New Plays Festival 2022 | Part I
June 2 – 26, 2022
Columbia University School of the Arts presents an expanded festival of new plays written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students. The esteemed faculty who have nurtured these students, including Tony©, Pulitzer, and Obie Award winners such as David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Charles Mee, and Rogelio Martinez, invite you to experience these innovative new playwrights.
This is the second round of our New Plays Festival that runs through the summer presenting the work of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Playwrights of Columbia's MFA Theatre Program.
Organized by David Henry Hwang, Theatre.
Featuring
Good Things Happen by Martin Murray, People on Earth by Sam Grabiner, Eärendil, Our Most Beloved Star by Adam North, The Lark Ascending by Jacob K. Robinson, Bleecker Street Brides by Tatiana Kouguell-Hoell, GIRLHOOD by Ida Esmaeili, Jupiter by Ciara Ní Chuirc, and LOVE (Among Dreamers) by Greg T. Nanni.
"These plays have been created by visionary writers under extraordinary circumstances. Some were originally scheduled to be produced as far back as 2020; others were written during the pandemic itself. Like theatre itself, they have survived the shutdown of our art form to come roaring back to life. We are so proud of what our writers have achieved during these challenging and traumatic times. Enjoy the rebirth!"
– DAVID HENRY HWANG, CONCENTRATION HEAD, PLAYWRITING
Schedule of Events
Good Things Happen
by Martin Murray
Directed by Laura Dupper
Thursday, June 2 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, June 4 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, June 4 @ 8 pm
A working class mother finds a bag of stolen money - more than she could ever hope to earn in her lifetime. But what does the average mom even do with that much cash? And how far will she stretch her moral compass if it means making her family’s wildest dreams come true? Good Things Happen is a nostalgic neo-noir chock full of blue collar crime, money laundering, VHS tapes, phonebook deliveries, manifestation, and pepperoni pizza.
People on Earth
by Sam Grabiner
Directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant
Friday, June 3 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, June 3 @ 8 pm
Sunday, June 5 @ 2:30 pm
An audience gathers. They sit in a circle. And the actors begin to tell them a story…
We are in a prehistoric forest and the trees are dying. Two strangers meet on the outskirts of an ancient city. An iPhone buzzes in a small boat on a stormy sea at night.
As epic as it is intimate, People on Earth takes us on a three-hundred-million-year journey from primordial extinction, through to the not-so-distant future. A play about human progress. And what is lost along the way.
Eärendil, Our Most Beloved Star
by Adam North
Directed by Ana Liza Muravina
Thursday, June 9 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, June 11@ 2:30 pm
Jimmy Byers, a failed startup founder, gets a job working for reclusive billionaire Felix Marshall, whose investment portfolio includes everything from banking apps to cryonics. The strange requirements of the job include a regimented diet, constant travel, and no actual work. A queer gothic story set in the tech world, Eärendil, Our Most Beloved Star explores the nature of transactional relationships, and whether humanity has commodified everything, right down to the heart.
The Lark Ascending
by Jacob K. Robinson
Directed by Joan Sergay
Friday, June 10 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, June 10 @ 8 pm
Sunday, June 12 @ 2:30 pm
It’s the first week of advent at a megachurch in Texas and a congregant’s baby has died. Mike, the head pastor, is praying for resurrection. Tess, the worship pastor, is praying for release. Gideon, her husband, is just trying to help. And they’re all barely holding on. The Lark Ascending is a play about reckoning with a garden overrun with vines, about bolstering and faltering faith, about darkness and light and how, in the end, they might be the same thing.
Bleecker Street Brides
by Tatiana Kouguell-Hoell
Directed by Kat Yen
Thursday, June 16 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, June 18 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, June 18 @ 8 pm
Emmy is getting married today…right? While getting stoned with her grandmother in a bathtub on her wedding day, her grandmother warns her that two old family friends might be coming to the wedding: Sex and Death.
GIRLHOOD
by Ida Esmaeili
Directed by R Lee Kratzer
Friday, June 17 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, June 17 @ 8 pm
Sunday, June 19 @ 2:30 pm
In an Upper East Side apartment, seven teenage girls gather over the course of a year as they prepare for their debutante ball: a night which will ultimately change their lives in ways they never could have predicted.
GIRLHOOD is a dark comedy that follows a diverse and tight-knit group of friends navigating the tragedies of adolescence, and the small cruelties they inflict upon each other while they look for their places in the world. They are funny. They are strong. They are deeply flawed. And they are figuring it out.
This is a play about friendship. This is a play about growing up. This is a play about power, in a world where young women are told they don’t have any.
LOVE (Among Dreamers)
by Greg T. Nanni
Directed by Phoebe Brooks
Friday, June 24 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, June 24 @ 8 pm
Sunday, June 26 @ 2:30 pm
Morpheus, The God of Dreams, hasn’t felt their heart beat for a million years. To try to inspire themself to love again, they make a bet with Janus, the God of Transitions, with Morpheus' own heart on the line. The bet: Can Morpheus bring two humans together every night within the cafe of their dreams and lead them not only to fall in love but to find each other in reality, the one realm Morpheus can’t influence? Are these two meager humans capable of finding each other beyond their dreams, and will it be worth it? Will Morpheus' heart finally beat again, or will it remain numb and still? Join these dreamers in a magical theatrical journey of love and longing.