NYCPlaywrights November 8, 2025
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NYCPlaywrights
Nov 8, 2025, 4:30:50 PM (13 days ago) Nov 8
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
MOONLIGHTERS
By Niveka Hobaichan
"Moonlighters" is a new full length play by Niveka Hobaichan, it's a story of undercover cops, criminal vampires, love and fate. "Moonlighters" started with the thought "what if I combined Twilight with Point Break?" and then proceeded to listen to "Can't Fight The Moonlight" by LeAnn Rimes constantly while writing it.
But like every piece that started as a joke, I let it become real and channeled as much honesty into it as I could. It became a play that I poured my heart into and I'm proud of it.
It's a story of loss, betrayal, fate, love and chaos all wrapped up into a dark comedy.
Staged reading
Nov 20 from 8pm to 10pm EST
312 West 36th Street
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staged-reading-of-moonlighters-by-niveka-hobaichan-tickets-1928707659529?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
***
The result of the depression of the eighties was a revival of socialist agitation. George Bernard Shaw became a socialist and spoke in halls, on street corners, in Hyde Park. The ‘ insurrectionism ’ of the period reached a climax in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ of November 1887, when the socialists, at the head of a working-class demonstration, invaded Trafalgar Square and were routed by the police. After this, business revived and took up the slack of unemployment, and the agitation quieted down.
In the meantime, Shaw had attached himself to the socialist statistician, Sidney Webb, and with others they had founded the Fabian Society, which had ‘agreed to give up the delightful ease of revolutionary heroics and take to the hard work of practical reform on ordinary parliamentary lines.’ Webb was a civil servant with a post in the colonial office and later a member of the London County Council; Shaw became a vestryman, then a borough councilor. The Fabians continued to treat Marx with respect, but the polite and reasonable criticism to which they subjected him was designed to discredit some of his main assumptions. Marx had asserted that the value of commodities was derived from the labor which had gone to produce them; and the Fabians, by elaborating a counter-theory which made value depend on demand, shifted the emphasis from the working class to the ‘consumer.’ They also repudiated the class war, showed that it would never occur. Socialist nationalization was to be accomplished by a corps of experts who should ‘permeate’ government and business, quietly invading Whitehall and setting up state departments which, unassisted by the action of the masses, should put socialist ideas into effect.
More...
https://archive.ph/sc5QQ#selection-793.0-797.1216
***
Reconsidering Edward Bond's position in the history of contemporary British and European drama, it is to his credit that at the turning point of British politics towards New Liberalism (with the rise of Margaret Thatcher as the “iron” conservative leader of the nation in the ‘80s), he was the only one political writer of the Left to stand up and defend his independent artistic territory, when even the younger generation of socialist dramatists (e.g. Howard Brenton, David Hare, David Edgar and Trevor Griffiths) were already following the reverse route from fringe and alternative theatre to the lucrative potentials (in technical equipment and prestige) of the big stages of the mainstream. If the claim of these latter dramatists in support of their sudden change of camp was made through pompous but dubious statements of the type “Petrol Bombs through the Proscenium Arch” (Brenton 1975) and “The Red Theatre under the Bed” (Brenton 1987), Bond’s was a much more honest stance of refusal to capitulate – to use an apt Brechtian term. This unbending attitude, so typical in his constant theatre quarrels, was also directly expressed in his negative comments concerning fellow artists Harold Pinter’s and David Hare’s acceptance of knighthood by the Queen.
https://www.critical-stages.org/29/edward-bond-the-missed-voice-of-a-true-socialist-writer/
***
Although over the decades of playwriting her socialist-feminist vision of society has looked increasingly, to borrow the title of her 2000 play, ‘far away’, Caryl Churchill has remained fiercely opposed to the nightmarish intensification of capitalist greed, violence, and damage that, as her recent apocalyptic Escaped Alone (2016) reminds us, is now occurring on a global scale. Undaunted, she remains steadfast in her commitment to socially democratic futures – repeatedly deploys her theatrical inventiveness to form those urgent, contemporary social and political questions that prompt her audiences to think how the world might be otherwise.
More...
https://cambridgeblog.org/2017/03/international-womens-day-spotlight-on-caryl-churchill/
***
On first sight Wallace Shawn’s face will transport you. If you have watched movies or television in the last forty years, there is a cultural milestone, which you love deeply, in which Shawn has played an unforgettable role. Depending on your age, that will be Gossip Girl, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Clueless, The Princess Bride, or My Dinner with Andre, which he also wrote. On the street, children who hear him speak instantly register the voice of Toy Story‘s Rex the Dinosaur.
Shawn is also a playwright, whose work has consistently pushed past the comfort levels of the comfortable and wealthy to expose their complicity as society degrades. Only months into the Trump administration, two of his older works on life under totalitarian states have received new stagings — Evening at the Talk House in New York, and The Designated Mourner in Los Angeles. Each has garnered far more press attention today than when they were first staged under Democratic administrations (Obama in 2015 and Clinton’s in 1996, respectively).
In addition to plays, Shawn is an essayist who has just published his second book, Night Thoughts, which explores capitalism, extremism, revolution, and punishment, among other themes. He’s an open socialist, who has participated in early efforts to free Chelsea Manning, been a vocal supporter of Palestinians, and sits on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Jacobin’s Jason Farbman spoke with Wallace Shawn about the role art and artists can — and can’t — play in building political movements, and how a famous actor became an open socialist.
More...
https://jacobin.com/2017/09/wallace-shawn-plays-socialist-night-thoughts-culture-hollywood
***
Sean O’Casey’s nationalist interests saw him joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood but his taste for socialism led him to be active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
When the likes of Big Jim Larkin and James Connolly took to the fore of the working class struggle in Ireland, O’Casey was instantly drawn to their militaristic ways and he described the trade union leader Larkin as someone who had ‘brought poetry into the workers fight for a better life.’
In 1911 O’Casey was sacked from his job on the railway when he refused to remove his cap when receiving his pay. It was the same year which saw him join Larkin and Connolly’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
O’Casey became secretary of the Women and Children’s Relief Fund during the 1913 Lockout when workers across Dublin went and strike for better working conditions but were subjected to harsh treatment by the authorities.
James Connolly set up the Irish Citizen Army to protect the striking workers from the brutality of the police and O’Casey became its general secretary. O’Casey would later write a history of the Irish Citizen Army as well as a number of articles for the Irish Worker newspaper, the mouth organ of the labour movement in Ireland.
When a proposal was made to offer dual membership of the Irish Citizen Army to members of the less socialist Irish Volunteer Force, O’Casey resigned and flung himself wholeheartedly into writing proletarian plays for the world stage.
Unlike many other playwrights, O’Casey’s plays concentrated on the lives of ordinary working class folk. He brought the rough reality of tenement life to a world stage and shone a light on the proletarian struggle. He brought a sense of the grit protruding up from the fight against authority and it shone through in works such as ‘The Plough and the Stars’ ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and ‘Shadow of a Gunman.’
More...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/11/sean-ocasey-unrepentant-socialist/
***
Black freedom, for Lorraine Hansberry, required amplifying the voices of the black working class. At times, this commitment caused her to focus more on politics than on her art, and at times it put her at odds with her less radical peers. Yet, as Perry shows, Hansberry was hard to pin down. “Though she was an internationalist, and something of a Black nationalist, a Marxist, and a socialist, she was also deeply American.” Her critique of capitalist and racist America stemmed from a deep attachment to the culture and people who felt its violence. Her investment in American politics did not lead to a simplistic patriotism or a belief in American exceptionalism but rather to a desire to see her country realize its (not unique) democratic potential. Hansberry, in this way, was deeply committed to the United States, wanting to make it a more equitable and humane force—for women, for black people, for queer people, and for colonized people across the globe.
More...
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/looking-for-lorraine-imani-perry-review/
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
MOONLIGHTERS
By Niveka Hobaichan
"Moonlighters" is a new full length play by Niveka Hobaichan, it's a story of undercover cops, criminal vampires, love and fate. "Moonlighters" started with the thought "what if I combined Twilight with Point Break?" and then proceeded to listen to "Can't Fight The Moonlight" by LeAnn Rimes constantly while writing it.
But like every piece that started as a joke, I let it become real and channeled as much honesty into it as I could. It became a play that I poured my heart into and I'm proud of it.
It's a story of loss, betrayal, fate, love and chaos all wrapped up into a dark comedy.
Staged reading
Nov 20 from 8pm to 10pm EST
312 West 36th Street
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staged-reading-of-moonlighters-by-niveka-hobaichan-tickets-1928707659529?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS SEEKS MONOLOGUES ON THE THEME OF "BLACK WOMAN GENIUS" ***
Some genius prompts:
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2025/10/nycplaywrights-seeks-monologues-on.html
Some genius prompts:
- Ida B. Wells, investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.
- Aretha Franklin, voted Rolling Stone's greatest singer of all time - "a work of genius" (#2 is Whitney Houston)
- Valerie Brown, the first Black woman animated character on American television, resident genius of the 1970s cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats"
- Alena Analeigh Wicker, in 2021, became the youngest person to intern for NASA
- Simone Biles, athletic genius
- Wanda Sykes, stand-up comedian, actor and writer
- Angela Davis, philosopher and political activist
- Dr. Ayda Mensah, character performed by Noma Dumezweni, the brilliant team leader and "favorite human" of Murderbot, from the sci-fi books and AppleTV+ series.
- Lorraine Hansberry, the young, gifted and Black playwright
- Kamala Harris, America’s first woman, Black and South Asian vice president, became the Democratic presidential candidate half-way through the 2024 campaign when Biden bowed out. She drew record-breaking crowds during her campaign and accurately predicted that Trump would use the US military against US citizens.
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2025/10/nycplaywrights-seeks-monologues-on.html
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
LITTLE FISH THEATRE is accepting scripts for our 24th Annual PICK OF THE VINE short play production to be produced in August 2026.
This season’s theme is “The Unexpected Guest.” All Plays should relate to this theme. There will be a $100 flat fee royalty payment to playwrights per play produced.
***
THEATRE SOUTHWEST is accepting short play submissions for its Annual Readers' Theatre Matinee.
This year the TSW-RTM will happen on Sunday, January 18th, 2026 at 3:00 P.M. and our event producer Brian Heaton will be accepting 5-10 minute scripts till the end of 2025.
Selected plays will be read and voted on by the audience in attendance and the Audience Favorite will receive a $100 cash prize.
***
LOCALLY GROWN THEATRE is now accepting play submissions for its 2026 Season
We’re a small but mighty community theatre based in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, performing under the open sky — so we’re looking for scripts that thrive in the great outdoors. Seeking family-friendly stories — think adaptations of classic literature, folklore, fairy tales, or even spooky season tales. Royalty: $50 per performance (we typically do 6 performances)
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** SOCIALIST PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Tony Kushner, a gay Jewish socialist who was raised in Louisiana, won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for his two-part, seven-hour Broadway production of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Other plays, A Bright Room Called Day (1985) and Slavs! (1994), are also concerned with the moral responsibilities of people in politically repressive times. Such concerns may be especially relevant in America today, where, as he observes: “What used to be called liberal is now called radical, what used to be called radical is now called insane, what used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking.”
Q: Angels in America opened on Broadway just months after the Clinton inauguration. It ends with a very hopeful speech about healing. Do you still feel that hope?
A: You have to have hope. It’s irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it’s irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of. I don’t believe you would bother to write a play if you really had no hope. That passage was one of the very first things I ever wrote when I was working on Angels. I read it to the woman who I was originally writing the part of the angel for, who died of breast cancer before the play was finished. In one of my last conversations with her, she told me that she thought about that image a lot and that she hoped I would include it in the play. I think I wouldn’t have included it otherwise, but I’m glad I did now.
More...
https://www.motherjones.com/media/1995/07/tony-kushner/
LITTLE FISH THEATRE is accepting scripts for our 24th Annual PICK OF THE VINE short play production to be produced in August 2026.
This season’s theme is “The Unexpected Guest.” All Plays should relate to this theme. There will be a $100 flat fee royalty payment to playwrights per play produced.
***
THEATRE SOUTHWEST is accepting short play submissions for its Annual Readers' Theatre Matinee.
This year the TSW-RTM will happen on Sunday, January 18th, 2026 at 3:00 P.M. and our event producer Brian Heaton will be accepting 5-10 minute scripts till the end of 2025.
Selected plays will be read and voted on by the audience in attendance and the Audience Favorite will receive a $100 cash prize.
***
LOCALLY GROWN THEATRE is now accepting play submissions for its 2026 Season
We’re a small but mighty community theatre based in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, performing under the open sky — so we’re looking for scripts that thrive in the great outdoors. Seeking family-friendly stories — think adaptations of classic literature, folklore, fairy tales, or even spooky season tales. Royalty: $50 per performance (we typically do 6 performances)
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** SOCIALIST PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Tony Kushner, a gay Jewish socialist who was raised in Louisiana, won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for his two-part, seven-hour Broadway production of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Other plays, A Bright Room Called Day (1985) and Slavs! (1994), are also concerned with the moral responsibilities of people in politically repressive times. Such concerns may be especially relevant in America today, where, as he observes: “What used to be called liberal is now called radical, what used to be called radical is now called insane, what used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking.”
Q: Angels in America opened on Broadway just months after the Clinton inauguration. It ends with a very hopeful speech about healing. Do you still feel that hope?
A: You have to have hope. It’s irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it’s irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of. I don’t believe you would bother to write a play if you really had no hope. That passage was one of the very first things I ever wrote when I was working on Angels. I read it to the woman who I was originally writing the part of the angel for, who died of breast cancer before the play was finished. In one of my last conversations with her, she told me that she thought about that image a lot and that she hoped I would include it in the play. I think I wouldn’t have included it otherwise, but I’m glad I did now.
More...
https://www.motherjones.com/media/1995/07/tony-kushner/
***
The result of the depression of the eighties was a revival of socialist agitation. George Bernard Shaw became a socialist and spoke in halls, on street corners, in Hyde Park. The ‘ insurrectionism ’ of the period reached a climax in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ of November 1887, when the socialists, at the head of a working-class demonstration, invaded Trafalgar Square and were routed by the police. After this, business revived and took up the slack of unemployment, and the agitation quieted down.
In the meantime, Shaw had attached himself to the socialist statistician, Sidney Webb, and with others they had founded the Fabian Society, which had ‘agreed to give up the delightful ease of revolutionary heroics and take to the hard work of practical reform on ordinary parliamentary lines.’ Webb was a civil servant with a post in the colonial office and later a member of the London County Council; Shaw became a vestryman, then a borough councilor. The Fabians continued to treat Marx with respect, but the polite and reasonable criticism to which they subjected him was designed to discredit some of his main assumptions. Marx had asserted that the value of commodities was derived from the labor which had gone to produce them; and the Fabians, by elaborating a counter-theory which made value depend on demand, shifted the emphasis from the working class to the ‘consumer.’ They also repudiated the class war, showed that it would never occur. Socialist nationalization was to be accomplished by a corps of experts who should ‘permeate’ government and business, quietly invading Whitehall and setting up state departments which, unassisted by the action of the masses, should put socialist ideas into effect.
More...
https://archive.ph/sc5QQ#selection-793.0-797.1216
***
Reconsidering Edward Bond's position in the history of contemporary British and European drama, it is to his credit that at the turning point of British politics towards New Liberalism (with the rise of Margaret Thatcher as the “iron” conservative leader of the nation in the ‘80s), he was the only one political writer of the Left to stand up and defend his independent artistic territory, when even the younger generation of socialist dramatists (e.g. Howard Brenton, David Hare, David Edgar and Trevor Griffiths) were already following the reverse route from fringe and alternative theatre to the lucrative potentials (in technical equipment and prestige) of the big stages of the mainstream. If the claim of these latter dramatists in support of their sudden change of camp was made through pompous but dubious statements of the type “Petrol Bombs through the Proscenium Arch” (Brenton 1975) and “The Red Theatre under the Bed” (Brenton 1987), Bond’s was a much more honest stance of refusal to capitulate – to use an apt Brechtian term. This unbending attitude, so typical in his constant theatre quarrels, was also directly expressed in his negative comments concerning fellow artists Harold Pinter’s and David Hare’s acceptance of knighthood by the Queen.
https://www.critical-stages.org/29/edward-bond-the-missed-voice-of-a-true-socialist-writer/
***
Although over the decades of playwriting her socialist-feminist vision of society has looked increasingly, to borrow the title of her 2000 play, ‘far away’, Caryl Churchill has remained fiercely opposed to the nightmarish intensification of capitalist greed, violence, and damage that, as her recent apocalyptic Escaped Alone (2016) reminds us, is now occurring on a global scale. Undaunted, she remains steadfast in her commitment to socially democratic futures – repeatedly deploys her theatrical inventiveness to form those urgent, contemporary social and political questions that prompt her audiences to think how the world might be otherwise.
More...
https://cambridgeblog.org/2017/03/international-womens-day-spotlight-on-caryl-churchill/
***
On first sight Wallace Shawn’s face will transport you. If you have watched movies or television in the last forty years, there is a cultural milestone, which you love deeply, in which Shawn has played an unforgettable role. Depending on your age, that will be Gossip Girl, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Clueless, The Princess Bride, or My Dinner with Andre, which he also wrote. On the street, children who hear him speak instantly register the voice of Toy Story‘s Rex the Dinosaur.
Shawn is also a playwright, whose work has consistently pushed past the comfort levels of the comfortable and wealthy to expose their complicity as society degrades. Only months into the Trump administration, two of his older works on life under totalitarian states have received new stagings — Evening at the Talk House in New York, and The Designated Mourner in Los Angeles. Each has garnered far more press attention today than when they were first staged under Democratic administrations (Obama in 2015 and Clinton’s in 1996, respectively).
In addition to plays, Shawn is an essayist who has just published his second book, Night Thoughts, which explores capitalism, extremism, revolution, and punishment, among other themes. He’s an open socialist, who has participated in early efforts to free Chelsea Manning, been a vocal supporter of Palestinians, and sits on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Jacobin’s Jason Farbman spoke with Wallace Shawn about the role art and artists can — and can’t — play in building political movements, and how a famous actor became an open socialist.
More...
https://jacobin.com/2017/09/wallace-shawn-plays-socialist-night-thoughts-culture-hollywood
***
Sean O’Casey’s nationalist interests saw him joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood but his taste for socialism led him to be active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
When the likes of Big Jim Larkin and James Connolly took to the fore of the working class struggle in Ireland, O’Casey was instantly drawn to their militaristic ways and he described the trade union leader Larkin as someone who had ‘brought poetry into the workers fight for a better life.’
In 1911 O’Casey was sacked from his job on the railway when he refused to remove his cap when receiving his pay. It was the same year which saw him join Larkin and Connolly’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
O’Casey became secretary of the Women and Children’s Relief Fund during the 1913 Lockout when workers across Dublin went and strike for better working conditions but were subjected to harsh treatment by the authorities.
James Connolly set up the Irish Citizen Army to protect the striking workers from the brutality of the police and O’Casey became its general secretary. O’Casey would later write a history of the Irish Citizen Army as well as a number of articles for the Irish Worker newspaper, the mouth organ of the labour movement in Ireland.
When a proposal was made to offer dual membership of the Irish Citizen Army to members of the less socialist Irish Volunteer Force, O’Casey resigned and flung himself wholeheartedly into writing proletarian plays for the world stage.
Unlike many other playwrights, O’Casey’s plays concentrated on the lives of ordinary working class folk. He brought the rough reality of tenement life to a world stage and shone a light on the proletarian struggle. He brought a sense of the grit protruding up from the fight against authority and it shone through in works such as ‘The Plough and the Stars’ ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and ‘Shadow of a Gunman.’
More...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/11/sean-ocasey-unrepentant-socialist/
***
Black freedom, for Lorraine Hansberry, required amplifying the voices of the black working class. At times, this commitment caused her to focus more on politics than on her art, and at times it put her at odds with her less radical peers. Yet, as Perry shows, Hansberry was hard to pin down. “Though she was an internationalist, and something of a Black nationalist, a Marxist, and a socialist, she was also deeply American.” Her critique of capitalist and racist America stemmed from a deep attachment to the culture and people who felt its violence. Her investment in American politics did not lead to a simplistic patriotism or a belief in American exceptionalism but rather to a desire to see her country realize its (not unique) democratic potential. Hansberry, in this way, was deeply committed to the United States, wanting to make it a more equitable and humane force—for women, for black people, for queer people, and for colonized people across the globe.
More...
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/looking-for-lorraine-imani-perry-review/
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