THE 22/23 EARLY-CAREER WRITERS’ GROUP

Each year we gather eight playwrights over the course of a season to develop work, commune with each other and meet various industry professionals, culminating in a reading series during Summerworks. We’re pleased to introduce you to the writers from the past season and their work. Click the titles to download their scripts. This program is generously supported by The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation and The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust.

Sam Bell is a writer from Providence, Rhode Island. His work has been supported by Clubbed Thumb, Stillwright, and has appeared at AS220 in Providence. He holds a BA in Playwriting and Screenwriting from SUNY Purchase.

Untitled Boots/Knife Play
A freakish blizzard traps siblings Shara and Nico in a small, remote house which Shara has been renovating. As they fight over who correctly remembers a strange event from their childhood, they begin to receive visits from a cheerful, barefoot man whose body is rapidly succumbing to frostbite.

Daniela Gonzalez y Perez (they/she) is a queer Puerto Rican playwright, actor, and teaching artist from Brooklyn. Their writing explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion through fantasy, “magical realism”, sci-fi, and that “Brooklyn shit” to confront/reject societal norms, barriers, and the displacement of peoples. Currently in Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writer’s Group being mentored by David Henry Hwang and recently in The Latinx Playwrights Circle’s Intensive Mentorship Program and mentored by Migdalia Cruz. Writing creds include Cosmic Cherry Festival, The 24 hour Plays, Fucked-Up Play Fest!, Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Slam by Nosotros & NBC, and Fortway Media. Acting creds include Rattlestick Theater, INTAR Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Tank, and Gallery Players. They hold a BFA in Acting from Brooklyn College, are a member of INTAR’s Unit 52 and The Latinx Playwrights Circle, and a teaching artist for Manhattan Theatre Club.

The Raptors
BREAKING NEWS: Puerto Rico has just been declared the 51st state of the United States causing chaos to break out in the U.S. and on the island! As the last remaining resistance group of women and non-gendered people are being hunted by the government in El Yunque rainforest, strange things begin to occur when they’re forced to reckon with identity, trauma, and survival as time threatens to escape them and the race for their memory begins.

ÁNGEL Y CHUPI (The Reinvented Queer Tale of the Puerto Rican Chupacabra)
The tortured tale of two reincarnated spirits that find themselves face to face in their newest forms, one as a quirky Puerto Rican angel and the other as a repulsive although charming Chupacabra, after being separated for centuries. A love triangle ensues when a mystery woman appears, threatening the balance of their worlds, as they grapple with obsession, forgiveness, grief, and the afterlife as they’re not only forced to face each other, but themselves.

Emma Horwitz is a writer from New York City. Her plays have been recently supported by New Georges (2022-2023 Audrey Resident w/ Bailey Williams, Affiliated Artist), Clubbed Thumb (2022-2023 Early Career Writers Group), The Playwrights Realm (2021-2022 Writing Fellow), Williamstown Theater Festival (2020 “Playwright-in-Residence”). Her fiction has been recently published with Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Two Serious Ladies. She teaches playwriting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has previously taught at Brown University and Mount Holyoke College. BA: Bard College, Written Arts. MFA: Brown University, Playwriting. For more: emmahorwitz.com

The Executrix
A non-murder murder mystery about longing and love affairs.

Bogdonoff
Alice and Francis walk their dogs off leash in a park by the river.

Katelynn Kenney (she/her) is a disabled, queer Filipina American writer, director, performer, teacher, and folklore enthusiast who develops work for the stage, screen, audio, and games. Her plays have been produced and developed by The Tank, Primary Stages’ ESPA, the Skeleton Rep, FEAST at Under St. Marks, the Baltimore Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, Prospect Theater Company, and others. Kenney was a finalist for the 2021 Sundance Uprise Grant and was awarded a 2021 Ma-Yi Micro Grant. She is a member of the ’22-’23 Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group and the ‘23-’25 New Georges Jam. MFA: Brooklyn College, Playwriting. https://linktr.ee/kkenneyplays

c h r o n i c
A play about an ambitious artist and horror fan who starts developing strange and increasingly frightening symptoms. As she searches for a diagnosis, she transmutes her symptoms into different monsters and creatures of folklore, and she discovers that there are other, more deceptive, monsters lurking in this ableist world.

10 Years
A climate-conscious Etsy store owner raises her child in her studio apartment over these next 10 years—through them, we experience Earth’s rearing of humanity and our rebellion against the planet that birthed us. With vastness and intimacy, 10 Years wrestles with the question of our agency in the current and oncoming waves of the climate crisis. As the child’s imaginary friends, you, the audience, may choose to affect the course of their life…and our future.

Nina Ki (xe/she/they) is a Queerean (Queer + Korean) American playwright who was born and raised in Los Angeles, but currently lives in Brooklyn. Xe graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2008 with a BFA in Dramatic Writing, and xer plays have been read, recorded, and presented nationwide, including with MCC Theater, Queens Theatre, Yale Summer Cabaret, and The Parsnip Ship. Xer play Moon Bear was given special consideration for the Relentless Award, and xer play Ravage was a finalist for the Playwrights Realm’s Fellowship. Xe was also an inaugural member of The Parsnip Ship’s Radio Roots Writer’s Group, and is currently a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group and Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab. To contact xer or learn more about xer work, please visit xer website at www.nina-ki.com.

Rescues
Rin – closed off and still coping with the loss of a previous dog – takes on the responsibility of caring for a special needs dog named Hannibal. Can the two open their hearts to one another, to become the family they both need – or will all the trauma they’ve experienced get in the way?

Moon Bear
Silver and Richie are siblings without parents. As the two grow up, they cling to one another as each other’s family, and help one another navigate their positions as social outsiders – Silver as a genderqueer weirdo, and Richie as a drug dealing gangbanger. In a parallel world, Bear is ousted from his tribe and through a gesture of filial piety, is turned by Hwanung, a gay Korean god, into a human woman. S/he is then coerced into being Hwanung’s pregnant beard, and has Hwanung’s child. As family bonds begin to disintegrate, and the god-world begins to crumble, Silver and Bear must redefine home for themselves, to find power through the magic of stories.

Kaia Lyons (they/she) is a Black queer playwright and memoirist from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, now based in Austin. They are a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood collective and an alum of Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Play Group (2021), HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat (2020), and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (Tennessee Williams Scholar in Playwriting, 2019). Her work has been developed with/presented by The Black Box Project NYC, The Starfruit Project, The Playground Experiment, Possibilities Theatre Company, and Strange Trace Opera Company. B.A.: Washington University in St. Louis.

Straight Wedding
When Hana Murphy’s ex-girlfriend Smythe (the world’s hottest lesbian) shows up to crash her wedding to Laurie (a straight man), not even her ball gown of a wedding dress can hide all the secrets that threaten to spill out. Straight Wedding is a play that asks two questions: first, just how much can we afford to keep from the people we claim to love? And second, is anyone getting married today?

kanishk pandey (he/him/his) is a joyous exile who attempts to live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life. As a writer, he believes that art must be in constant conflict with society and express the love all beings deserve. His work interrogates this through the guiding light of the oversoul – that all souls are intertwined and that consciousness can only exist through dialogue and connection. And he follows these concepts in everything he does, be it plays, short stories, films, scholarship, poetry, graphic novels, and more. As long as he gets to talk to you. His work has been developed at The Lark, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Clubbed Thumb, Sanguine Theater, and others.  Kanishkpandey.com

Gardens @ Glennshead
On her way to plant her late mother’s herbs, Karna awakens a long sleeping Giant and suddenly finds the world folding in on itself.

Let Me Let Me Rot
When Mangal’s suicide attempt fails, he suddenly finds himself in an awkward predicament: face to face with a recent meet on a dating app, Death herself.

Hayley Stahl is a writer from Michigan. Her work has been supported by MacDowell, Yaddo, and Clubbed Thumb. She holds a BA in film from the University of Michigan and an MFA in playwriting from Hunter College.

X