kind that might sound alarm bells, if anyone was listening. The men are gone, and the house is full of three generations of women. They are all different, and they are all the same, and they are tearing each other apart. A stark, surreal, and hilarious look at codependency and the ties that break, this play asks: how do we survive the agony of wanting? And how do we step out of the cycles that spun us into being?
