MARCH 16-23 | $5 TICKETS
SMJ
Reynaldo Piniella
kanishk pandey
Sophie McIntosh
Lauren Holmes
The Command Center by SMJ | Sat, March 16 at 8pm
Five apprentices at a high-profile regional theater known for its development of new plays are finally thrown a bone after working for a year. They get a coveted production slot in the summer season after one of the apprentices scores a commission from Hasbro to write a Power Rangers-based play. On the day of opening, the arrival of a Hasbro executive, a double-booked venue, cell phones that never stop ringing, and another awkward encounter with the Artistic Director Lindsay in their housing causes the day to head into a tailspin as emotional distress that has been repressed rises to the surface: dying parents, panic attacks, body issues, food scarcity, economic anxiety, and sexual tension. THE COMMAND CENTER explores how theater isolates people, how theater creates community, and how the theater industry… and Power Rangers exploit young people.
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SMJ (they/them) is an NYC-based, mixed-Latiné, and non-binary playwright, musical theater writer, educator, & theatermaker originally from Mount Vernon, OH. They were a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow. Currently, SMJ is creating work with Ars Nova, The Road Theatre Company, The Orchard Project, American Theater Group, LatinX Playwrights Circle, and Open Jar Studios. Their work has been developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, New York Stage and Film, Lincoln Center, National Queer Theater, Latiné Musical Theatre Lab, Art House Productions, Carnegie Mellon University, Otterbein University, Wright State University, NYU’s Tisch New Theatre, UTEP, Andy's Summer Playhouse, The Workshop Theater, The 24 Hour Plays, The Flea Theater, Live Arts, CRY HAVOC, The Tank, DR2 Theatre, and others. SMJ has been a semifinalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference (2022, 2023, & Current 2024), Princess Grace Award at New Dramatists, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, and The Civilians R & D Group as well as a Finalist for the 2023 Parity Development Award, Illinois State University’s 2024 Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative, Write Out Loud Contest, 5th Avenue Theater's First Draft Commission, and the Doric Wilson Playwright Award. They’re a member of the Dramatists Guild and Ring of Keys.
PRISONCORE! by kanishk pandey | Tues, March 19 at 7pm
PRISONCORE! is a multidisciplinary show that places the audience within a panopticon to confront the inherent cruel nature of prisons and investigate the possibility of prison abolishment. It focuses on two characters: Lucky, who works as the sole prison guard on the night shift while whittling away his massive debt by playing blackjack on an online gambling service hosted by Rain, a VTuber running the blackjack table.
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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. He is a writer, artist, and scholar who believes that art must be in constant conflict with society to express the love all beings deserve. His work interrogates this through the belief that consciousness can only exist through dialogue and interaction, and that every living creature shares an unspoken connection. He follows these concepts in everything he does, be it plays, short stories, films, or essays. As long as he gets to connect with you.
His work has been supported by organizations such as The Brick, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Sanguine Theater, and Boomerang Theatre, and has been honored by institutions such as Synecdoche Works, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Austin Film Festival, and New York Stage and Film.
Zeus 4 by Lauren Holmes | Thu, March 21 at 7pm
In a park in Boston, dog owners gather to let their dogs run around off leash — against park rules. As the seasons pass, they all must overcome constant threats to their dog park society from other park goers, from park rangers, and from each other.
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Lauren Holmes is a writer. She grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, and ended up in New York City, where she graduated from Hunter College’s MFA playwriting program in 2023. She writes dark, comic plays about class, work, families of happenstance, and seekers of hidden knowledge. They’re grounded in realism, but full of ghosts, invisible dogs, aliens, and other spirits. Lauren was recently awarded a 2024 Woodward Residency. She’s been a finalist for the Bushwick Starr Reading Series and the Risk Theatre Prize, as well as a semi-finalist for the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, The Next Forever Residency, The Civilians R&D Lab, and the WP Lab. When they graduated in May, Lauren and her Hunter classmates founded a theater collective, The Omnivores — check them out! Before becoming a playwright, she worked on political campaigns, in corporate America, and for the United Nations in Italy and New York. She graduated from Harvard College (BA in government), and the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli in Rome, Italy (MA in economics), where she was an Intesa Sanpaolo Scholar.
Son of an Unknown Father By Reynaldo Piniella | Fri, March 22 at 7pm
Son of an Unknown father tells the story of the first Black saint of the Americas, Martin de Porres. Born into slavery in Lima, Peru in the 1600s, Martin aspired to break through the chains of his bondage by devoting his life to the Catholic Church. But no matter how virtuous Martin was, nothing could break through the barriers of his oppression. Until one day, Martin discovers he has the power to heal people with his bare hands. Suddenly viewed as the second son of God, people come from far and wide to meet the man with the magic hands. Martin's burden becomes too much and he is forced to make a decision - self-preservation or self-sacrifice?
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Reynaldo Piniella is an actor, writer, activist and educator from East New York, Brooklyn. In 2021, he was in the acting company of two Broadway shows at the same time – Thoughts of a Colored Man and Trouble in Mind. As a playwright, his work includes Black Doves (Thomas Barbour award for Playwriting), Real Life RPG (commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage, produced by San Diego Rep, Shakesqueer Theater Company and Pioneer Theater Guild), No Shade (produced by the Lee Strasberg Institute at NYU Tisch), I’m Old School (produced by Single Carrot Theater) and Black and Blue (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest.) He received the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship from Theatre Communications Group to develop a bilingual English-Spanish Hamlet with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. He is an alum of New Victory Theater's LabWorks, All for One Theater’s Solo Collective, the Civilians’ R&D Group and a former artist-in-residence at Abingdon Theatre Company and Culture Lab LIC. He is the inaugural recipient of the All Stars Project’s Fellowship for Young Artists of Color, a FREEdom Fellow at the Weeksville Heritage Center and has received residencies from the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Initiative and HB Studio. His Off-Broadway acting credits include The Death of the Last Black Man…, Venus (Signature), The Skin of Our Teeth (TFANA), Lockdown (Rattlestick), The Space Between the Letters (The Public/UTR), Lockdown (Rattlestick) and The Best of Theatreworks (Working Theater). Regional acting credits include work at Baltimore Center Stage, Syracuse Stage, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, O’Neill, Sundance Theatre Lab and Cleveland Play House.
The After Wife By Sophie McIntosh | Sat, March 23 at 7pm
It is 1963, and robotic engineer Martin has brought a prototype robot named Nora—the most authentically humanoid model created to date—to his home in the suburbs of Chicago to help take care of his house and children following the recent death of his wife. His daughter Ruth and son Wally, initially intrigued by the robot, become unnerved as its mannerisms grow increasingly and eerily similar to those of their deceased mother.
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Sophie McIntosh (she/her) is a New York–based playwright and theatermaker. Her writing gives voice to women and queer folks, offers empathetic insight into living with mental illness, and lovingly riffs on the cynical sincerity of young adults. Sophie is also the co-founder of Good Apples Collective, a developmental orchard for new theatrical works that she co-leads with her collaborator Nina Goodheart. Recent productions of Sophie’s work include the world premiere of MACBITCHES (New York Times Critic’s Pick) at the Chain Theatre, the premiere of CITYSCRAPE at Good Apples Collective, and the college premiere of ELEVEN MONTHS OF NUCLEAR SUMMER at Notre Dame University. Sophie’s plays have also been developed by Pioneer Theatre Company, the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, the Bechdel Group, the Unicorn Theatre, and Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective. Sophie is a proud recipient of a BA in drama from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and is currently working toward an MFA in playwriting at Columbia University.