The PlayLab is a playwrights group that aids and encourages artists in growing their biggest, wildest ideas into imaginative and daring new plays. Through monthly meetings, workshop-events, and an artistic retreat, each writer is supported in developing their ambitious initial concept into a new script. At the end of the year, each playwright will have the opportunity to present their script.
Class of 2022: Nelson Diaz-Marcano, Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin, Kairos Looney
Nelson Diaz-Marcano
Nelson Diaz-Marcano is a Puerto Rican NYC-based theater maker, activist, and community leader whose mission is to create work that challenges and builds community. He currently serves as the Literary Director for the Latinx Playwright Circle as well as the Community Outreach Coordinator for Atlantic Theater Company. His plays have been developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Vision Latino Theater Company, The Orchard Project, The William Inge Theatre Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and The Parsnip Ship among others. Recent credits include: Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? Part 1 (Vision Latino Theater Company) When the Earth Moves, We Dance (Clubbed Thumb,) Flor: A Podcast Series (Braata Productions,) The Diplomats (Random Acts Chicago,) Paper Towels (INTAR,) Misfit, America (Hunter Theatre Company,) I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja (Conch Shell Productions) and Revolt! (Vision Latino Theatre Company.)
Project: 1898
As Puerto Rico goes from being a Spanish colony to a US territory, the promise of independence seems to be within grasp, and nobody is more excited to welcome the USA than the Suarez family. Owners of a small Coffee plantation, the family is even more thrilled when an American investor takes interest in their land promising riches they never had. But as soon as he arrives things start falling apart, and strange dreams haunt the family threatening their land, identity and sanity.
Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin
Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin is a writer, producer, performer, and educator. Their plays include Tiger Beat (2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2021 Seven Devils Conference finalist), Harpers Ferry 2019 (2021 Kendeda Playwriting Award finalist, Alliance Theater workshop, 2022 Know Theatre production in Cincinnati), Call Out Culture: or, the unbearable whiteness of being (2021 NADIA Amplified Currents Festival, 2019 Ars Nova’s ANTFest), and The Well-Tempered Clavier (2020 BAPF finalist.) Garvin is the recipient of six Kennedy Center awards and is a current member of The Coop’s Clusterf**k, Playground NY, as well as Pipeline Theater Company’s Playlab. Their plays have been developed with The Alliance Theater, Montana Repertory Theater, and College of the Holy Cross, and have been produced at New York venues including Dixon Place, the New Ohio, and Ars Nova. Garvin is a founding member of Undiscovered Countries, a Brooklyn-based incubator of new interdisciplinary art, and is the Play Selection Advisor for BAPF Season 45. Garvin currently teaches playwriting and theater history at Cornish College of the Arts. MFA, Indiana University; BFA, NYU. www.kaelameishinggarvin.com / @kaemeishing on IG, twitter
Project: Living Elegy
Octogenarian Siobhan shares stories with adolescent Aoife, connecting Joan of Arc’s visionary faith to the midcentury American computer industry, domestic work, and fading memory.
Kairos Looney
Kairos Looney is a trans, queer theatremaker of Norwegian, Irish, Hungarian, and German descent. They are based on unceded Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, Comanche and Tonkawa lands. Kairos’ plays and musical collaborations have been presented at Joe’s Pub, Magic Time at Judson, Dixon Place, The Duplex, and La MaMa Club Cabaret among others. Kairos is especially drawn to projects that investigate the relationships between magic / complex trauma and irreverence / divinity. They recently received their MA in Performance as Public Practice from UT Austin, where they are presently pursuing a PhD. BFA/NYU Tisch.
Project: Radclyffe and the Archivist
Radclyffe and the Archivist is a lyrical comedic play-meets-resurrection exploring: how we learn to be loved and unloved; how cycles of harm form and propagate whiteness; what might be our responsibility to our most problematic chosen trans ancestors; and how we keep promises with the very youngest parts of ourselves.
Class of 2021
Teach by Karina Billini
Good Hair by Phaedra Michelle Scott
A Silkworm Play by Minghao Tu
Class of 2020
righteous kill, a requiem by Nissy Aya
Red Clay Halo by Andy Boyd
BUST by Zora Howard
Untitled Cruise Ship Horror Play by Molly Beach Murphy & Erica Mann
Nasty Yatra by Utkarsh Rajawat
Chava the Giant & the Oldest Bird by Ran Xia
Class of 2019
Society by Skylar Fox & Simon Henriques
When Bees Last Whispered by Sevan K. Greene
Office Comedy by Sukari Jones
Coop by Sam Max
The Ortiz Twins Are Coming Home by Andrew Siañez-De La O
Let’s Hex the President by Kristin Slaney
Class of 2018
Five Hundred by Rick Burkhardt
Bundle of Sticks by J. Julian Christopher
feminine octagon [or, aristotle can eat me] by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk
Earth is Greedy by Jae Kramisen
House of Telescopes by Kairos Looney
Rise of the River by Divya Mangwani
wyrd by Matt Minnicino
Class of 2017
Bruise & Thorne by J. Julian Christopher
Heart of Duckness by A.J. Ditty
The Holdfolk by Freddy Edelhart
The Troll King by Aeneas Sagar Hemphill
Wunderkammer by Francesca Pazniokas
Trick of the Light by Charly Evon Simpson
Class of 2016
Princess Clara of Loisaida by Matt Barbot
Hags, Mopes, and the End of All Existence by Jen Browne
The Mermaid Parade by Gina Femia
The Puppet Show by Reina Hardy
Cracks by Jacob Marx Rice
Girl Becomes Bone by Callan Stout
Eleven Shades of Blue by Amy E. Witting
Class of 2015
Let Me Be Frank by Salty Brine
Untitled Time Dilation Play by Colby Day
The Convent of Pleasure by Sarah Einspanier
The Serpent in Quicksilver by Adam Fried
Pilgrims by Claire Kiechel
Nostalgia is a Mild Form of Grief by Jerry Lieblich
Hiding in Sanity: A Tragicomedy by Rachel Music
Proximity by Jeremy Wine
Class of 2014
Optimism, Or by A.P. Andrews
The Great Molly by Colby Day
Tom’s Nightmare by Andrew Farmer
Show of Hands by Jessica Fleitman
Mystery of Fucking by Scott McCarrey
The Carrion Man by Alex Malcolm Mills
I’s Twinkle by Nate Weida