NYCPlaywrights December 13, 2025
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NYCPlaywrights
Dec 13, 2025, 5:06:35 PM (2 days ago) Dec 13
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Verse4Verse is New York's only drag poetry show!
A Verse4Verse evening has original poetry, drag performances, stand up comedy, and audience games-- all for free!
Verse4Verse is hosted by yours truly, Poison Oak (she/her). Poison Oak is a published poet, drag queen, comedienne, and show host.
This month she is joined by Priestess Lolita (she/her). Priestess Lolita is a drag queen, dancer, and singer. She is the current reigning Polish the Queen winner season 12.
Dec 21 from 6pm to 8pm EST
DADA is the home bar for Verse4Verse and Ridgewood's coolest cocktail lounge.
60-47 Myrtle Avenue
Queens, NY 11385
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/verse4verse-drag-poetry-tickets-1976391229370?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Strongbox Theater is now accepting submissions for its second annual short play festival.
Seeking 10-minute plays. Only comedies will be considered for this year’s show.
All plays will be fully produced. Playwrights will be paid a $100 fee for accepted plays.
***
Following our successful Feastival at our new location we are pleased to announce that Queens Short Play Festival is now accepting plays for its Winter 2026 festival. The Secret Theatre seeks to promotenew work and emerging playwrights through our biannual One Act Festival. Last year's festivals were a success, and this year we are excited for more!
• $250 Cash Prize for Best Play
• $100 Cash Prize for Best Director
• $75 Cash Prize for Best Actor
• $75 Cash Prize for Best Actor
***
Every month, Kumu Kahua's artistic director Harry Wong III will select a writing prompt on the first day of that month. We're looking for 5-page monologues or 10-page scenes based on that prompt; the due date for submissions are always the last day of the month.
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Verse4Verse is New York's only drag poetry show!
A Verse4Verse evening has original poetry, drag performances, stand up comedy, and audience games-- all for free!
Verse4Verse is hosted by yours truly, Poison Oak (she/her). Poison Oak is a published poet, drag queen, comedienne, and show host.
This month she is joined by Priestess Lolita (she/her). Priestess Lolita is a drag queen, dancer, and singer. She is the current reigning Polish the Queen winner season 12.
Dec 21 from 6pm to 8pm EST
DADA is the home bar for Verse4Verse and Ridgewood's coolest cocktail lounge.
60-47 Myrtle Avenue
Queens, NY 11385
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/verse4verse-drag-poetry-tickets-1976391229370?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Strongbox Theater is now accepting submissions for its second annual short play festival.
Seeking 10-minute plays. Only comedies will be considered for this year’s show.
All plays will be fully produced. Playwrights will be paid a $100 fee for accepted plays.
***
Following our successful Feastival at our new location we are pleased to announce that Queens Short Play Festival is now accepting plays for its Winter 2026 festival. The Secret Theatre seeks to promotenew work and emerging playwrights through our biannual One Act Festival. Last year's festivals were a success, and this year we are excited for more!
• $250 Cash Prize for Best Play
• $100 Cash Prize for Best Director
• $75 Cash Prize for Best Actor
• $75 Cash Prize for Best Actor
***
Every month, Kumu Kahua's artistic director Harry Wong III will select a writing prompt on the first day of that month. We're looking for 5-page monologues or 10-page scenes based on that prompt; the due date for submissions are always the last day of the month.
The prompt for December 2025 is:
A social media prompt. Write a ten-page maximum scene or an eight-page maximum monologue of a historical figure living well before the internet making a social media post now on one of the various platforms. Stay away from fictional characters; real people from history. Have fun.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** MERRILY ***
Maria Friedman’s transformative revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” made the show one of the great flop-to-hit comebacks in Broadway history. In the heady days after her production won four Tony Awards in 2024, the company — with a cast led by Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez — spent three days turning the musical into a movie, preserving their performance forever. That film will be released in theaters on Friday. Here are five things to know about the musical, and the new film.
What is “Merrily We Roll Along”?
It is a 1981 musical, with a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth, about the implosion of a three-way friendship among a playwright, a composer and a novelist. But there’s a twist: The story unfolds in reverse chronological order.
The show has been reworked many times, but this latest version begins in 1976, at a party in Los Angeles at which it becomes clear that the friendship has splintered. It moves backward, through nine scenes, to 1957, when three starry-eyed 20-somethings meet on a New York City rooftop where they have gathered to watch Russia’s Sputnik satellite pass overhead.
“It makes everybody think about their relationship with their friends — in the past, and moving forward,” said Dave Sirulnick, president of entertainment at RadicalMedia, the film’s production company.
Why was the original production a flop?
Directed by the legendary Hal Prince, a regular Sondheim collaborator, the original was cast with teens and young adults, and that just didn’t work for audiences or critics. In his review for The New York Times, Frank Rich called it “a shambles.” The show closed just two weeks after opening.
More...
https://archive.ph/DoIr1
***
It was Hart’s notion to tell the story of the entertainment and art world from World War I to the Depression by creating a tale of three friends and telling it backwards. Besides being a fabulous time capsule of the period, the play features a thinly-velied portrait of the authors’ colleague Dorothy Parker as Julia Glenn, the central female character. (A supporting character based on George Gershwin is also depicted.) The play was also turned into a cult favorite musical by the same title by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth in 1981, which, although it had only a brief tenure on Broadway (it opened on November 16th—Kaufman’s birthday—and ran two weeks) has been frequently and successfully revived Off-Broadway and in London and Washington, DC. Still, the original packs a tremendous punch—and is Kaufman and Hart’s most ambitious play.
More...
https://georgeskaufman.com/plays/critics-choice/merrily-we-roll-along-1934/
***
1981 NYTimes Review
AS we all should probably have learned by now, to be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one's heart broken at regular intervals. Usually the heartbreak comes from Mr. Sondheim's songs -for his music can tear through us with an emotional force as moving as Gershwin's. And sometimes the pain is compounded by another factor - for some of Mr. Sondheim's most powerful work turns up in shows (''Anyone Can Whistle,'' ''Pacific Overtures'') that fail. Suffice it to say that both kinds of pain are abundant in ''Merrily We Roll Along,'' the new Sondheim-Harold Prince-George Furth musical that opened at the Alvin last night. Mr. Sondheim has given this evening a half-dozen songs that are crushing and beautiful - that soar and linger and hurt. But the show that contains them is a shambles.
"Merrily We Roll Along" has been adapted by Mr. Furth from the second George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart collaboration, a Broadway curiosity of 1934. While the new version is rewritten and updated, it repeats the defects of the original text - even as it adds more of its own. Now, as before, "Mer-rily" is about three best friends who reach the top of the Broadway-Holly-wood showbiz whirl only to discover, in two cases, that their lives are empty, petty and loveless. The gimmick is to tell the story backwards. The central plot begins with the principals at a present-day party, where they're at their lowest, most jaded ebb.
More...
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/11/17/issue.html
***
This is a show where Sondheim also subtly takes revenge on his critics. There is a lovely moment when a Broadway producer lectures the young Franklin and Charley on the need to provide hummable melodies in musicals, adding: “I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit.” The ultimate irony is that Merrily We Roll Along itself is full of treasurable tunes, such as Old Friends, Good Thing Going and the title number that for me have been earworms for more than 40 years. I am always astonished by the accusation that Sondheim is a great lyricist but a deficient tunesmith for, although his songs always derive from a specific dramatic situation, they lodge permanently in the memory.
If there is a just charge against Merrily, it is that its hero, Franklin, is unsympathetic. But in this version Groff intelligently plays him not as an egomaniac monster but a tragic innocent who sails through life always taking the easy option. Mendez captures perfectly Mary’s unfulfilled romantic longings but the most eye-catching performance comes from Radcliffe, who lends Charley both an angsty neurosis and a passionate belief in the power of art to improve lives.
More...
https://archive.ph/S5rJ2
***
Director Lonny Price and writer Abigail Pogrebin, members of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince's show, "Merrily We Roll Along," discuss Price's new documentary "Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened," about the cohort of young performers in that 1981 production and what happened to their lives as well as the musical's legacy in the 35 years since the musical abruptly closed after only two weeks on Broadway.
Taped: 11-18-16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWy_fXGGCSE
A social media prompt. Write a ten-page maximum scene or an eight-page maximum monologue of a historical figure living well before the internet making a social media post now on one of the various platforms. Stay away from fictional characters; real people from history. Have fun.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** MERRILY ***
Maria Friedman’s transformative revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” made the show one of the great flop-to-hit comebacks in Broadway history. In the heady days after her production won four Tony Awards in 2024, the company — with a cast led by Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez — spent three days turning the musical into a movie, preserving their performance forever. That film will be released in theaters on Friday. Here are five things to know about the musical, and the new film.
What is “Merrily We Roll Along”?
It is a 1981 musical, with a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth, about the implosion of a three-way friendship among a playwright, a composer and a novelist. But there’s a twist: The story unfolds in reverse chronological order.
The show has been reworked many times, but this latest version begins in 1976, at a party in Los Angeles at which it becomes clear that the friendship has splintered. It moves backward, through nine scenes, to 1957, when three starry-eyed 20-somethings meet on a New York City rooftop where they have gathered to watch Russia’s Sputnik satellite pass overhead.
“It makes everybody think about their relationship with their friends — in the past, and moving forward,” said Dave Sirulnick, president of entertainment at RadicalMedia, the film’s production company.
Why was the original production a flop?
Directed by the legendary Hal Prince, a regular Sondheim collaborator, the original was cast with teens and young adults, and that just didn’t work for audiences or critics. In his review for The New York Times, Frank Rich called it “a shambles.” The show closed just two weeks after opening.
More...
https://archive.ph/DoIr1
***
It was Hart’s notion to tell the story of the entertainment and art world from World War I to the Depression by creating a tale of three friends and telling it backwards. Besides being a fabulous time capsule of the period, the play features a thinly-velied portrait of the authors’ colleague Dorothy Parker as Julia Glenn, the central female character. (A supporting character based on George Gershwin is also depicted.) The play was also turned into a cult favorite musical by the same title by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth in 1981, which, although it had only a brief tenure on Broadway (it opened on November 16th—Kaufman’s birthday—and ran two weeks) has been frequently and successfully revived Off-Broadway and in London and Washington, DC. Still, the original packs a tremendous punch—and is Kaufman and Hart’s most ambitious play.
More...
https://georgeskaufman.com/plays/critics-choice/merrily-we-roll-along-1934/
***
1981 NYTimes Review
AS we all should probably have learned by now, to be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one's heart broken at regular intervals. Usually the heartbreak comes from Mr. Sondheim's songs -for his music can tear through us with an emotional force as moving as Gershwin's. And sometimes the pain is compounded by another factor - for some of Mr. Sondheim's most powerful work turns up in shows (''Anyone Can Whistle,'' ''Pacific Overtures'') that fail. Suffice it to say that both kinds of pain are abundant in ''Merrily We Roll Along,'' the new Sondheim-Harold Prince-George Furth musical that opened at the Alvin last night. Mr. Sondheim has given this evening a half-dozen songs that are crushing and beautiful - that soar and linger and hurt. But the show that contains them is a shambles.
"Merrily We Roll Along" has been adapted by Mr. Furth from the second George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart collaboration, a Broadway curiosity of 1934. While the new version is rewritten and updated, it repeats the defects of the original text - even as it adds more of its own. Now, as before, "Mer-rily" is about three best friends who reach the top of the Broadway-Holly-wood showbiz whirl only to discover, in two cases, that their lives are empty, petty and loveless. The gimmick is to tell the story backwards. The central plot begins with the principals at a present-day party, where they're at their lowest, most jaded ebb.
More...
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/11/17/issue.html
(Requires NYTimes subscription)
***
In 1981, Sondheim’s MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG ran 16 performances. Yet it too yielded an original cast album. It was followed by recordings from the 1992 Leicester Haymarket production, the 1994 York Theatre revival and the 2012 staged concert at City Center’s Encores!
With the recent release of the 2023 revival cast album on Masterworks Broadway, MERRILY has now had five recordings. And five into 16 results in an average of 3.2 performances per recording.
Like Charlotte in Sondheim’s A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, it’s gaining.
And who says that this latest one will be the last? Look at the resiliency that MERRILY has shown since its much-maligned original production. If all goes as planned with the film version that is being shot over 20 years, in 2039 there’ll at least be a sixth recording thanks to the soundtrack.
For now, there are five. So, what’s noteworthy about this 2023 recording that’s going to make you take the fifth?
Well, there is the world-famous Daniel Radcliffe. He’s top-billed, although he plays the secondary lead: Charley Kringas, the frustrated bookwriter-lyricist whose partner, composer Franklin Shepard, now spends more time writing contracts than music.
More...
https://www.masterworksbroadway.com/blog/merrily-beyond-the-ills-of-the-80s-by-peter-filichia/
***
In 1981, Sondheim’s MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG ran 16 performances. Yet it too yielded an original cast album. It was followed by recordings from the 1992 Leicester Haymarket production, the 1994 York Theatre revival and the 2012 staged concert at City Center’s Encores!
With the recent release of the 2023 revival cast album on Masterworks Broadway, MERRILY has now had five recordings. And five into 16 results in an average of 3.2 performances per recording.
Like Charlotte in Sondheim’s A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, it’s gaining.
And who says that this latest one will be the last? Look at the resiliency that MERRILY has shown since its much-maligned original production. If all goes as planned with the film version that is being shot over 20 years, in 2039 there’ll at least be a sixth recording thanks to the soundtrack.
For now, there are five. So, what’s noteworthy about this 2023 recording that’s going to make you take the fifth?
Well, there is the world-famous Daniel Radcliffe. He’s top-billed, although he plays the secondary lead: Charley Kringas, the frustrated bookwriter-lyricist whose partner, composer Franklin Shepard, now spends more time writing contracts than music.
More...
https://www.masterworksbroadway.com/blog/merrily-beyond-the-ills-of-the-80s-by-peter-filichia/
***
This is a show where Sondheim also subtly takes revenge on his critics. There is a lovely moment when a Broadway producer lectures the young Franklin and Charley on the need to provide hummable melodies in musicals, adding: “I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit.” The ultimate irony is that Merrily We Roll Along itself is full of treasurable tunes, such as Old Friends, Good Thing Going and the title number that for me have been earworms for more than 40 years. I am always astonished by the accusation that Sondheim is a great lyricist but a deficient tunesmith for, although his songs always derive from a specific dramatic situation, they lodge permanently in the memory.
If there is a just charge against Merrily, it is that its hero, Franklin, is unsympathetic. But in this version Groff intelligently plays him not as an egomaniac monster but a tragic innocent who sails through life always taking the easy option. Mendez captures perfectly Mary’s unfulfilled romantic longings but the most eye-catching performance comes from Radcliffe, who lends Charley both an angsty neurosis and a passionate belief in the power of art to improve lives.
More...
https://archive.ph/S5rJ2
***
Director Lonny Price and writer Abigail Pogrebin, members of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince's show, "Merrily We Roll Along," discuss Price's new documentary "Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened," about the cohort of young performers in that 1981 production and what happened to their lives as well as the musical's legacy in the 35 years since the musical abruptly closed after only two weeks on Broadway.
Taped: 11-18-16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWy_fXGGCSE
***
The “Merrily We Roll Along” movie is different from the Wicked films; it’s not a film adaptation, it’s a recording of the live 2024 Tony-winning Broadway production that turned the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical from a notorious 40-year-old flop into an acclaimed hit, the stuff of Broadway legend.
There is something worthwhile in offering a chance at experiencing such a show to theater lovers who didn’t make it to New York or couldn’t afford Broadway prices. Still, the film offers a different experience from the stage musical, in part because of the inherent qualities and expectations of the medium, but also because of directorial choices – some for the better, some for the worse — by Maria Friedman, director of both the Broadway production and the film.
“Merrily We Roll Along” tells the story of three old friends — Jonathan Groff as composer turned movie producer Franklin Shepard Jr, Lindsay Mendez as novelist Mary Flynn, Daniel Radcliffe as lyricist and playwright Charley Kringas — in reverse chronological order, from 1976 to 1957. They “start” off cynical and estranged and “end” up nineteen years earlier and eight scenes later at the birth of their friendship, idealistic and collaborative.
Here is my interview with Maria Friedman last year, in which she offers her view as to why it was a flop and how she turned it around.
More...
https://newyorktheater.me/2025/12/04/merrily-we-roll-along-movie-vs-stage-musical/
The “Merrily We Roll Along” movie is different from the Wicked films; it’s not a film adaptation, it’s a recording of the live 2024 Tony-winning Broadway production that turned the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical from a notorious 40-year-old flop into an acclaimed hit, the stuff of Broadway legend.
There is something worthwhile in offering a chance at experiencing such a show to theater lovers who didn’t make it to New York or couldn’t afford Broadway prices. Still, the film offers a different experience from the stage musical, in part because of the inherent qualities and expectations of the medium, but also because of directorial choices – some for the better, some for the worse — by Maria Friedman, director of both the Broadway production and the film.
“Merrily We Roll Along” tells the story of three old friends — Jonathan Groff as composer turned movie producer Franklin Shepard Jr, Lindsay Mendez as novelist Mary Flynn, Daniel Radcliffe as lyricist and playwright Charley Kringas — in reverse chronological order, from 1976 to 1957. They “start” off cynical and estranged and “end” up nineteen years earlier and eight scenes later at the birth of their friendship, idealistic and collaborative.
Here is my interview with Maria Friedman last year, in which she offers her view as to why it was a flop and how she turned it around.
More...
https://newyorktheater.me/2025/12/04/merrily-we-roll-along-movie-vs-stage-musical/
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