New Plays Festival 2022 | Part III
July 21–August 19, 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 third and final 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
It Will Rise Soon Enough by Fiona Gorry-Hines, This Hair I Tear Is Mine by Evie Mason, Pair by Kate Pressman, Accidental Feminist by Alaudin Ullah, …enough by Tré Calhoun, Nine Ways to Plead With a God by Kanika Asavari Vaish, camp champ by morgan mcnaught, I’ve never planned to be on earth this long by Clarity Bian, and Tom by Daniel Irving Rattner.
"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
It Will Rise Soon Enough
by Fiona Gorry-Hines
Directed by Victoria Gruenberg
Thursday, July 21 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, July 23 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, July 23 @ 8 pm
2030. A mother and her child tread water with a delivery person in a flooding Greenwich Village apartment during a category six hurricane. 2060. A group of rogue individuals struggle to find new identities and homes in the wreckage of once familiar landscapes. 2090. The firstborn of a self-governed settlement questions whether to follow his own will or the will of his people. It Will Rise Soon Enough is a cross-generational work of speculative theatre that examines how we might be forced to rethink our relationships to labor and capital as it pertains to our identities as we face increasingly dramatic changes to our climate.
This Hair I Tear Is Mine
by Evie Mason
Directed by Jacob Sexton
Friday, July 22 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, July 22 @ 8 pm
Sunday, July 24 @ 2:30 pm
This Hair I Tear Is Mine is, quite simply, a play about being lost at sea. Less simply, stories, real and imagined, interlock across generations in this playful exploration of longing, identity, gender and art. What does it mean to seek connection in the face of abandonment? And is it even possible to find paradise – at sea or elsewhere?
Pair
by Kate Pressman
Directed by Logan Reed
Friday, July 29 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, July 30 @ 8 pm
Sunday, July 31 @ 2:30 pm
“You’re amazing” - “You’re amazing”
“You’re amazing” - “You’re amazing”
Two au pairs in a tiny room in the eaves of a Swiss chalet.
A chance to see the world before their “real lives” of middle class conformity begin.
There’s something that happens when you’re trapped in a place with someone. There’s something that happens when you’re the only two people on earth that matter. There’s something that happens when the place you’re trapped in doesn’t see you.
That tension creates pressure.
That pressure finds a release.
Based loosely on the 1933 murders committed by Christine and Léa Papin – the murders that inspired Jean Genet’s The Maids, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, and a century of films, novels, songs, and Law and Order episodes in between – Pair explores the subtle tyranny of care work, the longing of the powerless for empire, and the tiny twisted pocket world a relationship creates.
Accidental Feminist
a staged reading
by Alaudin Ullah
Directed by Reena Dutt
Thursday, August 5 @ 8 pm
Saturday, August 6 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, August 6 @ 8 pm
A comedian turned documentarian is inspired by an old flame to go back to his parents’ village in Bangladesh to complete a documentary as a gift to his mother. Upon arrival secrets of his parents’ past are revealed, extremists kill bloggers and throw acid on women who defy them, and the female ghosts of 1971 liberation appear while Alaudin must choose between love or championing local women as an accidental feminist.
…enough
by Tré Calhoun
Directed by Ares Harper
Thursday, August 11 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, August 13 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, August 13 @ 8 pm
Fynn, a successful black man, ropes his white childhood friends into a martyrdom ploy against the police. This genre-bending thriller asks: what people need to be sacrificed to find peace in the heart and in the world?
Nine Ways to Plead With a God
by Kanika Asavari Vaish
Directed by Liz Peterson
Friday, August 12 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, August 12 @ 8 pm
Sunday, August 14 @ 2:30 pm
A group of travelers set out to illegally summit a Himalayan mountain believed to be the abode of several Godly presences. As their physical limits, relationships to one another, and perceptions of reality are tested with each meter they climb, they must find a way to achieve their new collective goal: survival.
camp champ
by morgan mcnaught
Directed by Katrina Dion & Liz Peterson
Thursday, August 18 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, August 20 @ 2:30 pm
Saturday, August 20 @ 8 pm
camp champ, is a dark comedy about a bitchy but wildly competent West LA Girl Scout Troop, one of the last communities left in the world. they are on a pre-destined mission to save the last of humanity, that is, if they can sacrifice their crush.
Tom
by Daniel Irving Rattner
Thursday, August 18 @ 7 pm
Friday, August 19 @ 7 pm & 9 pm
Saturday, August 20 @ 7 pm & 9 pm
You’re in a real apartment. You are seated on the couch. The TV turns on, and “The Matchmaker," episode 3 of season 2 of Frasier, plays. It’s a classic Frasier-ian farce, in which Frasier is set up on a date with his gay boss, Tom, as a prank. When the episode ends, the credits play. The sun has set outside. It’s dark. You are alone. And then the door opens: It’s Tom.
I’ve never planned to be on earth this long.
by Clarity Bian
Directed by Chaesong Kim
Friday, August 19 @ 2:30 pm
Friday, August 19 @ 8 pm
Sunday, August 21 @ 2:30 pm
I've never planned to be on this earth long by Clarity Bian was born as a personal experiment on what can be the boundaries and possibilities of forms and narratives on stage and on page. sitting at the intersection of poetry, prose, and play, the sequence is an exploration of growth, desire, romance and diaspora. an ongoing existential crisis. a fanfiction of a life. mostly love. mostly desperation. mostly hope.