The Plays

BLOSSOMING 2023: Exile/Embrace

ORTA by Katherine Vondy; directed by Jessie Lee Mills

Synopsis: In Northern Italy there is a small town. Next to the town is a lake. On the lake is a tiny island. And on this island, there are absolutely no snakes, dragons, or monsters–thanks to St. Julius, who, according to legend, sailed across the lake on his cloak in the 4th century and banished them.

These days, Orta is known to be a romantic destination for couples in love, but when Kasper and Tajana go there on their honeymoon, some of the banished serpents decide it’s the perfect time to return home. The thing is, the serpents may not be what they seem. And, as it turns out, neither are the newlyweds…

TAKING THE EDGE OFF by Natalie Camunas; directed by Rebecca Louisell

Synopsis: Taking the Edge Off is the story of Sara, an alcoholic Latinx woman in her 30s, who has a night of binge drinking after learning that her partner has cheated on her. In her drunken stupor, she runs a red light and wakes up in heaven. Well, almost. She is greeted by three intermediary angels who inform her that if she’d like to return to her life, she’s got to take a hard look at how she arrived at this point. Along with their help, Sara must finally deal with a generation’s worth of familial grief, figure out who she is without alcohol, and learn what loving yourself truly feels like.

*These readings were made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs & is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. *

THE HOLE IN THE SKY
by Jennifer Bobiwash; directed by Pastiche Queen

Synopsis: The year is 2491, 1000 years after Columbus has discovered America. Humanity is now searching for a new home after destroying the earth. Exiled from the Earth because of its uninhabitability, 10 ships have been launched from different cities around the globe in the hopes of rendezvousing on Planet B-6-12. But now, instead of a boat full of Europeans, this intergalactic ship is carrying the leader of an ancient religious order and one special passenger, someone who is believed to be the last Native American in the Universe. How will this ancient society and once conquered people come together once they land on this new world? Or will they even make it there…

THE SARAHS (Сари) by Anna Fox. directed by Dean Grosbard

Synopsis: In the year 1919, Sara, a young Jewish woman, works at her family’s bakery in Kyiv, but when the Pogroms happen, the bakery is vandalized and she must flee to New York City where her family establishes a new bakery on the Lower East Side. A little over a hundred years later in 2022, her great granddaughter Sarah is running that very same family bakery, when the landlord raising the rent, pandemic struggles, and someone spray-painting a swastika on the door, force her family to close its doors forever. As Sarah cleans out the bakery, she discovers her great grandmother’s old diary in the wall, and suddenly a new world is unlocked. Feeling determined to embrace her ancestry, and visit the land her great grandmother was once exiled from, she books a plane ticket to Kyiv, when Putin invades and she is no longer able to go. Now she must grapple with her painful family history and identity as a young Jewish Ukrainian woman living in an antisemitic world in ways she never has before. Inspired stylistically by Alice Birch and Caryl Churchill, this play is a time-bendy poetic meditation on ancestry, violence, womanhood, and Jews who’ve been cast out.

BLOSSOMING 2022: Truth & Relativity

THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA by M.J. Kang; directed by Jully Lee. Featuring Cindy Nguyen, Jennifer Cheung, Abraham Lim, Sheila Guerrero-Edmiston.

Synopsis: Inspired by childhood memories, adult experiences, and recent events, three people become entwined in each other’s lives as fellow Koreans in their early 20’s, living in Saratoga Springs, NY, where a battle once took place for liberty.

RELIABLE NARRATORS by Katherine Vondy; directed by Carly D. Weckstein.
Featuring *Paul Turbiak, Danielle Gonzales, Kari Lee Cartwright, *Robert Paterno, Rebecca Aranda.

Synopsis: Sam is going to tell us a story. It's a story about the complications of friendship. It's a story about heartbreak, the triumph of love, and the human condition. It's a relatable and universal story. But also, it's just a story…

…Or is it?

*These readings were made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs & is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. *

DREAM INC. by Emily Brauer Rogers; directed by Dean Grosbard. Featuring Natalie Nicole Dressel, Sheila Guerrero-Edmiston, Curt Gavin, *Cathy Diane Tomlin, Danielle Gonzales.

Synopsis: Dream incubators control the dreams of their patients. But are they experimenting for science or succumbing to corporate realities? However, one client doesn’t seem to be changing while demanding specific results for her own creation of self. Paddling through the uncharted ethical waters of what dreams could become, Dream Inc, asks if we can create better versions of ourselves through dreams—even if we might have to cheat a little.

APT. 205 by Amanda Black; directed by Virtic Emil Brown. Featuring *Allison Reeves, Max Pescherine, *Cathy Diane Tomlin.

Synopsis: Two wanderers named Sione and Derek, can’t seem to face the problems in their respective lives. After meeting on a dating app, and realizing they live in the same apartment building. The two find that they could have been brought together for a purpose much greater than romance. This purpose being to get rid of whoever is living in Apartment 205! Perhaps destroying Apartment 205, will lead these two neighbors towards a kind of connection that neither of them would have ever thought possible.

BLOSSOMING 2021: a virtual edition
History Repeats Itself

MAMA, I WISH I WERE SILVER by Amanda L. Andrei; directed by Fran de Leon.

Synopsis: On a cold January day in 2020, Sofia and Ariel, two estranged Filipina American half-sisters, reunite in Virginia to clean out the photographs, papers, and letters of their recently deceased mother. When they find a cassette tape seemingly recorded on the 1972 declaration of martial law in the Philippines, when Ariel was born, they realize that what their mother left behind has a life of its own. If family history repeats itself, can we choose which ones to repeat?

JALDEE (HURRY) by Ayesha Siddiqui; directed by Reena Dutt.

Synopsis: On Wall Street in 1987, Tariq, a young, charismatic, and ambitious Pakistani immigrant is clawing his way up the corporate banking ladder in hopes of becoming the youngest Vice President to date. As he ruthlessly chases his version of the American dream, we watch how it changes his friendships, relationships, values, and identity. JALDEE (HURRY) draws on the myth of Icarus, the excess of the 80s, and the historical event of Black Monday to explore the sacrifices we make in order to claim our worth and dignity in a world where we are treated as commodities.

N*GGA B*TCH by June Carryl; directed by Ann James

Synopsis: Nambi keeps dying and coming back: as an African princess traded to the New World only to drown in the Atlantic; as a suffragette bludgeoned to death by her lover; as a Black Panther shot down by a policeman’s bullet leaving the scene of a failed bombing. After each incarnation she wakes to find the Man in the White Coat. Is he God or the devil? Or just the hospital orderly there to deliver her meds?

Eventually, she meets Helen, the place’s only other inmate, stabs an orderly and escapes only to find herself in a flooded subway, then is pulled away from her lover. Soon, all her realities converge and the Man in the White Coat informs her that she is a mistake, perhaps an accident of the Hadron collider, not meant to exist at all. And yet… With the help of a mysterious little girl Nambi finally names her/Self and gains her freedom.

In a commencement speech at Barnard College, Viola Davis said, “The world is a wounded place because we are wounded.” And whether we think it’s cheesy or not, the only escape is love—of self and of others. N*GGA B*TCH is about being on repeat and the insanity that is black womanhood: being and yet being invisible, the alternating accommodation and outrage, and downright “What the fuckery???” A riff on existence and letting go, N**GGA B*TCH is a story of grief, healing, and reinvention.

*These readings were made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs & is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. *

WINCHESTER/WINCHESTER by Katherine Vondy; directed by Jessie Lee Mills. Dialect coaching by Meagan Prahl

Synopsis: In the 990s, Southern England is constantly beset by Danish invaders, who plunder and destroy their ways across the Kingdom of Wessex. In the 1990s, international relations continue to be a hot topic in the US, where the Clinton administration has just passed NAFTA. And in the midst of these disparate political landscapes are Gænburh & Æscwyn and Jennifer & Amanda: two pairs of teenage sisters living in Medieval Winchester, England, and 20th-century Winchester, Virginia. As all of them are learning, the world is full of peril for young women--whether facing the physical threats of the wild animals in the forest or the emotional threats of public high school. How do individual lives get shaped by broader political and national events, and what can lives separated by an ocean and a millenium possibly have in common? WINCHESTER/WINCHESTER is a darkly comic and poignant exploration of the relationships between two pairs of sisters, living in sister cities a thousand years apart.

A LONG TIME COMING by Weston Gaylord; directed by Hannah Wolf

Synopsis: A forest is growing in Norway, planted to provide paper for a set of texts that will be printed in the year 2114. Each year between 2014-2114, an author is selected to write a text for this Future Library which will be preserved, unread, until the printing. The play tells two intertwining stories of one family: a novelist in 2022 who puts his mother’s life story into words, his great-granddaughter and her son in 2114 who journey from a California farm to a Norwegian forest for the opening of the Library, and a secret that has waited a century to come to light. Examining the voices we choose to preserve and those that are lost forever, A LONG TIME COMING looks toward a future that holds both disaster and hope.

Inspired by The Future Library Project, an artwork conceived by Katie Paterson in 2014 and commissioned by the City of Oslo’s Slow Space public art program.

WARRIOR’S BLOOD by Joseph D. Valdez; directed by Elizabeth Frances; Navajo Translation by Keanu Gorman

Synopsis: Focusing on his “rags to middle-class” story, Johnny, a 38 year-old Navajo single father, has galvanized people across the county with his “American Dream” congressional campaign, and he has been selected to give the keynote address at the Democratic Convention. However, a week before he is set to deliver the speech, his grandfather is placed under hospice care and only given a few months to live. As he fights for his life, Grandpa finds himself stuck in his past—World War 2, fighting across Normandy. As Johnny attempts to come to terms with the imminent passing of the man who raised him, he must also find a way to manage attacks on his campaign while finding his 16 year old daughter, who has run away. In investigating identity, legacy, and intergenerational trauma, WARRIOR’S BLOOD examines a Native family’s struggle to thrive in a 21st century America.

BLOSSOMING 2020: the virtual edition
When The Political Becomes Personal

The Last One by Mercedes Segesvary; directed by Carly Weckstein

THE LAST ONE is the story of Kranbary, a woman who was once a National Dart Throwing Champion, but now, in her 30s, struggles to find purpose in her day to day world. Her best friend, Bucket, is in a similar state and one day decides to become a Life Coach/Motivator. As Bucket learns new techniques to face his life’s challenges, Kranbary notices that Bucket has forgotten a portion of his negative memories. She’s turned off by Bucket’s sudden intense positivity and begins to pull away from their friendship. But she can’t get far from this Goop-y positivity, for everyone around her is rapidly going through a similar change. This sudden mass human consciousness shift leads Kranbary down a rabbit hole to discover the source of the Shift.

when we breathe by Jaisey Bates; directed by June Carryl

Two twins. Half-siblings. Strangers. Their authoress, four days gone. A sheep that speaks, recently deceased. A coyote. Possibly supernatural. A stormy night. Probably supernatural. A history-haunted mine-contaminated sacred storied thirsty imagined land. A play that asks: Who are we? Who will be the 'we' we write?

Into the Side of a Hill by James Anthony Tyler; directed by Jamil Jude

At a Historically Black University in 2004, 6 fraternity brothers rehearse for the annual Homecoming Step Show. As they rehearse, issues such as mental illness, toxic masculinity, and war bring all of the young men into battle with each other. Is their brotherhood strong enough to keep them united?

Slowly And Then All At Once by Katherine Vondy; directed by Hannah Wolfe

Naomi and Kiran have a nice life together. They work from home. They get their groceries delivered. They binge-watch streaming TV shows. But the earthquakes just won’t stop. And when Naomi’s destitute cousin unexpectedly appears on their doorstep, he brings the reality of the outside world--decimated by the effects of climate change--in with him, and their lives are shaken up even more. What are our obligations to family? How different are they from our obligations to strangers? Our obligations to our partners? Ourselves? SLOWLY AND THEN ALL AT ONCE examines the ways that our health, our safety, and our futures are inextricably intertwined with the well-being of our planet.

Walk Like an Egyptian by Tamadhur Al-Aqeel; directed by Rachel Park

In an LA of the near future where water and food shortages are the norm, performance artist Miriam Louisa is hiding from the government in her parents’ garage. After the suspicious death of her father, and witnessing two strangers in the neighborhood stealing garbage, Miriam kidnaps both thieves only to discover they are part of a government program to steal DNA to plant at crime scenes. What follows between the prisoners and their captor becomes an argument over the role of the individual during a time of repression.

BLOSSOMING 2019
True Crime

Taciturn Beings by librecht baker; directed by Tamiyka White

Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Semi-Finalist

In the Night Child, the womxn are gated by their own rules, tend their gardens, and revel in their company while being anchored by Oni, an elder who knows the community's herstories. When the womxn's lives begin to uncoil, Oni helps them recombine with their unremembered parts of themselves.

Nurse Cadden by Kate Mickere; directed by Theo Motzenbacker

O'Neill Semi-Finalist

Everyone living in mid-century Dublin knows Mamie Cadden — she’s the boorish woman who motors around the city in her bright red sports car. She also happens to be a notorious backstreet abortionist who profits off the secrets of Dublin’s most powerful men. When the body of pregnant Helen O’Reilly is found dumped outside of Mamie’s flat, the infamous nurse is sentenced to hang. Can a Divine intervention save Nurse Cadden’s soul before it’s too late?

Intertwined by Tracy Held Potter; directed by Gleason Bauer

It’s 1906 and Chinese immigrant Win Chow has fled his home country to create a better life for himself in San Francisco. After establishing a successful business, Win gets closer to his dream, but laws banning interracial marriage are pulling him from the woman he loves while anti-immigration laws push him towards a Chinese woman he barely knows.

Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
by Katherine Vondy; directed by Jessie Lee Mills

While wandering Worcester, England in 1943 in search of bird eggs, a teenage boy happened upon the skeleton of an unidentified woman inside the trunk of a large tree. An investigation commenced to determine who the woman was and how she died, but it raised more questions than it answered. Was she a spy? Was she a prostitute? Had she been part of an occult ritual? Theories abounded, but no definitive answers emerged. Then graffiti began to appear around town, asking a question that remains unanswered to this day...
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM? uses the historical mystery to explore the ways in which society imposes identities on women, and ultimately ask how much it's possible to truly know another person.

Slur by Ilana Turner; directed by Diana Wyenn

In pre-World War One England, Maud Allan rises to world fame as one of the first ‘modern’ dancers, only to sue for criminal libel an ultra-conservative member of Parliament who accuses her of promoting sexual deviancy via her performances. Slur delves into the hypocrisy of moral mandates for women, how the legal system can be wielded as a weapon to suppress artists, and the effects of guilt by association.

Molly by Howard Ho;
directed by Arthur Keng

A Musical Journey through the surprising rise and fall of Ecstasy, the drug that changed how we move and groove. From her birth in a German lab in 1912 to the Rave scene's Summer of Love in 1988, Molly sings her intoxicating song and, along the way, ignites a movement.

BLOSSOMING 2018
Classics Re-Imagined

Hedda Gabler: Re-imagined by Lena Ford; directed by Nagham Wehbe

Hedda Gabler keeps her maiden name instead of taking her husband’s to separate herself from someone who proudly voted for the current President whom she dislikes. Andy is a white conservative who tends to lack worldly compassion at times, but Black West Indian Hedda knows he is deeply devoted to her. Things are going as well as expected until friends from the past visit dredging up old wounds and new expectations.

The Snake God of Fiji (A Hedda Gabler Prequel) by Katherine Vondy;
directed by Darcie Crager

In Ibsen's play, Hedda Gabler burns the manuscript written by Eilert Lövborg, her former lover. The world never knew what was written in that book. Until now. Exploring the roles that memory and desire have in storytelling, The Snake God of Fiji (A Hedda Gabler Prequel) tells the peculiar tale of this mysterious book's creation.

Celebrity Trash by Nicholas Pilapil;
directed by Miranda Stewart

Harlow is an “It Girl” famous for her fame. After a sex tape scandal, she tries to rehab her image, but when her father throws a lavish party in their mansion, she's tempted again by Hollywood's excess—and by one her father’s social-climbing employees. What follows is a dangerous game of seduction as the two battle each other in a struggle for power and an escape from their trapped existences. An adaptation of Miss Julie, August Strindberg’s iconic play about class and sex, Celebrity Trash adds explorations of race, white male privilege, and celebrity culture to the mix by setting the action in 2007—before the social media age and just as Britney Spears had shaved her head.

The Wicked One (formerly The 626 Project) by Lisa Dring; directed by Hannah Chodos

O'Neil Semi-Finalist
2018 Relentless Award Finalist
Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist
Seven Devils Playwrights Finalist

The 626 Project is inspired by the true story of a mother faced with a brutal decision. Set in Rosemead, CA, a terminal cancer diagnosis forces a first generation Laotian immigrant to confront her son's schizophrenia. Using traditional Asian instruments to create a hybrid of contemporary and classical music, this operetta explores the piercing isolation experienced by single immigrant mothers, the shame around mental illness that often plagues Asian families, and the heft of having to carry your culture with you in a foreign land.

The Last, Best Small Town by John Johnson; directed by Arthur Keng

THE LAST, BEST SMALL TOWN tells the story of two neighboring families--one Latinx and one white--who live in the small southern California town of Fillmore. As the first decade of the 21st century unfolds, the children of these families come of age, fall in love, and suffer loss, as they continually hunt for their place in a world that can no longer promise them a better life than their parents.

*These readings were made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.*

BLOSSOMING 2017

BLOSSOMING 2016

BLOSSOMING 2015

Mercy Station by Abbey Fenbert;
directed by Darcie Crager

Metamorphosis by Cort Brinkerhoff; directed by Eric Hoff

The Scrambling Class by Amy Tofte; directed by McKerrin Kelly

Young Dumb Broke High School
Kids by Nicholas Pilapil;
directed by Arthur Keng

Various Emporia by Howard Ho;
directed by Doug Oliphant

O'Neill Finalist
David Henry Hwang Writers Institute Playwriting Scholarship

I Want Her Wet Like Gasoline by Megan Breen; directed by Carly Weckstein

The Ocean Deep by Katherine Vondy; directed by Miranda Stewart
O'Neill Semi-Finalist

Child by Abbey Fenbert; directed by Caitlin Hart

O'Neill Finalist

OP by Jesse Shao; directed by Caitlin Hart

Disappointment
Island
by Howard Ho;
directed by David Mancini

O'Neill Finalist

Horse by Cort Brinkerhoff; directed by Reena Dutt

(2015)

The Charlie Play by Nahal Navidar; directed by Doug Oliphant

BLOSSOMING 2014

BLOSSOMING 2013

BLOSSOMING 2012

The Tale of a Girl by Annette Lee; directed by Doug Olipant

The God Particle by Annette Lee; directed by Doug Olipant

Jackson Demands by Megan Breen; directed by Doug Oliphant

Dolls of America by Boni B. Alvarez; directed by Caitlin Hart

The Bomb Plot by Cort Brinkerhoff; directed by Sabina Ptasznik

The Vermillion Hand by Cort Brinkerhoff; directed by Caitlin Hart

Falling Slanted, Sad & Crazy by Chelsea Sutton; directed by Sabina Ptasznik

Marabella by Boni B. Alvarez; directed by Efrain Schunior

The Dead Woman by Chelsea Sutton; directed by Raina Pratto

O'Neill Semi-Finalist

The Nightmare Room by Cort Brinkerhoff; directed by Doug Oliphant

H.A.P. by Chelsea Sutton; directed by Caitlin Hart

Chardust by Niki Blumberg; directed by Noam Rubin

She Cries Rivers of Diamonds and Dust/
While the Sky Bleeds Flames/ and the Earth Hums a Lullaby by Donald Jolly; directed by Laura Steinroeder

The Special Education of Miss Lorna Cambonga by Boni B. Alvarez; directed by Sabina Ptasznik

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