NYCPlaywrights January 31, 2026
19 views
Skip to first unread message
NYCPlaywrights
Jan 31, 2026, 5:25:46 PM (7 days ago) Jan 31
to NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
PENNY ARCADE: USE BY DUE DATE
Performance by Penny Arcade in conjunction with the apexart exhibition Expired.
Penny Arcade presents a short performance in conjunction with Expired. Across a career spanning five decades, her work has confronted cultural expectations with wit, urgency, and incisive honesty. Her presence in the gallery affirms endurance—an artistic practice that continues to evolve, resisting erasure and expiration.
Penny Arcade (Susana Ventura) is a New York–based performance artist, writer, and theater maker whose long-form, text-based work bridges experimental theater and performance art. Centered on community and cultural critique, her practice has established her as a true original on the mainstream international stage.
Feb 21 from 5 pm to 5:30 pm EST
19 Monroe Street
New York, NY 10002
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/penny-arcade-use-by-due-date-tickets-1979894770556?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Celtic Calling is now accepting submissions of original Celtic-themed plays, vignettes, or one-acts, not to exceed thirty minutes. Up to 5 plays will be selected to be performed during the weekend of the 10th Celtic Calling Gathering, March 4-8, 2026, at a location to be determined, in Charleston, WV,USA.
The selected Top 5 submissions will receive cash prizes
First Place $150
Second $100
Third $75
Fourth $50
Fifth $25
***
The TSW-FOO is once again calling for short one act (20 minute) plays in any and all genres from all over the country and the world.
Each playwright may submit up to 2 plays for consideration.
All entries should be unpublished and not previously produced in the Houston area.
All Genres are accepted. But Light comedies are encouraged.
***
"That's What She Said" Page to Stage seeks one-act and full-length plays
Since its inception in 2018, this festival has been a vital platform for powerful new plays that uplift, challenge, and connect audiences. Produced in partnership with That’s What She Said Women’s Writers Collective, this annual event continues its mission to highlight diverse female voices through bold storytelling by playwrights from across the country.
Our 2026 Festival will take place August 14th - 16th at the Curtis Theatre in Brea, CA
Full-Length or One-Act plays centered on female, femme, trans, non-binary, queer or other inherently non-male experiences & voices.
Plays should be at least 60 pages and no longer than 120 pages in length.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** PUBLIC DOMAIN 2026 ***
Regular observers of copyright law’s favorite holiday know the drill: on January 1, 2026, a new crop of creative works from 1930 (along with sound recordings from 1925) will enter the public domain in the United States—ready to be remixed, recycled, or repurposed into B-grade horror films and ill-advised erotica.
This year’s film class is stacked with classics: Howard Hughes’s aviation epic Hell’s Angels (Jean Harlow’s screen debut and, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made); The Big Trail, featuring John Wayne in his first starring role; Greta Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie; Bing Crosby’s film debut in King of Jazz; and 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front. There’s plenty of comedy too, including the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess, and Soup to Nuts, best remembered for featuring an early iteration of the Three Stooges.
https://copyrightlately.com/public-domain-2026/
PRIVATE LIVES
Audiences loved seeing Coward and Lawrence perform together, a pairing that began with Coward’s 1930 play Private Lives. Coward and Lawrence were great friends, some even believed lovers, but that is unlikely. Coward did adore Lawrence even though they often wrangled. Coward wrote Private Lives while he was on tour in Asia. He contracted a bad case of the flu in Shanghai and was ill for two weeks. During that time, he drafted the shape of a play that would become Private Lives, and he wrote the actual script in four days. He immediately sent copies of the play to Gertrude Lawrence and his manager to ask their reactions to the play. He also asked Lawrence to reserve the fall of that year to star opposite him in a production of the play which he would also direct in London.
More...
https://pashakespeare.org/press/private-lives-the-directors-take/
The text
https://ia801404.us.archive.org/12/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.210130/2015.210130.Private-Lives.pdf
***
THE GREEN PASTURES
The play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930. It had the first all-Black Broadway cast. The play and the film adaptation were generally well-received and hailed by white drama and film critics. African American intellectuals, cultural critics, and audiences were more critical of white author Connelly's claim to present an authentic view of black religious thought. In the 21st century, it could be a form of cultural appropriation.
The play portrays episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a Black child in the Great Depression-era Jim Crow South, who interprets The Bible in terms familiar to her. Following Bradford's lead, Connelly set the biblical stories in New Orleans and an all-black context. However, he diverged from Bradford's work in enlarging the role of the character "De Lawd" (God), played on stage by Richard B. Harrison.
More...
https://aaregistry.org/story/the-green-pastures-debuts-on-broadway/
The text
https://archive.org/details/greenpasturesfa00conn/page/n17/mode/2up
***
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY
Created by genre-defying composer Kurt Weill and pioneering dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a cynical tale of an imaginary yet plausible boom town peopled by fortune seekers, prostitutes, and shady businessmen (and women) where absolutely anything goes—except having no money. This modern myth features a spectacularly inventive score that blends grand opera, popular song, and jazz-infused rhythms into a highly original mix. Teresa Stratas and Astrid Varnay, two of the great singing actresses of the 20th century, head an ensemble cast that also includes Richard Cassilly and Cornell MacNeil.
More...
https://www.metopera.org/globalassets/user-information/nightly-opera-streams/week-39/playbills/mahagonny-synopsis.pdf
1956 production with Lotte Lenya
https://archive.org/details/lp_rise-and-fall-of-the-city-of-mahagonny_kurt-weill-lotte-lenya/disc1/01.01.+Act+I+(Beginning).+Scenes+1+Through+6.mp3
***
A MURDER HAS BEEN ARRANGED
We used to moan about the dominance of thrillers, farces and drawing room comedies in their theatrical heyday. Now they have all but disappeared, they have acquired a nostalgic charm. Which is one reason for welcoming this revival of a 1930 ghost story by the largely forgotten Emlyn Williams. It certainly shows how times have changed in that its thrills depend on a playful ingenuity; a far cry from the visceral terrors of a recent Punchdrunk show where we were chased down a darkened corridor by a masked man wielding a chainsaw.
Williams's play depends on a dodgy premise. Sir Charles Jasper is celebrating his 40th birthday, on which he stands to inherit £2m if he survives a night in an allegedly haunted theatre. Given that a rapacious cousin appears out of the blue, you feel Sir Charles's life expectations are somewhat dubious. But two things lend Williams's story a ghoulish distinction.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/nov/08/a-murder-has-been-arranged
***
THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET
Mr. Rudolf Besier, whose play has been so highly praised here and so lengthily successful in London, has written of that strange, scared household at 50 Wimpole Street, where numerous souls slunk through their years under the terrible tyranny of a monstrous puritan. I am told that, when the play was first produced in England, the present Moulton-Barretts took it heavily to heart; exclaimed, in effect, “Ooh, you big story-teller! Grandpa never did any such thing! ;” and saw to it that certain bits were removed from the text. Here, I believe, the piece is displayed in its entirety, and I find myself lined right up along with the family. That Edward Moulton-Barrett was a monster and a maniac, a self-appointed czar, and, to bring matters to a climax, an old crab, we have all been told. But those scenes in which he seeks to be a little more than kin and less than kind to his daughter Elizabeth —surely those are apocryphal. Everything else we have all heard of him, but isn’t it late in the day to drag up incest? He was bad enough just plain, without making him fancy.
More...
https://archive.ph/LVHwe
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
PENNY ARCADE: USE BY DUE DATE
Performance by Penny Arcade in conjunction with the apexart exhibition Expired.
Penny Arcade presents a short performance in conjunction with Expired. Across a career spanning five decades, her work has confronted cultural expectations with wit, urgency, and incisive honesty. Her presence in the gallery affirms endurance—an artistic practice that continues to evolve, resisting erasure and expiration.
Penny Arcade (Susana Ventura) is a New York–based performance artist, writer, and theater maker whose long-form, text-based work bridges experimental theater and performance art. Centered on community and cultural critique, her practice has established her as a true original on the mainstream international stage.
Feb 21 from 5 pm to 5:30 pm EST
19 Monroe Street
New York, NY 10002
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/penny-arcade-use-by-due-date-tickets-1979894770556?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Celtic Calling is now accepting submissions of original Celtic-themed plays, vignettes, or one-acts, not to exceed thirty minutes. Up to 5 plays will be selected to be performed during the weekend of the 10th Celtic Calling Gathering, March 4-8, 2026, at a location to be determined, in Charleston, WV,USA.
The selected Top 5 submissions will receive cash prizes
First Place $150
Second $100
Third $75
Fourth $50
Fifth $25
***
The TSW-FOO is once again calling for short one act (20 minute) plays in any and all genres from all over the country and the world.
Each playwright may submit up to 2 plays for consideration.
All entries should be unpublished and not previously produced in the Houston area.
All Genres are accepted. But Light comedies are encouraged.
***
"That's What She Said" Page to Stage seeks one-act and full-length plays
Since its inception in 2018, this festival has been a vital platform for powerful new plays that uplift, challenge, and connect audiences. Produced in partnership with That’s What She Said Women’s Writers Collective, this annual event continues its mission to highlight diverse female voices through bold storytelling by playwrights from across the country.
Our 2026 Festival will take place August 14th - 16th at the Curtis Theatre in Brea, CA
Full-Length or One-Act plays centered on female, femme, trans, non-binary, queer or other inherently non-male experiences & voices.
Plays should be at least 60 pages and no longer than 120 pages in length.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** PUBLIC DOMAIN 2026 ***
Regular observers of copyright law’s favorite holiday know the drill: on January 1, 2026, a new crop of creative works from 1930 (along with sound recordings from 1925) will enter the public domain in the United States—ready to be remixed, recycled, or repurposed into B-grade horror films and ill-advised erotica.
This year’s film class is stacked with classics: Howard Hughes’s aviation epic Hell’s Angels (Jean Harlow’s screen debut and, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made); The Big Trail, featuring John Wayne in his first starring role; Greta Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie; Bing Crosby’s film debut in King of Jazz; and 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front. There’s plenty of comedy too, including the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess, and Soup to Nuts, best remembered for featuring an early iteration of the Three Stooges.
https://copyrightlately.com/public-domain-2026/
***
PRIVATE LIVES
Audiences loved seeing Coward and Lawrence perform together, a pairing that began with Coward’s 1930 play Private Lives. Coward and Lawrence were great friends, some even believed lovers, but that is unlikely. Coward did adore Lawrence even though they often wrangled. Coward wrote Private Lives while he was on tour in Asia. He contracted a bad case of the flu in Shanghai and was ill for two weeks. During that time, he drafted the shape of a play that would become Private Lives, and he wrote the actual script in four days. He immediately sent copies of the play to Gertrude Lawrence and his manager to ask their reactions to the play. He also asked Lawrence to reserve the fall of that year to star opposite him in a production of the play which he would also direct in London.
More...
https://pashakespeare.org/press/private-lives-the-directors-take/
The text
https://ia801404.us.archive.org/12/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.210130/2015.210130.Private-Lives.pdf
***
THE GREEN PASTURES
The play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930. It had the first all-Black Broadway cast. The play and the film adaptation were generally well-received and hailed by white drama and film critics. African American intellectuals, cultural critics, and audiences were more critical of white author Connelly's claim to present an authentic view of black religious thought. In the 21st century, it could be a form of cultural appropriation.
The play portrays episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a Black child in the Great Depression-era Jim Crow South, who interprets The Bible in terms familiar to her. Following Bradford's lead, Connelly set the biblical stories in New Orleans and an all-black context. However, he diverged from Bradford's work in enlarging the role of the character "De Lawd" (God), played on stage by Richard B. Harrison.
More...
https://aaregistry.org/story/the-green-pastures-debuts-on-broadway/
The text
https://archive.org/details/greenpasturesfa00conn/page/n17/mode/2up
***
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY
Created by genre-defying composer Kurt Weill and pioneering dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a cynical tale of an imaginary yet plausible boom town peopled by fortune seekers, prostitutes, and shady businessmen (and women) where absolutely anything goes—except having no money. This modern myth features a spectacularly inventive score that blends grand opera, popular song, and jazz-infused rhythms into a highly original mix. Teresa Stratas and Astrid Varnay, two of the great singing actresses of the 20th century, head an ensemble cast that also includes Richard Cassilly and Cornell MacNeil.
More...
https://www.metopera.org/globalassets/user-information/nightly-opera-streams/week-39/playbills/mahagonny-synopsis.pdf
1956 production with Lotte Lenya
https://archive.org/details/lp_rise-and-fall-of-the-city-of-mahagonny_kurt-weill-lotte-lenya/disc1/01.01.+Act+I+(Beginning).+Scenes+1+Through+6.mp3
***
A MURDER HAS BEEN ARRANGED
We used to moan about the dominance of thrillers, farces and drawing room comedies in their theatrical heyday. Now they have all but disappeared, they have acquired a nostalgic charm. Which is one reason for welcoming this revival of a 1930 ghost story by the largely forgotten Emlyn Williams. It certainly shows how times have changed in that its thrills depend on a playful ingenuity; a far cry from the visceral terrors of a recent Punchdrunk show where we were chased down a darkened corridor by a masked man wielding a chainsaw.
Williams's play depends on a dodgy premise. Sir Charles Jasper is celebrating his 40th birthday, on which he stands to inherit £2m if he survives a night in an allegedly haunted theatre. Given that a rapacious cousin appears out of the blue, you feel Sir Charles's life expectations are somewhat dubious. But two things lend Williams's story a ghoulish distinction.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/nov/08/a-murder-has-been-arranged
The text
https://archive.org/details/murderhasbeenarr0000will/page/n5/mode/2up
***
THE HUMAN VOICE
Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play is a monologue disguised as a series of breakup phone calls in which we hear the anguish of a woman being left by her partner. Using the telephone as a metaphor – the cut or crossed lines a mirror to the couple’s emotional disconnect – it is not just a dramatic experiment in voice but a painfully human play about being desperately, frantically, in love with someone as they coolly walk away. There have been vastly different versions of the central, tormented character, from Ingrid Bergman’s tremulous chain-smoker in 1960 to Tilda Swinton’s imperiously wounded woman in Pedro Almodóvar’s 2021 film. What is key is the grip of the emotional drama.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/23/the-human-voice-review-ruth-wilson-harold-pinter-theatre
https://archive.org/details/murderhasbeenarr0000will/page/n5/mode/2up
***
THE HUMAN VOICE
Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play is a monologue disguised as a series of breakup phone calls in which we hear the anguish of a woman being left by her partner. Using the telephone as a metaphor – the cut or crossed lines a mirror to the couple’s emotional disconnect – it is not just a dramatic experiment in voice but a painfully human play about being desperately, frantically, in love with someone as they coolly walk away. There have been vastly different versions of the central, tormented character, from Ingrid Bergman’s tremulous chain-smoker in 1960 to Tilda Swinton’s imperiously wounded woman in Pedro Almodóvar’s 2021 film. What is key is the grip of the emotional drama.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/23/the-human-voice-review-ruth-wilson-harold-pinter-theatre
***
THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET
Mr. Rudolf Besier, whose play has been so highly praised here and so lengthily successful in London, has written of that strange, scared household at 50 Wimpole Street, where numerous souls slunk through their years under the terrible tyranny of a monstrous puritan. I am told that, when the play was first produced in England, the present Moulton-Barretts took it heavily to heart; exclaimed, in effect, “Ooh, you big story-teller! Grandpa never did any such thing! ;” and saw to it that certain bits were removed from the text. Here, I believe, the piece is displayed in its entirety, and I find myself lined right up along with the family. That Edward Moulton-Barrett was a monster and a maniac, a self-appointed czar, and, to bring matters to a climax, an old crab, we have all been told. But those scenes in which he seeks to be a little more than kin and less than kind to his daughter Elizabeth —surely those are apocryphal. Everything else we have all heard of him, but isn’t it late in the day to drag up incest? He was bad enough just plain, without making him fancy.
More...
https://archive.ph/LVHwe
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages