Each year, we select new works of heightened language and classical themes from today’s hottest writers from over 300 submissions and commission two from today’s top playwrights.

 

featuring brand new plays by Lee Blessing and Ellen McLaughlin, Matt Barbot, Dipika Guha, Stephen Massicotte, Jason Gray Platt, Aubrey Saverino, and Matthew Wells

directed by May Adrales and Evan Yionoulis

with David Barlow, Jeff Biehl, Jeremy Bobb, Nick Choksi, Deborah S. Craig, Ray Dooley, Susannah Flood, Sam Lilja, Maria Christina Oliveras, Erin Wilhelmi, and more ​

 

Inspired by the theme of "Uncontrolled Passions," the plays and playwrights this year include:

 

Matt Barbot

A LIST OF SOME SH*T I'VE KILLED

If he were alive right now how might Sophocles write his plays? Based on Philoctetes, this contemporary take on a classic story is hilariously provocative - brazenly depicting how modern man might handle the high stakes Trojan War.

 

Lee Blessing

STONES

Filled with offbeat humor and insightful truth, this is a heart-wrenching look inside a man’s head as he grapples with an affair that was exposed. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but .... hmmm.

 

Dipika Guha

AN AMERICAN DREAM

This charming and surprising verse comedy explores entertaining versions of Shakespeare’s Sebastian and Olivia from Twelfth Night. You’ll be laughing as you follow Seb’s unusual journey to London to win his love.

 

Stephen Massicotte

IN THE ATTIC

As sun shines through the rafters of the castle’s attic in Denmark, young Hamlet and Ophelia play, reckon with identity, and fabricate an imminent destiny for themselves.

 

Ellen McLaughlin

FIRST AND LAST IN THE UNDERWORLD

What if the Trojan War could have been stopped? From the afterlife we meet the first and last to die in this simple and shockingly potent contemplation of life, war and the scope of history.

 

Jason Gray Platt

SLEEP NOW

This poignant story of mother and child both dealing with the unexplainable fears that come with growing older explores our innate desire to make sense of the unanswerable questions of life.

 

Aubrey Saverino

DIDO AND AENEAS

Filled with eerie imagery and passionate rhyme, this tragic story of love, of lust and fate descends upon the heart in a visceral and haunting fashion. As much as we wish heaven would leave us free, it haunts our lives with fate's decree.

 

Matthew Wells

ROMEO AND ROSALINE

Just what did Rosaline make of the shenanigans of Romeo and Juliet? This hilarious alternate ending to the romantic tragedy provides an even bloodier denouement. Shakespeare meets Tarantino!