PEN PALS is an epistolary play that tells the story of the extraordinary friendship between two ordinary women. Bernie, from Newark, New Jersey, starts writing to Mags, who lives in Sheffield, England, when she’s 14-years-old and their correspondence continues for the next five decades.
The play is essentially an extended flashback where the women read the letters they sent to each other over the past 50 years. Without the aid of costumes, make-up, or wigs, the actors age before the audience’s eyes as they tell the stories of their lives.
UNCOMMON SENSE weaves together the stories of four characters living on the autism spectrum—Dan, Jess, Moose, and Lali—as well as their families and friends. The play reveals our desire to connect, our universal challenges with “difference,” and the lengths to which we go for the people we love.
Stan Zimmerman (The Golden Girls, Roseanne, Gilmore Girls) brings to life the last words written in letters by individuals lost to suicide—including celebrities, veterans, kids that were bullied, LGBTQ, and the clinically depressed—and those who have survived suicide attempts. Since its acclaimed first performance at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2015, the play has traveled across the country, raising awareness and offering hope for suicide prevention.
ERNEST SHACKLETON LOVES ME is a critically acclaimed new musical comedy with a tongue-in-cheek script by Tony Award®-winner Joe DiPietro (MEMPHIS and ALL SHOOK UP). In this wildly inventive and romantic adventure, a sleep-deprived single mom who makes her living as a video game music composer is contacted across space and time, via a crossed connection on her mobile phone, by the famous early 20th century polar explorer Ernest Shackleton while he is stranded on an iceberg in the Antarctic in the early 1900s. Inspired by her music, he shares his epic journey with her and, together, they overcome the odds in a timeless, and very funny, musical romance for the ages.
Shakespeare’s comedy about the power of love follows twins Viola and Sebastian, who are washed ashore in a strange land after a shipwreck, each thinking the other has perished. Viola disguises herself as a man, to become a servant of the local Duke Orsino. She quickly finds herself in love with this duke, despite being recruited as messenger for his wooing of the countess Olivia. Not only is this wooing unsuccessful, but Olivia falls for the messenger. The subplot involves Olivia’s household revelers, who clash with her stern household steward, Malvolio. The wild knot of misunderstandings is untied at last, once Sebastian arrives on the scene.
When he was twenty-three, Edgar Oliver found The Pyramid Club in New York City. This long-gone ghost of Avenue A became a home for all artists and outcasts, and the first stage Edgar ever performed on in the city. In the dark recesses of this magic theatre, Edgar found the voice that brought all the sorrow and glory, the solitude and companionship of his early life into the hearts of his audience. The Pyramid Club created the beautiful, heart-broken, and triumphant person he is today.
THE DOWNFALL OF RAFAEL TRUJILLO explores the last five years of the life of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. He ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist for 31 years. The play begins with the infamous kidnapping and murder of Professor Jesús Galíndez and follows the resulting fall-out, which leads to the downfall of the Trujillo regime. It is the story of a man whose desire for absolute power poisoned his humanity and terrorized a nation.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC is brand new adaptation in verse of the famous crowd-pleasing tale of love, honor, and panache, by way of a warrior-poet with a huge nose and a huge complex about it.
A young father in the playground, eleven-month-old baby in tow, engages another parent in the park in a conversation about neighborhoods, parenthood, and culture, processing some of his traumas and insecurities along the way as he tries to predict the factors that will shape his child’s Latinx identity. Meanwhile, his alter-ego, a swaggering hip hop jester named MC Plátano, comments on the action, fills in some of the blanks, and asks us some difficult questions.
This eight-person adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream places us at Hermia’s wedding rehearsal dinner, where she is trapped into marrying Demetrius, threatening to tear her away from her true love Lysander. When dressmaker Bottom fits her into her wedding gown, Hermia faints and awakens in a magical landscape—part frolic, part dream, part nightmare. In her Wizard of Oz-like hallucination her parents transform into Titania and Oberon and friends and lovers couple and uncouple until, at last, Hermia escapes to be with her true love.
