Barbarians by Nick Robideau
January 17, 2023 at 7pm ET
Jasmine, her boyfriend Scott, and her best friend Marquise are 30-somethings doing their best to navigate ambition, romance, and the brutal aftermath of an environmental disaster. Relationships get murky, society collapses, and oh yeah, Scott joins a local white militia group, which is somewhat controversial back at home since Jasmine and Marquise are Black. Fast-forward a year, and the trio finds themselves in separate interrogations, trying to explain how one of them came to commit a terrible act of violence. As the two timelines unfold, bounce off each other, and slowly start to converge, Jasmine, Scott, and Marquise are forced to truly look at themselves in the harsh light of the apocalypse.
PARALYSIS by: Kyle A. Smith
March 14, 2023 at 7pm ET
Joy just got broken up with. They commiserate with their best friend, Lilly, and usually that would be enough, but not this time. This time, the breakup triggers a full-blown depressive episode, which goes deeper in pain than any breakup could. Joy, fearing rejection and disappointment, resolves themselves to staying in bed. Unfortunately, bed holds nightmares for Joy. Lilly tries to get Joy out of the bed, as Joy falls deeper into depression, has vivid nightmares, and is haunted by a sleep paralysis demon with the
head of an angler fish. As reality fractures around Joy, and they succumb to hallucinations, they confront the Angler, free themselves from their paralysis, and leave their room, with the help of Lilly. Paralysis is about the difficulties of mental illness, the strength of friendship, and the importance of taking action when you feel that all is lost.
THE MIMOSA WAR by Maximillian Gill
May 16, 2023 at 7pm ET
Two Manhattan couples find their brunch plans derailed when martial law is declared and the national guard occupies the city. As the months pass, a resistance movement splinters into a civil war among rival factions. The four characters have their own fractures as some commit themselves to fighting but others want to collaborate or just keep their heads down and survive. An absurdist dark comedy that explores the lengths people will go to just to hold onto a piece of Manhattan real estate.
You Have To Promise by Audrey Lang
Seventeen-year-olds Maeve and Nessa have been best friends their entire lives. Three months ago, they discovered what they had was more than a friendship. When they decide to come out to their families together, Nessa's father kicks her out and the girls scramble to come up with a solution, all the while lying to Maeve's stepmother Rachael and trying to dream their way to being grown-up.
BANDERA, TEXAS by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend
August 15, 2023 at 7pm ET
A dramedy about marriage, motherhood, and the women who came before us and paved our way. Liz, a native New Yorker, is forced to relocate to the Texas Hill Country for her husband’s job. She is visited by her long-dead grandmothers, who help her adapt to her new life and remind her that an uprooted woman can grow wherever she is replanted when she knows who she is and carries the people and places she loves inside her.
Madame Quixota’s Last Words by Malú Huacuja del Toro
October 17, 2023 at 7pm ET
ALONSA, whose artistic name is “ELLA,” a Hollywood movie star trying to clean her image after a Twitter scandal involving Johnny Depp by mistake, is now rehearsing a big-time musical Broadway production of “Romeo and Juliet” in some misinterpreted, misunderstood, misrepresented “Woke version” just because it’s fashionable. Greedy sponsors and producers are forcing actors to try ridiculous, even unsafe stage directions. This play starts right after she fell off Juliet’s balcony into a secret corridor which magically connects to a small, off-off-off Broadway theater where every dream comes true. ELLA meets SANCHA PANZA, aka SALLY, a struggling actor working as a janitor.
Getting out of that place becomes ELLA’s adventure as MADAME QUIXOTA, accompanied by SANCHA PANZA, who just goes with the flow. ELLA (meaning “She” in Spanish) needs to travel into her memories and stories with the love of her life, her saving knight DARYL (the equivalent of the female “Dulcinea”). He disappointed her when they were lovers, before she became a movie star. She now needs his memory to remember who she was and why it is important for her to always tell the truth.
Set against the backdrop of the MeToo movement, this is the female rendition of “Don Quixote.” Doña Quixota travels with Sancha Panza through her own past to discover and expose major true facts about the feminist movement in the sixties - the decade that changed the world forever largely because of the pill, but no one puts it that way - the MeToo movement, and the socially irresponsible investors in her own production. As “crazy” as Quixota looks like, she ends up talking about relevant issues, like the impact of science in real life, the importance of fighting climate change, weapons manufacturing, etc.
PROXIMA CENTAURI By David Whiteman
November 14, 2023 at 7pm ET
Like the continually expanding universe itself, there is something exquisitely random about the approach to storytelling here. With Proxima Centauri, playwright David Whiteman takes us “revolving, orbiting and rotating” through the discombobulated mind of respected astrophysics professor Frederick E. Delahunt. With his long-deceased father, Elwood, by his side, Dr. Delahunt journeys across time and space on
simultaneous yet painfully divergent quests: rescuing his ailing mother, Amelia, from financial exploitation at the hands of an unscrupulous sibling, and motivating his students to save Planet Earth from the relentlessly destructive nature of mankind. This is at once an intimate and skillfully drawn family drama, paralleled by a take-no-prisoners commentary on critical issues of the day, such as climate change,
globalization, capitalism and the rise of populism. Ultimately, in attempting to bridge the gap between science and faith, Proxima Centauri asks us to consider our true place in the universe, and our probable fate.
