NYCPlaywrights January 24, 2026
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NYCPlaywrights
Jan 24, 2026, 5:11:34 PM (5 days ago) Jan 24
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** BLACK WOMAN GENIUS ***
We have selected the prize-winning piece from the semi-finalists of the BLACK WOMAN GENIUS project - GENIUS by Kenndall Wallace - congratulations Kenndall!
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2026/01/black-woman-genius-genius-by-kenndall.html
And we have begun to post excerpts from the semi-finalist monolouges - one monologue every other day. Check them out:
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/search/label/Black%20Woman%20Genius
***
Young widow Dou Yi vows that if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi suffered before the curse destroys every living thing.
A contemporary re-imagining of one of the most famous Classical Chinese dramas, Snow in Midsummer was the first production in our Chinese Translations Project, a cultural exchange bringing Chinese classics to a modern western audience. It played in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 23 February to 25 March 2017.
More...
https://www.rsc.org.uk/snow-in-midsummer
***
You might already have heard about, or even seen ‘A Hundred Words for Snow’, as it had a very well received run at last year’s Vault Festival. Fortunately for those of you who missed seeing this brilliant monologue, it’s being performed at Trafalgar Studios for most of March. To find out more about the play, and the talented creative behind it, I arranged a quick chat with playwright Tatty Hennessy.
CM: Can you start by telling us a bit about the narrative of the play? Whose story does it tell and where does it go?
TH: The play tells the story of Rory, a fifteen year old girl whose father dies very suddenly. She decides to help him have one last adventure, and runs away from home with his ashes to the North Pole, without telling Mum.
CM: What would you say are the primary themes of the show?
TH: Grief, being an explorer in a world that’s melting, and being a teenage girl in a world that doesn’t think all that much of teenage girls.
More...
https://thisweekculture.com/article/tatty-hennessy-a-hundred-words-for-snow/
***
The lights will go down in the Nancy T. Hansen Theatre this weekend as Purdue’s Department of Theatre and Dance presents “The Snow,” a play about a boy named Theodore hatching a plan to save his town from being trapped because of a huge snowfall. The show opens this Thursday and will run throughout this weekend and the next. Caitlin Davey, a second-year MFA student and a costume designer for “The Snow,” was excited to do a show with a lighter mood.
“The last couple of productions I’ve worked on … have been really heavy content material, which is not bad, and it can be really interesting to work on,” Davey said. “Sometimes it’s just really fun to do a theater piece for young audiences like this. Just have fun, right?”
More...
https://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/the-snow-theatre-hansen-play/article_4a29f9e1-c87b-43f6-8b27-80eaae37cc53.html
***
The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, perhaps best known today for launching James Ijames’s Fat Ham and winning the 2024 regional theater Tony Award, is not the place you would normally find a play for the entire family. Their season opener is a new pursuit, an all-ages version of The Snow Queen (running through Sunday, November 23), featuring the strong acting and smart production choices that make the theater such a staple of Philadelphia’s theater scene.
The cast of The Snow Queen comes from the Wilma HotHouse Company, a core group of actors who perform together regularly in same theater. This rich history and ease of performing together was on full display in this production of Evgeny Schwartz’s work, translated by Mike Lion and Ethan Gotlieb Wilcox. Schwartz was best known for plays like The Dragon, which is a political allegory about dictatorship and totalitarianism.
More...
https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-the-wilma-theaters-snow-queen-is-a-family-show-to-melt-hearts_1812390/
***
A production for children in Theatre by the Lake’s intimate studio theatre doesn’t look like the ideal venue for something that will entertain small children and simultaneously keep them safe. Pantomimes are big, over-the-top, sumptuous feasts of nonsense, where the usual interaction is to shout, “It’s behind you!” and not much else. In a small stage area, little people are much more prone to get up and try to touch, especially if hyped up in the traditional panto way.
Well, with Snow Play, hyped up they were and, oh boy, did they get up and try to be physically involved. There was a lot of noise at times and complete mayhem.
And. It. Was. Glorious.
More...
https://northernartsreview.co.uk/north-west/review-snow-play-at-theatre-by-the-lake/
***
Over the past few decades, CGI has allowed directors to put virtually anything they can imagine onto the big screen. But in the world of theater, practical effects still rule supreme.
So how do these special effects wizards make it snow, rain, and gust inside the confines of a theater, where real live audiences are sitting just feet away? And what are the challenges to dumping more than 100 gallons of water indoors, or coating the stage in slippery fake snow?
We tour a Brooklyn warehouse that houses the secrets behind Broadway’s wildest special effects, where one engineer is inventing new ways to wow audiences with the magic of the elements.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-broadways-sfx-designers-make-it-rain-and-snow-on-stage/id1061222770?i=1000742572428
*** BLACK WOMAN GENIUS ***
We have selected the prize-winning piece from the semi-finalists of the BLACK WOMAN GENIUS project - GENIUS by Kenndall Wallace - congratulations Kenndall!
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2026/01/black-woman-genius-genius-by-kenndall.html
And we have begun to post excerpts from the semi-finalist monolouges - one monologue every other day. Check them out:
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/search/label/Black%20Woman%20Genius
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Dunyasha!
by Molly Kate Babos
Label Theatre Company presents a Stamp Reading of Molly Kate Babos' new play, "Dunyasha!"
Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya returns to her family's estate with her teenage daughter to try to save it from foreclosure. But fuck her. She already has a play. Instead, we follow Dunyasha, the incurably horny and overly imaginative maid as she doges a proposal from Yepikodov (the stinky old weirdo perv), avoids mean Varya (a 22-year old unmarried hag!!!!) and lusts after caddish and evasive Yasha.
"Dunyasha!" is presented in A Stamp Reading; stay after the reading for a brief talkback with playwright Molly Kate Babos and Label's Dramaturg Anne Bakan.
The reading will be held at Ripley Grier Studios, 520 8th Avenue, Studio 10D on the 10th Floor. Per building policy, all guests will be required to show photo ID to the security staff at the front door as they enter the building.
Wednesday, Jan 28 from 8 pm to 9:30 pm EST
Ripley-Grier Studios
520 8th Avenue
#10th floor New York, NY 10018
New York, NY
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dunyasha-a-stamp-reading-tickets-1979488927669?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Unexpected Connections is a 10-minute play festival produced by CSCT (Gan Haim, Israel), dedicated to celebrating the surprising, funny, tender, and transformative ways people connect. Through short, bold storytelling, we create space for laughter, empathy, and shared humanity, reminding us that connection often appears when we least expect it.
***
In "A Room of One's Own," written in 1929, Virginia Woolf says, “fictitious women are too simple — contrary to the living, breathing, complex women of real life, (they) are almost always depicted only “in their relation to men.” With the ROO Residency, Bechdel Project hopes to take one more step toward creating a culture of stories with complex women who are not simply depicted in relation to men.
***
2026 JESSE L. KEARNEY BBM PLAYWRITING INITIATIVE
The program is open to Black male-identifying playwrights (ages 18+) who are ready to take their original work to the next level. One selected playwright will receive:
• A $1,000 Honorarium.
• A 29-hour developmental reading of their original script.
• Professional Support: Access to a professional director and a cast of New York City actors.
• Industry Exposure: An invite-only staged reading held in New York City.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** SNOW SHOW ***
In the Iowa State University 4-H Youth Development Nutcracker + STEM performance, snow magically falls as dancers move gracefully across the stage. While it may appear delicate and effortless to the audience, it is the result of design, planning, and engineering on behalf of the stage crew.
To achieve a successful solution, stage crew had to take several criteria into account including, which material would look the most realistic when falling, how to ensure dancers remain safe during the performance while the snow falls, the cost of the materials and the ease of clean up after the performance.
The successful solution shown in this performance is a snow material made of recycled and bleached plastic grocery bags which fall from a “snow sling” The sling is moved up and down through the backstage fly system which causes the snow to fall through the holes.
More...
https://www.iowapbs.org/education/initiatives/iowasciencephenomena/13261/designing-snowfall-stage-performances
Dunyasha!
by Molly Kate Babos
Label Theatre Company presents a Stamp Reading of Molly Kate Babos' new play, "Dunyasha!"
Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya returns to her family's estate with her teenage daughter to try to save it from foreclosure. But fuck her. She already has a play. Instead, we follow Dunyasha, the incurably horny and overly imaginative maid as she doges a proposal from Yepikodov (the stinky old weirdo perv), avoids mean Varya (a 22-year old unmarried hag!!!!) and lusts after caddish and evasive Yasha.
"Dunyasha!" is presented in A Stamp Reading; stay after the reading for a brief talkback with playwright Molly Kate Babos and Label's Dramaturg Anne Bakan.
The reading will be held at Ripley Grier Studios, 520 8th Avenue, Studio 10D on the 10th Floor. Per building policy, all guests will be required to show photo ID to the security staff at the front door as they enter the building.
Wednesday, Jan 28 from 8 pm to 9:30 pm EST
Ripley-Grier Studios
520 8th Avenue
#10th floor New York, NY 10018
New York, NY
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dunyasha-a-stamp-reading-tickets-1979488927669?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Unexpected Connections is a 10-minute play festival produced by CSCT (Gan Haim, Israel), dedicated to celebrating the surprising, funny, tender, and transformative ways people connect. Through short, bold storytelling, we create space for laughter, empathy, and shared humanity, reminding us that connection often appears when we least expect it.
***
In "A Room of One's Own," written in 1929, Virginia Woolf says, “fictitious women are too simple — contrary to the living, breathing, complex women of real life, (they) are almost always depicted only “in their relation to men.” With the ROO Residency, Bechdel Project hopes to take one more step toward creating a culture of stories with complex women who are not simply depicted in relation to men.
***
2026 JESSE L. KEARNEY BBM PLAYWRITING INITIATIVE
The program is open to Black male-identifying playwrights (ages 18+) who are ready to take their original work to the next level. One selected playwright will receive:
• A $1,000 Honorarium.
• A 29-hour developmental reading of their original script.
• Professional Support: Access to a professional director and a cast of New York City actors.
• Industry Exposure: An invite-only staged reading held in New York City.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** SNOW SHOW ***
In the Iowa State University 4-H Youth Development Nutcracker + STEM performance, snow magically falls as dancers move gracefully across the stage. While it may appear delicate and effortless to the audience, it is the result of design, planning, and engineering on behalf of the stage crew.
To achieve a successful solution, stage crew had to take several criteria into account including, which material would look the most realistic when falling, how to ensure dancers remain safe during the performance while the snow falls, the cost of the materials and the ease of clean up after the performance.
The successful solution shown in this performance is a snow material made of recycled and bleached plastic grocery bags which fall from a “snow sling” The sling is moved up and down through the backstage fly system which causes the snow to fall through the holes.
More...
https://www.iowapbs.org/education/initiatives/iowasciencephenomena/13261/designing-snowfall-stage-performances
***
Young widow Dou Yi vows that if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi suffered before the curse destroys every living thing.
A contemporary re-imagining of one of the most famous Classical Chinese dramas, Snow in Midsummer was the first production in our Chinese Translations Project, a cultural exchange bringing Chinese classics to a modern western audience. It played in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 23 February to 25 March 2017.
More...
https://www.rsc.org.uk/snow-in-midsummer
***
You might already have heard about, or even seen ‘A Hundred Words for Snow’, as it had a very well received run at last year’s Vault Festival. Fortunately for those of you who missed seeing this brilliant monologue, it’s being performed at Trafalgar Studios for most of March. To find out more about the play, and the talented creative behind it, I arranged a quick chat with playwright Tatty Hennessy.
CM: Can you start by telling us a bit about the narrative of the play? Whose story does it tell and where does it go?
TH: The play tells the story of Rory, a fifteen year old girl whose father dies very suddenly. She decides to help him have one last adventure, and runs away from home with his ashes to the North Pole, without telling Mum.
CM: What would you say are the primary themes of the show?
TH: Grief, being an explorer in a world that’s melting, and being a teenage girl in a world that doesn’t think all that much of teenage girls.
More...
https://thisweekculture.com/article/tatty-hennessy-a-hundred-words-for-snow/
***
The lights will go down in the Nancy T. Hansen Theatre this weekend as Purdue’s Department of Theatre and Dance presents “The Snow,” a play about a boy named Theodore hatching a plan to save his town from being trapped because of a huge snowfall. The show opens this Thursday and will run throughout this weekend and the next. Caitlin Davey, a second-year MFA student and a costume designer for “The Snow,” was excited to do a show with a lighter mood.
“The last couple of productions I’ve worked on … have been really heavy content material, which is not bad, and it can be really interesting to work on,” Davey said. “Sometimes it’s just really fun to do a theater piece for young audiences like this. Just have fun, right?”
More...
https://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/the-snow-theatre-hansen-play/article_4a29f9e1-c87b-43f6-8b27-80eaae37cc53.html
***
The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, perhaps best known today for launching James Ijames’s Fat Ham and winning the 2024 regional theater Tony Award, is not the place you would normally find a play for the entire family. Their season opener is a new pursuit, an all-ages version of The Snow Queen (running through Sunday, November 23), featuring the strong acting and smart production choices that make the theater such a staple of Philadelphia’s theater scene.
The cast of The Snow Queen comes from the Wilma HotHouse Company, a core group of actors who perform together regularly in same theater. This rich history and ease of performing together was on full display in this production of Evgeny Schwartz’s work, translated by Mike Lion and Ethan Gotlieb Wilcox. Schwartz was best known for plays like The Dragon, which is a political allegory about dictatorship and totalitarianism.
More...
https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-the-wilma-theaters-snow-queen-is-a-family-show-to-melt-hearts_1812390/
***
A production for children in Theatre by the Lake’s intimate studio theatre doesn’t look like the ideal venue for something that will entertain small children and simultaneously keep them safe. Pantomimes are big, over-the-top, sumptuous feasts of nonsense, where the usual interaction is to shout, “It’s behind you!” and not much else. In a small stage area, little people are much more prone to get up and try to touch, especially if hyped up in the traditional panto way.
Well, with Snow Play, hyped up they were and, oh boy, did they get up and try to be physically involved. There was a lot of noise at times and complete mayhem.
And. It. Was. Glorious.
More...
https://northernartsreview.co.uk/north-west/review-snow-play-at-theatre-by-the-lake/
***
Over the past few decades, CGI has allowed directors to put virtually anything they can imagine onto the big screen. But in the world of theater, practical effects still rule supreme.
So how do these special effects wizards make it snow, rain, and gust inside the confines of a theater, where real live audiences are sitting just feet away? And what are the challenges to dumping more than 100 gallons of water indoors, or coating the stage in slippery fake snow?
We tour a Brooklyn warehouse that houses the secrets behind Broadway’s wildest special effects, where one engineer is inventing new ways to wow audiences with the magic of the elements.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-broadways-sfx-designers-make-it-rain-and-snow-on-stage/id1061222770?i=1000742572428
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