Playwriting alum Jay Stull '20, Directing alum Keenan Tyler Oliphant ’20 and Film alum Aurora Real de Asua ’24 will have work featured in Second Stage Theater's 2025 Next Stage Festival. The Off-Broadway festival, dedicated to early-career artists, is headlined by Playwriting student D. A. Mindell’s On The Evolutionary Function of Shame.
Stull wrote and Oliphant directs a reading of The Singularity Play, showing on March 3. The play follows a theatre troupe as they develop and rehearse a new play written by an advanced AI named Denise. Heralded by Second Stage as “a new workplace comedy about the last living generation of human beings,” the play examines the nature of human creativity. Former classmates Stull and Oliphant have previously teamed up on the play baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando.
Real de Asua wrote the play Wipeout, which was recently adapted to a short film, about a trio of women who decide to learn how to surf late in life. The play will be read at The Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center on March 10.
Jay Stull is a playwright, director, dramaturg and educator. He made his Off-Broadway playwriting debut at The Connelly Theatre with his play Streepshow! He has directed numerous plays, including Off-Broadway’s Utility, which garnered a New York Times Critic’s Pick. His work has been supported by fellowships or residencies at Yaddo, the New York Theatre Workshop and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He was an artist-in-residence and visiting professor in the Theater, Dance, and Media concentration at Harvard College.
Keenan Tyler Oliphant is a theatre-maker and director from Cape Town, South Africa. He is the associate director of the Tony-winning Hadestown. In South Africa, he founded the alternative musical theatre group Mixing Bowl Productions and produced and directed pieces at the South African National Arts Festival. His work seeks to collide South African storytelling rituals with western theatre expectations.
Aurora Real de Asua is a Basque-American filmmaker, actor and playwright. Her short film Heartsong debuted at Short of the Week, screened at New York Latino Film Festival and garnered acclaim at the Midwest Film Festival. Real de Asusa’s plays have been workshopped at The Old Globe Theatre, The Playwrights Realm and Rivendell Theatre.
