NYCPlaywrights June 6, 2026
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NYCPlaywrights
Jun 6, 2026, 5:04:00 PM (6 days ago) Jun 6
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Halfway There. Where?
Celebrating our relationship with flowers
Written & Directed by Cesi Davidson
Come take a magical roadtrip with Marcus McKenna on his route to self-discovery. His traveling companion in his beat up jalopy isn't the family pet, it's the family plant Dieffenbachia (dee-eh-fuhn-baa-kee-uh). A promise he made to his deceased mother becomes an opportunity for self-forgiveness. Marcus and "Dee" have an adventure that will have you laughing with joy while reflecting on suffering and renewal. Then you'll wonder if you've been good to your own plants lately.
Post show conversation
Audience appreciation gifts while supplies last
Free and open for the adult public
Elizabeth Acosta as Dieffenbachia (Dee)
Douglas Mansell as Marcus
Music selections by Samuel Lerner
Production Assistant Rosita Timm
Le Vera Sutton is your host
June 27, 2026
3 PM
George Bruce Library
518 West 125th Street
New York, New York. 10027
https://www.nypl.org/locations/george-bruce
*** WORKSHOP: WRITE A NEW PLAY IN FIVE WEEKS ***
Two sessions available via Zoom:
Tuesdays June 23, 30 and July 7, 14, 21 / 6-9PM EASTERN
or Thursdays June 25 and July 2, 9, 16, 23 / 6-9PM EASTERN
***
In the 1980s, the U.S. Navy carried out a futile search for a woman who didn’t exist. The Naval Investigative Service (NIS) had learned that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as ‘friends of Dorothy,’ and assumed that, as Randy Shilts explained in 1993’s Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military, “a woman named Dorothy was the hub of an enormous ring of military homosexuals in the Chicago area.” The NIS made it their mission to find this elusive Dorothy, thinking they could get her to reveal the names of gay Navy personnel.
But as members of the gay community already knew, the phrase didn’t actually refer to a real woman—instead, it was a discreet way for people in the closet to identify each other.
While it’s not always easy to come out these days, in decades past, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. was so severe that they created code words and phrases to communicate in safety. For instance, instead of dangerously outing themselves, gay people—particularly gay men—would ask, “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” Fellow gay people would answer “yes,” while heterosexuals would take the question at face value, replying “no” or “Dorothy who?”
Although it’s not as commonly used anymore because of the wider acceptance of queer people, the saying still crops up in movies and TV shows, from Clueless to The Crown. But who was Dorothy, and how did she wind up in the euphemistic phrase?
More...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/friend-of-dorothy-meaning
***
Now she takes to the London stage in the revival of Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow directed by Rupert Hands at Soho Theatre Walthamstow. Here, she plays gay icon and all-around legend, Judy Garland. Though, true fans, and even perhaps those less well acquainted with Monsoon, will know it’s not her first time portraying Garland. Monsoon memorably, and quite rightly (along with Trinity the Tuck), won Snatch Game on her season of the All Winners edition of All Stars for a truly uncanny and hilarious performance as The Wizard of Oz actress.
Monsoon is outstanding, she is Garland incarnate. From the moment the actress descends through the auditorium to the stage, crooning as she goes, she has us in the palm of her hand. Dressed in a large black fur coat, matching hat and oversized sunglasses she looks every bit the star. When she hits the stage the action begins as we see Judy arrive at The Ritz in London ahead of the six-week run of shows at The Talk of the Town in the months prior to her death in 1969.
More...
https://thequeerreview.com/2026/05/22/theatre-review-end-of-the-rainbow-soho-theatre-walthamstow-london-jinkx-monsoon/
***
Judy Garland's Seventeenth Birthday Party
At Mr. Mayer's house in Santa Monica. Judy Garland celebrates her 17th birthday with fellow teen actors Mickey Rooney, Ann Rutherford, June Preisser and Jackie Cooper. This newsreel opens with "Sweet Sixteen" but Judy was actually 17 as this footage was shot on June 10, 1939, Judy's 17th birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC-o8mg4eu0
***
Command Performance #92 - Judy Garland & Bob Hope "Over the Rainbow"
March 5, 1944: Judy Garland recorded several "Command Performance" appearances for broadcast to U.S. troops overseas. This is the only filmed record of how Judy sang "Over The Rainbow" throughout the 1940s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB7-_eSI-Ak
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Halfway There. Where?
Celebrating our relationship with flowers
Written & Directed by Cesi Davidson
Come take a magical roadtrip with Marcus McKenna on his route to self-discovery. His traveling companion in his beat up jalopy isn't the family pet, it's the family plant Dieffenbachia (dee-eh-fuhn-baa-kee-uh). A promise he made to his deceased mother becomes an opportunity for self-forgiveness. Marcus and "Dee" have an adventure that will have you laughing with joy while reflecting on suffering and renewal. Then you'll wonder if you've been good to your own plants lately.
Post show conversation
Audience appreciation gifts while supplies last
Free and open for the adult public
Elizabeth Acosta as Dieffenbachia (Dee)
Douglas Mansell as Marcus
Music selections by Samuel Lerner
Production Assistant Rosita Timm
Le Vera Sutton is your host
June 27, 2026
3 PM
George Bruce Library
518 West 125th Street
New York, New York. 10027
https://www.nypl.org/locations/george-bruce
*** WORKSHOP: WRITE A NEW PLAY IN FIVE WEEKS ***
Two sessions available via Zoom:
Tuesdays June 23, 30 and July 7, 14, 21 / 6-9PM EASTERN
or Thursdays June 25 and July 2, 9, 16, 23 / 6-9PM EASTERN
$250
Having trouble getting started? Kickstart your process with this five-week workshop which includes exercises to revitalize your creativity, weekly office hours to discuss your progress, a complimentary post-workshop one-on-one, and a supportive, non-competitive environment.
Instructor: John J. Caswell, Jr. was a recent fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and holds an MFA from Hunter College.
MORE INFO: WWW.JOHNJCASWELLJR.COM/WORKSHOPS
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
DRURY UNIVERSITY ONE-ACT PLAY COMPETITION
1. Competition is open to all playwrights. Scripts are to be original, unpublished, and unproduced. Staged readings or workshop productions will not disqualify a script. Musicals, monologues, adaptations, film and TV scripts are ineligible.
2. Preference will be given to small cast, one-set shows with running times of no less than twenty and no more than forty-five minutes.
***
2026 Modern Works Festival seeks plays by women
Three finalists will be selected by a panel of play readers to present their work as a staged reading during the Festival. The Festival will culminate in an audience roundtable discussion, and Festival Passholders will have the opportunity to cast a vote for their favorite of the three works. All finalists will receive a stipend award of $1500, plus travel to/from Sarasota and housing.
***
Cimientos is IATI Theater’s Play Development Program. We provide playwrights the opportunity to develop new, never-before produced plays through a community of cutting-edge theater artists. Through the PPP* and SRP*, Cimientos amplifies as clearly as possible the voice of the playwright who lays the foundation from which the work emerges. Like IATI Theater, Cimientos is committed to supporting playwrights and works that challenge convention and explore the avant-garde spirit of IATI’s Vanguardia.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
Having trouble getting started? Kickstart your process with this five-week workshop which includes exercises to revitalize your creativity, weekly office hours to discuss your progress, a complimentary post-workshop one-on-one, and a supportive, non-competitive environment.
Instructor: John J. Caswell, Jr. was a recent fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and holds an MFA from Hunter College.
MORE INFO: WWW.JOHNJCASWELLJR.COM/WORKSHOPS
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
DRURY UNIVERSITY ONE-ACT PLAY COMPETITION
1. Competition is open to all playwrights. Scripts are to be original, unpublished, and unproduced. Staged readings or workshop productions will not disqualify a script. Musicals, monologues, adaptations, film and TV scripts are ineligible.
2. Preference will be given to small cast, one-set shows with running times of no less than twenty and no more than forty-five minutes.
***
2026 Modern Works Festival seeks plays by women
Three finalists will be selected by a panel of play readers to present their work as a staged reading during the Festival. The Festival will culminate in an audience roundtable discussion, and Festival Passholders will have the opportunity to cast a vote for their favorite of the three works. All finalists will receive a stipend award of $1500, plus travel to/from Sarasota and housing.
***
Cimientos is IATI Theater’s Play Development Program. We provide playwrights the opportunity to develop new, never-before produced plays through a community of cutting-edge theater artists. Through the PPP* and SRP*, Cimientos amplifies as clearly as possible the voice of the playwright who lays the foundation from which the work emerges. Like IATI Theater, Cimientos is committed to supporting playwrights and works that challenge convention and explore the avant-garde spirit of IATI’s Vanguardia.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** FRIENDS OF DOROTHY ***
A college friend invited me to Judy Garland’s highly publicized April 23, 1961, Carnegie Hall concert, which sold out the day tickets were issued. The success of this event is reflected in an album recorded live, which remained on the Billboard charts for 73 weeks, including 13 weeks at No. 1. It won four Grammy Awards, was certified gold, and has never been out of print.
And we were there “in the room where it happened” — two very fortunate Manhattan-based recent college graduates who were about to experience “the greatest night in show business.” Because my friend’s brother-in-law was Burt Boyar, a major entertainment journalist, we ended up sitting smack in the center of the third-row orchestra—an area usually occupied by A-list notables. Seated nearby were the celebrated pop-music composer Harold Arlen (who wrote the songs for The Wizard of Oz, among many other Garland hits) and the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, while Ethel Merman, Benny Goodman, and Rock Hudson were in the front row. I later learned that such Hollywood legends and Broadway stars as Mickey Rooney, Julie Andrews, Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Reynolds, Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Carol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May were also in attendance—and that’s just naming a smattering. It was exciting to be surrounded by such luminaries!
More...
https://www.nycitywoman.com/ill-never-forget-judy-garland-carnegie-hall-1961/
***
In a photograph snapped on the evening of April 23, 1961, a line of disembodied hands reach out to grasp for Judy Garland onstage at Carnegie Hall. They belonged to a group of men whose allegiance to the star was as passionate as it was fraught; as bound up in their identification with her strength and humor as with the many troubles of her life. Their cohort could only be spoken about in code, and in time, a whole vocabulary emerged to describe them: friends of Dorothy, the boys in the band, Best Judys. To journalists and outsiders they were objects of amusement, if not outright scorn: “the boys in tight trousers,” “ever-present bluebirds,” or as one writer bluntly called them, “a flutter of fags.”
What’s most striking about this image is Garland’s responsiveness to the people connected to those flailing limbs. Her eyes are cast downward, reciprocating their gaze, engaging them as individuals rather than an undifferentiated mass. Most accounts of that evening are of a restless and animated audience, leaping out of their seats and swarming the footlights to be closer to the singer. According to one review, the fervor was so intense “you could not tell whether the crowd was clapping, shouting, screaming, laughing, or crying. The sound suddenly had no character. It was just an expression of total approval and acceptance.”
More...
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/judy-garland-judy-at-carnegie-hall/
***
The religious ritual of greeting, watching and listening to Judy Garland took place last night in Carnegie Hall. Indeed, what actually was to have been a concert- and was- also turned into something not too remote from a revival meeting.
From the moment Miss Garland came on the stage, a stage, incidentally, on which have trod before her the immortals of music, the cultists were beside themselves. What Rev. Billy Graham would have given for such a welcome from the faithful!
They were on their feet before the goddess grabbed the microphone, and by the time she had bestowed the first of those warm smiles, they were applauding and screaming "Bravo!" Miss Garland could have probably ended the concert right there and they would still be cheering. The fact is that at least a half dozen times more during the evening the standing ovation, plus the screaming, took place.
Whether or not this sort of unadulterated adulation was warranted is a matter a non-cultist had better not discuss in public. And whether or not so professional a performer as Miss Garland requires the ritual to put her on her mettle is questionable. But on her mettle she was last night as she went through a repertoire of favorites.
More...
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/09/specials/garland-carnegie.html
***
It was June 22, 1969, that Oscar-nominated actor Judy Garland — star of The Wizard of Oz, (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and A Star Is Born (1954) — was found dead at 47 of an accidental overdose.
A week later, thousands of her admirers turned out to pay their respects at her June 27 funeral. “The countless legions of Judy Garland‘s fans, 21,000 of whom appeared in person and jammed the streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side last week to file past the bier where her body, dressed in the ankle-length gown she had worn at her fifth wedding, lay in state,” TIME reported back then in a story headlined “End of the Rainbow.”
By the time she died, Garland was a well-known icon to the LGBT community at the time. In a 1967 review of a performance she gave, TIME mockingly noted her popularity within the gay community and quoted Manhattan psychiatrists who surmised that she might be admired as a model of resilience. Her problems were no secret, including drug addiction and suicide attempts, and she channeled her sorrow into creative outlets. She was “the Elvis for homosexuals,” Barry Walters wrote in the LGBTQ news outlet The Advocate, “a symbol of emotional liberation, a woman who struggled to live and love without restraint. She couldn’t do it in her real life, of course, and neither could her fans. But she did it in her songs, and with them she brought along anyone who similarly dared to care too much.”
On June 27, 1969, when the trans activist Sylvia Rivera heard about the funeral, she became “completely hysterical,” she recalled to the historian Martin Duberman in his 1994 account of the uprising, Stonewall.
“It’s the end of an era,” she told him. “The greatest singer, the greatest actress of my childhood is no more. Never again ‘Over the Rainbow.'” Sobbing, she continued, saying there was “no one left to look up to.”
She had been planning to stay home and light some candles as a vigil to her idol when her friend Tammy Novak called and — “sounding more stoned than usual,” as Rivera recalled — begged Rivera to join her at Stonewall. At first Rivera worried about whether that would be in good taste: “Was it all right to dance with the martyred Judy not cold in her grave?” But she relented, “popped a black beauty,” and headed over.
More...
https://time.com/5602528/judy-garland-funeral-stonewall/
A college friend invited me to Judy Garland’s highly publicized April 23, 1961, Carnegie Hall concert, which sold out the day tickets were issued. The success of this event is reflected in an album recorded live, which remained on the Billboard charts for 73 weeks, including 13 weeks at No. 1. It won four Grammy Awards, was certified gold, and has never been out of print.
And we were there “in the room where it happened” — two very fortunate Manhattan-based recent college graduates who were about to experience “the greatest night in show business.” Because my friend’s brother-in-law was Burt Boyar, a major entertainment journalist, we ended up sitting smack in the center of the third-row orchestra—an area usually occupied by A-list notables. Seated nearby were the celebrated pop-music composer Harold Arlen (who wrote the songs for The Wizard of Oz, among many other Garland hits) and the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, while Ethel Merman, Benny Goodman, and Rock Hudson were in the front row. I later learned that such Hollywood legends and Broadway stars as Mickey Rooney, Julie Andrews, Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Reynolds, Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Carol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May were also in attendance—and that’s just naming a smattering. It was exciting to be surrounded by such luminaries!
More...
https://www.nycitywoman.com/ill-never-forget-judy-garland-carnegie-hall-1961/
***
In a photograph snapped on the evening of April 23, 1961, a line of disembodied hands reach out to grasp for Judy Garland onstage at Carnegie Hall. They belonged to a group of men whose allegiance to the star was as passionate as it was fraught; as bound up in their identification with her strength and humor as with the many troubles of her life. Their cohort could only be spoken about in code, and in time, a whole vocabulary emerged to describe them: friends of Dorothy, the boys in the band, Best Judys. To journalists and outsiders they were objects of amusement, if not outright scorn: “the boys in tight trousers,” “ever-present bluebirds,” or as one writer bluntly called them, “a flutter of fags.”
What’s most striking about this image is Garland’s responsiveness to the people connected to those flailing limbs. Her eyes are cast downward, reciprocating their gaze, engaging them as individuals rather than an undifferentiated mass. Most accounts of that evening are of a restless and animated audience, leaping out of their seats and swarming the footlights to be closer to the singer. According to one review, the fervor was so intense “you could not tell whether the crowd was clapping, shouting, screaming, laughing, or crying. The sound suddenly had no character. It was just an expression of total approval and acceptance.”
More...
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/judy-garland-judy-at-carnegie-hall/
***
The religious ritual of greeting, watching and listening to Judy Garland took place last night in Carnegie Hall. Indeed, what actually was to have been a concert- and was- also turned into something not too remote from a revival meeting.
From the moment Miss Garland came on the stage, a stage, incidentally, on which have trod before her the immortals of music, the cultists were beside themselves. What Rev. Billy Graham would have given for such a welcome from the faithful!
They were on their feet before the goddess grabbed the microphone, and by the time she had bestowed the first of those warm smiles, they were applauding and screaming "Bravo!" Miss Garland could have probably ended the concert right there and they would still be cheering. The fact is that at least a half dozen times more during the evening the standing ovation, plus the screaming, took place.
Whether or not this sort of unadulterated adulation was warranted is a matter a non-cultist had better not discuss in public. And whether or not so professional a performer as Miss Garland requires the ritual to put her on her mettle is questionable. But on her mettle she was last night as she went through a repertoire of favorites.
More...
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/09/specials/garland-carnegie.html
***
It was June 22, 1969, that Oscar-nominated actor Judy Garland — star of The Wizard of Oz, (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and A Star Is Born (1954) — was found dead at 47 of an accidental overdose.
A week later, thousands of her admirers turned out to pay their respects at her June 27 funeral. “The countless legions of Judy Garland‘s fans, 21,000 of whom appeared in person and jammed the streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side last week to file past the bier where her body, dressed in the ankle-length gown she had worn at her fifth wedding, lay in state,” TIME reported back then in a story headlined “End of the Rainbow.”
By the time she died, Garland was a well-known icon to the LGBT community at the time. In a 1967 review of a performance she gave, TIME mockingly noted her popularity within the gay community and quoted Manhattan psychiatrists who surmised that she might be admired as a model of resilience. Her problems were no secret, including drug addiction and suicide attempts, and she channeled her sorrow into creative outlets. She was “the Elvis for homosexuals,” Barry Walters wrote in the LGBTQ news outlet The Advocate, “a symbol of emotional liberation, a woman who struggled to live and love without restraint. She couldn’t do it in her real life, of course, and neither could her fans. But she did it in her songs, and with them she brought along anyone who similarly dared to care too much.”
On June 27, 1969, when the trans activist Sylvia Rivera heard about the funeral, she became “completely hysterical,” she recalled to the historian Martin Duberman in his 1994 account of the uprising, Stonewall.
“It’s the end of an era,” she told him. “The greatest singer, the greatest actress of my childhood is no more. Never again ‘Over the Rainbow.'” Sobbing, she continued, saying there was “no one left to look up to.”
She had been planning to stay home and light some candles as a vigil to her idol when her friend Tammy Novak called and — “sounding more stoned than usual,” as Rivera recalled — begged Rivera to join her at Stonewall. At first Rivera worried about whether that would be in good taste: “Was it all right to dance with the martyred Judy not cold in her grave?” But she relented, “popped a black beauty,” and headed over.
More...
https://time.com/5602528/judy-garland-funeral-stonewall/
***
In the 1980s, the U.S. Navy carried out a futile search for a woman who didn’t exist. The Naval Investigative Service (NIS) had learned that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as ‘friends of Dorothy,’ and assumed that, as Randy Shilts explained in 1993’s Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military, “a woman named Dorothy was the hub of an enormous ring of military homosexuals in the Chicago area.” The NIS made it their mission to find this elusive Dorothy, thinking they could get her to reveal the names of gay Navy personnel.
But as members of the gay community already knew, the phrase didn’t actually refer to a real woman—instead, it was a discreet way for people in the closet to identify each other.
While it’s not always easy to come out these days, in decades past, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. was so severe that they created code words and phrases to communicate in safety. For instance, instead of dangerously outing themselves, gay people—particularly gay men—would ask, “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” Fellow gay people would answer “yes,” while heterosexuals would take the question at face value, replying “no” or “Dorothy who?”
Although it’s not as commonly used anymore because of the wider acceptance of queer people, the saying still crops up in movies and TV shows, from Clueless to The Crown. But who was Dorothy, and how did she wind up in the euphemistic phrase?
More...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/friend-of-dorothy-meaning
***
Now she takes to the London stage in the revival of Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow directed by Rupert Hands at Soho Theatre Walthamstow. Here, she plays gay icon and all-around legend, Judy Garland. Though, true fans, and even perhaps those less well acquainted with Monsoon, will know it’s not her first time portraying Garland. Monsoon memorably, and quite rightly (along with Trinity the Tuck), won Snatch Game on her season of the All Winners edition of All Stars for a truly uncanny and hilarious performance as The Wizard of Oz actress.
Monsoon is outstanding, she is Garland incarnate. From the moment the actress descends through the auditorium to the stage, crooning as she goes, she has us in the palm of her hand. Dressed in a large black fur coat, matching hat and oversized sunglasses she looks every bit the star. When she hits the stage the action begins as we see Judy arrive at The Ritz in London ahead of the six-week run of shows at The Talk of the Town in the months prior to her death in 1969.
More...
https://thequeerreview.com/2026/05/22/theatre-review-end-of-the-rainbow-soho-theatre-walthamstow-london-jinkx-monsoon/
***
Judy Garland's Seventeenth Birthday Party
At Mr. Mayer's house in Santa Monica. Judy Garland celebrates her 17th birthday with fellow teen actors Mickey Rooney, Ann Rutherford, June Preisser and Jackie Cooper. This newsreel opens with "Sweet Sixteen" but Judy was actually 17 as this footage was shot on June 10, 1939, Judy's 17th birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC-o8mg4eu0
***
Command Performance #92 - Judy Garland & Bob Hope "Over the Rainbow"
March 5, 1944: Judy Garland recorded several "Command Performance" appearances for broadcast to U.S. troops overseas. This is the only filmed record of how Judy sang "Over The Rainbow" throughout the 1940s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB7-_eSI-Ak
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