NYCPlaywrights October 10, 2026
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NYCPlaywrights
Oct 10, 2026, 5:07:36 PMOct 10
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Don't Call Me Virgin
By Erin Proctor
Directed by Dante Piro
Part of the Bread n' Butter Developmental Reading Series
Starring Lauren Keffler as Mary and Matthew Penalva as Joseph
When you’re caught up in a dysfunctional lavender marriage ordained by God, things aren’t always easy. A fun little slice of life, from the Espousal through the Nativity, we follow Mary and Joseph as they navigate their new relationship, the Roman occupation of their town, their quirks, insecurities, and the birth of their child.
Sunday, October 18th at 7:00pm
The Studio at The Tank
312 W 36th St, 6th Floor
The show will run approximately 100 minutes with no intermission.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dont-call-me-virgin-by-erin-proctor-tickets-2003020543365?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Emerging Playwrights Fund (the “Fund”) is calling theatrical visionaries who are ready to push boundaries and captivate audiences through the intimate, limitless world of audio drama.
We're seeking early-career theatrical writers who craft immersive fictional experiences that engage, entertain, and inspire. We value diverse perspectives, innovative approaches to form, and stories that harness the unique intimacy and immediacy of audio storytelling. Whether your work explores internal worlds through sound, creates vivid landscapes through language, or experiments with narrative structure—if it pushes boundaries and demands to be heard, we want it.
***
Seeking BIPOC playwrights for Abingdon Theatre Company's seventh annual Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A BIPOC Festival of Short Plays in collaboration with AMT Theater. Abingdon Theatre Company continues to be committed to creating opportunities for all voices to be heard. With this in mind, ATC is thrilled to open submissions for our seventh annual festival of short plays; a festival shedding light on stories by people of color.
***
Queens (NYC) Theatre’s Unbound Voices: New Play Development Series (formerly New American Voices) is now accepting submissions for short plays for future readings.
We are looking for original plays about characters experiencing a moment of change in Queens, NY. Let a Queens neighborhood, landmark, institution, event, or moment in the borough's history shape the characters’ journey.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** LINCOLN IN THE BARDO ***
“Wild scene,” the writer George Saunders said, a little wide-eyed, after witnessing a portion of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Lincoln in the Bardo” unfold in a corner of the New York Times Building. It involved the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, 44, in the role of a dead 14-year-old girl, contending with disembodied hands and half a dozen foam pig heads, all while singing an aria.
The opera, set to debut at Lincoln Center on Oct. 19, was adapted from Saunders’s 2017 Man Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, which was inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie. But it’s also a strange and bighearted ghost story, with souls who exist in a murky state of denial about the fact that they’re dead. Residents of a Washington, D.C., graveyard, these figures regularly leave what they refer to as their “sick boxes” — coffins are for the deceased, after all — to recount who they were in “that previous place.”
More...
https://archive.ph/Xy7Uu
***
With music by Missy Mazzoli, “Lincoln in the Bardo” will be the first world première by a female composer at the Met since it was founded, in 1883. The story takes place during the course of one evening, in a hazy spiritual plane where anguished souls are caught between life and the hereafter. Lincoln’s son Willie, who died of typhoid fever at just eleven years old, is one of those stuck in stasis. The set depicts the wooded Oak Hill Cemetery, where Willie was temporarily interred after his death—and to which Mazzoli has an honorary key—but the stage is fragmented into a layered arrangement, segments contoured with neon lighting. “People are moving between a real landscape and void space,” the director, Lileana Blain-Cruz, said. “We wanted to keep the lines blurry.”
More...
https://archive.ph/lDjLH
***
Alison Stewart: When you wrote this book, you were already well-known as a short-story writer. Did this book expand out of a short story, or was a novel always in the making?
George Saunders: It didn't expand. This book has about a 30-year history because I first heard the story about Lincoln going into his son's crypt. I don't remember the year, but Bill Clinton was president.
Alison Stewart: Okay.
George Saunders: Yes, and I was four years old.
[laughter]
George Saunders: We literally drove by the cemetery and a relative of my wife pointed up at a certain crypt and said, "Willie Lincoln was buried there, and the newspapers reported that his father was so grief-stricken that he went in." I was like, "Who's Willie Lincoln?" That was the first thing. Then I researched it, and that actually was in the newspapers. At that point, I started to think about it.
I thought that would be a great book for somebody to write, but I didn't think there was an intersection between what I knew how to do and what the book would require. I just kept waiting. Then finally, I don't know, it was maybe 20 years later, I thought this is the time or, otherwise, my gravestone is going to say, "Avoided what he most longed to do," that kind of thing.
Alison Stewart: [laughs]
George Saunders: I just gave myself a six-month contract where I wouldn't tell anybody about it, but I'd try it, because it was different for me. It was more earnest, a little less funny, I guess.
Alison Stewart: Well, one thing I learned about you is that you have a degree in geophysical engineering. How does your science brain work with the creative writing side of your brain?
George Saunders: Well, actually, I went to this place called the Colorado School of Mines. Not like mimes, but mines.
Alison Stewart: M-I-N-E-S.
George Saunders: Yes, I had a major in glass-wall walking. One of the things they taught us, the mantra was no partial credit, which meant if you got to the end of a long proof and you got it wrong, you got zero. I actually found that really useful as a writer because there's not necessarily a connection between effort and result. You have to keep trying. If you get into draft 50 and it still stinks, it still stinks That sounds bleak when I say it that way. For me, that's a lot of it is you can't think that because you've done it a million times is good, and then you have to ascend to a different level where you're really in touch with what you think is good. That's where I think a lot of the stuff happens.
More...
https://wnyc.org/browse/shows/episode/simplecast/39522b9a-ecf2-44fe-86cf-fa80f96b2a2b/transcript
***
George Saunders (with Chris Thile, Serena Brook, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Claire Coffee, Rich Dworsky, Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, and Sean Watkins) reads a portion of his book 'Lincoln in the Bardo' on our October 14, 2017 broadcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2yA4TI1kS4
***
George Saunders
By my count, we are, what, three months away from rehearsals starting and three and a half from the premiere? How are you feeling?
Missy Mazzoli
The solitary writing is over, so this is the fun stage for me. I’ve been working by myself at my desk and at my piano for five years, and everyone else is finally joining the party. Now I get to sit back as the host.
We’re holding auditions for Willie Lincoln today, and our puppet designer, James Ortiz, has been sending me videos of his designs, and each time it feels like waking up to Christmas morning. I’ve also been answering lots of questions from our singers, including how I want them to play the kazoos. I’m like, “I think you just blow into it, but we’ll work on it in rehearsal.”
GS
It’s funny even hearing about it. Other than Willie, are you fully cast?
MM
Yes. Willie is the last role to be cast because he is a boy soprano, and you have to catch them before their voices change. You can’t cast children years in advance, because their voices might change before they get on stage.
GS
Hopefully not before October.
MM
Hopefully not. It has happened, but we’ll be fine.
GS
Are you free to run through some of the cast?
MM
Sure, but I won’t be able to mention everybody. It’s a huge cast. Christine Goerke, an amazing dramatic soprano, is playing The Reverend Everly Thomas. Anthony Roth Costanzo is playing Elise Traynor. We have Ryan McKinny as Hans Vollmann; Joshua Blue as Thomas Havens; Peter Mattei, a great star baritone, as Lincoln; and Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Barron. This is the absolute most luxury casting I’ve ever had—opera superstars.
GS
And Lileana Blain-Cruz is directing. She’s another superstar.
Take us back to the beginning. How did you first get interested in adapting this book?
MM
Well, permission to fangirl for like two sentences—
GS
Yes. Even several minutes is fine.
MM
(laughter) You are one of three or four writers whose new books I will automatically buy as soon as they come out and immediately devour; I read Lincoln in the Bardo as soon as I possibly could. Very soon after I finished it, the Metropolitan Opera called me into a meeting to ask if I wanted to write an opera and whetherI had any ideas. I hadn’t wanted to jinx the meeting by preparing, so I just blurted out, “Lincoln in the Bardo!” As soon as I said it, I started hoping it would work, because the novel has all the things I look for.
More...
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2026/09/15/missy-mazzoli-by-george-saunders/
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Don't Call Me Virgin
By Erin Proctor
Directed by Dante Piro
Part of the Bread n' Butter Developmental Reading Series
Starring Lauren Keffler as Mary and Matthew Penalva as Joseph
When you’re caught up in a dysfunctional lavender marriage ordained by God, things aren’t always easy. A fun little slice of life, from the Espousal through the Nativity, we follow Mary and Joseph as they navigate their new relationship, the Roman occupation of their town, their quirks, insecurities, and the birth of their child.
Sunday, October 18th at 7:00pm
The Studio at The Tank
312 W 36th St, 6th Floor
The show will run approximately 100 minutes with no intermission.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dont-call-me-virgin-by-erin-proctor-tickets-2003020543365?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Emerging Playwrights Fund (the “Fund”) is calling theatrical visionaries who are ready to push boundaries and captivate audiences through the intimate, limitless world of audio drama.
We're seeking early-career theatrical writers who craft immersive fictional experiences that engage, entertain, and inspire. We value diverse perspectives, innovative approaches to form, and stories that harness the unique intimacy and immediacy of audio storytelling. Whether your work explores internal worlds through sound, creates vivid landscapes through language, or experiments with narrative structure—if it pushes boundaries and demands to be heard, we want it.
***
Seeking BIPOC playwrights for Abingdon Theatre Company's seventh annual Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A BIPOC Festival of Short Plays in collaboration with AMT Theater. Abingdon Theatre Company continues to be committed to creating opportunities for all voices to be heard. With this in mind, ATC is thrilled to open submissions for our seventh annual festival of short plays; a festival shedding light on stories by people of color.
***
Queens (NYC) Theatre’s Unbound Voices: New Play Development Series (formerly New American Voices) is now accepting submissions for short plays for future readings.
We are looking for original plays about characters experiencing a moment of change in Queens, NY. Let a Queens neighborhood, landmark, institution, event, or moment in the borough's history shape the characters’ journey.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** LINCOLN IN THE BARDO ***
“Wild scene,” the writer George Saunders said, a little wide-eyed, after witnessing a portion of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Lincoln in the Bardo” unfold in a corner of the New York Times Building. It involved the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, 44, in the role of a dead 14-year-old girl, contending with disembodied hands and half a dozen foam pig heads, all while singing an aria.
The opera, set to debut at Lincoln Center on Oct. 19, was adapted from Saunders’s 2017 Man Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, which was inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie. But it’s also a strange and bighearted ghost story, with souls who exist in a murky state of denial about the fact that they’re dead. Residents of a Washington, D.C., graveyard, these figures regularly leave what they refer to as their “sick boxes” — coffins are for the deceased, after all — to recount who they were in “that previous place.”
More...
https://archive.ph/Xy7Uu
***
With music by Missy Mazzoli, “Lincoln in the Bardo” will be the first world première by a female composer at the Met since it was founded, in 1883. The story takes place during the course of one evening, in a hazy spiritual plane where anguished souls are caught between life and the hereafter. Lincoln’s son Willie, who died of typhoid fever at just eleven years old, is one of those stuck in stasis. The set depicts the wooded Oak Hill Cemetery, where Willie was temporarily interred after his death—and to which Mazzoli has an honorary key—but the stage is fragmented into a layered arrangement, segments contoured with neon lighting. “People are moving between a real landscape and void space,” the director, Lileana Blain-Cruz, said. “We wanted to keep the lines blurry.”
More...
https://archive.ph/lDjLH
***
Alison Stewart: When you wrote this book, you were already well-known as a short-story writer. Did this book expand out of a short story, or was a novel always in the making?
George Saunders: It didn't expand. This book has about a 30-year history because I first heard the story about Lincoln going into his son's crypt. I don't remember the year, but Bill Clinton was president.
Alison Stewart: Okay.
George Saunders: Yes, and I was four years old.
[laughter]
George Saunders: We literally drove by the cemetery and a relative of my wife pointed up at a certain crypt and said, "Willie Lincoln was buried there, and the newspapers reported that his father was so grief-stricken that he went in." I was like, "Who's Willie Lincoln?" That was the first thing. Then I researched it, and that actually was in the newspapers. At that point, I started to think about it.
I thought that would be a great book for somebody to write, but I didn't think there was an intersection between what I knew how to do and what the book would require. I just kept waiting. Then finally, I don't know, it was maybe 20 years later, I thought this is the time or, otherwise, my gravestone is going to say, "Avoided what he most longed to do," that kind of thing.
Alison Stewart: [laughs]
George Saunders: I just gave myself a six-month contract where I wouldn't tell anybody about it, but I'd try it, because it was different for me. It was more earnest, a little less funny, I guess.
Alison Stewart: Well, one thing I learned about you is that you have a degree in geophysical engineering. How does your science brain work with the creative writing side of your brain?
George Saunders: Well, actually, I went to this place called the Colorado School of Mines. Not like mimes, but mines.
Alison Stewart: M-I-N-E-S.
George Saunders: Yes, I had a major in glass-wall walking. One of the things they taught us, the mantra was no partial credit, which meant if you got to the end of a long proof and you got it wrong, you got zero. I actually found that really useful as a writer because there's not necessarily a connection between effort and result. You have to keep trying. If you get into draft 50 and it still stinks, it still stinks That sounds bleak when I say it that way. For me, that's a lot of it is you can't think that because you've done it a million times is good, and then you have to ascend to a different level where you're really in touch with what you think is good. That's where I think a lot of the stuff happens.
More...
https://wnyc.org/browse/shows/episode/simplecast/39522b9a-ecf2-44fe-86cf-fa80f96b2a2b/transcript
***
George Saunders (with Chris Thile, Serena Brook, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Claire Coffee, Rich Dworsky, Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, and Sean Watkins) reads a portion of his book 'Lincoln in the Bardo' on our October 14, 2017 broadcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2yA4TI1kS4
***
George Saunders
By my count, we are, what, three months away from rehearsals starting and three and a half from the premiere? How are you feeling?
Missy Mazzoli
The solitary writing is over, so this is the fun stage for me. I’ve been working by myself at my desk and at my piano for five years, and everyone else is finally joining the party. Now I get to sit back as the host.
We’re holding auditions for Willie Lincoln today, and our puppet designer, James Ortiz, has been sending me videos of his designs, and each time it feels like waking up to Christmas morning. I’ve also been answering lots of questions from our singers, including how I want them to play the kazoos. I’m like, “I think you just blow into it, but we’ll work on it in rehearsal.”
GS
It’s funny even hearing about it. Other than Willie, are you fully cast?
MM
Yes. Willie is the last role to be cast because he is a boy soprano, and you have to catch them before their voices change. You can’t cast children years in advance, because their voices might change before they get on stage.
GS
Hopefully not before October.
MM
Hopefully not. It has happened, but we’ll be fine.
GS
Are you free to run through some of the cast?
MM
Sure, but I won’t be able to mention everybody. It’s a huge cast. Christine Goerke, an amazing dramatic soprano, is playing The Reverend Everly Thomas. Anthony Roth Costanzo is playing Elise Traynor. We have Ryan McKinny as Hans Vollmann; Joshua Blue as Thomas Havens; Peter Mattei, a great star baritone, as Lincoln; and Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Barron. This is the absolute most luxury casting I’ve ever had—opera superstars.
GS
And Lileana Blain-Cruz is directing. She’s another superstar.
Take us back to the beginning. How did you first get interested in adapting this book?
MM
Well, permission to fangirl for like two sentences—
GS
Yes. Even several minutes is fine.
MM
(laughter) You are one of three or four writers whose new books I will automatically buy as soon as they come out and immediately devour; I read Lincoln in the Bardo as soon as I possibly could. Very soon after I finished it, the Metropolitan Opera called me into a meeting to ask if I wanted to write an opera and whetherI had any ideas. I hadn’t wanted to jinx the meeting by preparing, so I just blurted out, “Lincoln in the Bardo!” As soon as I said it, I started hoping it would work, because the novel has all the things I look for.
More...
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2026/09/15/missy-mazzoli-by-george-saunders/
***
Set in the bardo—the liminal plane between death and the next life, in Tibetan Buddhism—the story centers on Willie Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of Abraham Lincoln. Unable to come to terms with his premature demise, Willie struggles to pass on—despite the encouragement of a band of hapless haunts he encounters along the way—while his devastated father makes repeated pilgrimages to his grave, desperate to commune with the boy’s spirit, and attempts to heal a nation at war with itself. Simultaneously mesmerizing and macabre, humorous and heartbreaking, it’s a perfect piece for Tony-nominated director Lileana Blain-Cruz, who returns to the Met following her eye-popping vision of John Adams’s El Nino in 2024. Baritone Peter Mattei stars as the grieving president, headlining a starry ensemble that features such Met luminaries as soprano Christine Goerke, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, conducted by Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
In advance of the work’s October 19 debut, the opera’s creators discussed bringing this modern-day ghost story to the Met.
More...
https://www.metopera.org/discover/articles/the-space-between2/
Set in the bardo—the liminal plane between death and the next life, in Tibetan Buddhism—the story centers on Willie Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of Abraham Lincoln. Unable to come to terms with his premature demise, Willie struggles to pass on—despite the encouragement of a band of hapless haunts he encounters along the way—while his devastated father makes repeated pilgrimages to his grave, desperate to commune with the boy’s spirit, and attempts to heal a nation at war with itself. Simultaneously mesmerizing and macabre, humorous and heartbreaking, it’s a perfect piece for Tony-nominated director Lileana Blain-Cruz, who returns to the Met following her eye-popping vision of John Adams’s El Nino in 2024. Baritone Peter Mattei stars as the grieving president, headlining a starry ensemble that features such Met luminaries as soprano Christine Goerke, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, conducted by Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
In advance of the work’s October 19 debut, the opera’s creators discussed bringing this modern-day ghost story to the Met.
More...
https://www.metopera.org/discover/articles/the-space-between2/
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