NYCPlaywrights September 20, 2025
21 views
Skip to first unread message
NYCPlaywrights
Sep 20, 2025, 5:05:32 PM (10 days ago) Sep 20
to NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Your Limp Wrist Makes a Fist: The Legacy of Hot Peaches
An Archives Onstage panel featuring Hugh Ryan, David Getsy, Joe Jeffreys, and others, and moderated by Helen Shaw.
Describing themselves as “revolutionaries in action,” Hot Peaches made unabashedly queer, political theatre following the Stonewall Riots in the early 1970s and continuing into the early 2000s—working through the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and culture wars in the 90s. Through it all, the group demonstrated the co-constitutive resilience of queer art and life, and their archives, held in NYU Special Collections, offer deeply relevant and timely insights toward collaborative queer survival in hostile times. Moderated by Helen Shaw and featuring David Getsy, Joe Jeffreys, Hugh Ryan, and others, this panel will explore the legacy and ongoing importance of the Peaches and of downtown queer performance more broadly, from post-Stonewall to the present, asking: What is the potential of queer and trans performance during times of political crisis?
This discussion is presented as part of Archives Onstage: Hot Peaches—a semester-long celebration of the ongoing impact of the group, with events across campus, starting in September.
NYU's "Archives Onstage," an interdisciplinary, cross-campus series, aims to activate the NYU Division of Libraries’ significant performing arts-related archival holdings in relation to contemporary art and scholarship on campus. Using panels, talks, performance and more, the series situates these archives as integral to the past, present, and future lives of the university and its neighboring downtown artistic communities. Co-sponsored by NYU Libraries and NYU Skirball.
As a part of NYU's commitment to global inclusion, our events and initiatives are open to individuals of all backgrounds and identities.
Thursday, October 23 · 6 - 8pm EDT. Doors at 5:30pm
Bobst Library | 2nd Floor | Richard A. Chase North Reading Room and Event Space
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/your-limp-wrist-makes-a-fist-the-legacy-of-hot-peaches-tickets-1669921142089?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Flynn is committed to using the arts to build connections and strengthen communities. The *snap* Festival is a celebration of the power of first-person narratives. We believe everyone has stories to tell and that sharing these stories teaches empathy by allowing us to recognize commonalities and learn about each other’s unique experiences.
***
Eight Annual Eric Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists
The musical must:
• Be a full-length show (at least 80 minutes)
• Have no more than eight actors (actors may play multiple roles, if so, please include a suggested breakdown of role distribution)
• Be complete and ready for readings, workshops and/or productions
• Have a demo that is an accurate representation of the music and style of the show (at least five songs)
• Have full underlying rights clearance of any pre-existing material used in the script (music, source material, etc.)
• Not have had a full production or be published in any way, even if with a different name.
***
Go Try Playwrite September 2025
The prompt for September 2025 is:
A “There’s actually nothing funny about this” prompt. Writers, it’s our job to hold people in power up to ridicule when they deserve it. That’s our job as artists; to lessen the fear that keep the people in power in power by pointing out their idiocy and hypocracy. That being said, write a 10-page maximum scene about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** STAGE & FREE SPEECH ***
Oklahoma college administrators reportedly shut down a historically accurate student play about the boy actors performing as Shakespeare’s leading ladies over concerns about anti-trans laws—so students raised nearly $10,000 to bring the show to life.
Oklahoma Central University approved a student-led fall production of Boy My Greatness by Zoe Senese-Grossberg. “As the plague and rising religious conservatism threaten their way of life, they are all forced to reconsider their futures on the stage,” the show’s blurb read ahead of its world debut. “[It’s a] play about growing up, gender, and a chapter of theater history we seek to forget.”
Evidently, the school deemed this a liability. In order to avoid even the potential threat of a lawsuit, they revoked funding and permissions for the production, which had been pitched by two 20-year-old juniors at UCO’s theatre program, Liberty Welch and Maggie Lawson. They told Erin in the Morning they received school approval for the show this past spring.
More...
https://www.advocate.com/politics/oklahoma-student-play-shakespearean-theatre-shut-down
***
The playwrights are listed but, for their protection, not linked to their particular work(s) — itself a damning commentary on 2024 Britain. The caution is justified. People in the UK have been arrested and convicted on terrorism charges merely for the possession of an image of a paraglider as a symbol of resistance, or any placard whose message suggests active resistance against the slaughter. People, including most recently the child of survivors of Auschwitz, have been imprisoned for voicing solidarity with Gaza’s struggle within earshot or twitter-shot of the authorities. British journalists have been detained or arrested, and their equipment confiscated, under British “anti-terror” legislation, such as Richard Medhurst, Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson, and blogger/author Tony Greenstein. Even this writer, hardly any threat to Western hegemony(!), was once closed down by Prevent, the UK’s supposed anti-radicalization initiative. Prevent has still refused to reveal its secret charges against me, which were based on secret evidence from secret sources, or to clear my name.
More...
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/theater-production-cutting-the-tightrope-takes-on-the-british-governments-censorship-of-palestine/
***
A Republican candidate for US congress in Michigan has called off a scheduled drag show by Drag Syndrome, a UK-based group of drag performers with Down syndrome. Peter Meijer, who owns the venue in which the troupe was set to perform, said in a letter that he feared the group was being ‘exploited’, and described the performers as ‘special souls’ who needed to be ‘protected.’ Drag Syndrome was set to perform at the opening event for Project 1, the first in a series of public art exhibitions run by ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. However, Meijer cancelled the event last week after he learned of Drag Syndrome’s involvement in the event. Meijer owns Tanglefoot, the venue in which the performance was scheduled to take place.
In a letter to ArtPrize, Meijer said: ‘The differently abled are among the most special souls in our community, and I believe they, like children and other vulnerable populations, should be protected.’
More...
https://www.frieze.com/article/republican-congress-candidate-censors-drag-show-due-performers-down-syndrome
***
The tightening control over artistic freedoms and content is common under autocratic regimes and aspiring authoritarian leaders, given that art and culture often allow opposition through political commentary. Globally and across history, autocratic actors have taken actions like those we are starting to see in the early days of the current administration, attempting to supplant artistic endeavors in favor of censorship and propaganda.
Overreach of government powers to control boards and positions on cultural institutions is not a new tactic. In 1930’s Germany, we saw similar actions. In 1933, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Nazi Joseph Goebbels, led the newly established Reich Chamber of Culture. The institution took control of cultural production across Germany as part of the early Nazi regime’s growing attacks on anyone who did not meet “Aryan” standards, including Jews and other religious, political, racial, and sexual minorities. The Nazis conducted racial and political purges across a variety of cultural spaces, including theatrical and visual arts but also extending to the press, film, and broadcast media.
Other examples saw governments installing pro-party individuals to leadership roles in cultural institutions, leading to artistic censorship. Under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland in 2015, President Andrzej Duda appointed a new head of the Ministry of Culture, Piotr Gliński. Gliński selected leadership of national and municipal theaters across the country without following the required recommendations from expert advisors, instead installing party loyalists. PiS also used a blasphemy law, Article 196 of the Polish Penal Code, to silence any artistic expression that “offended religious [Catholic] beliefs.” Similarly, a 2019 Culture Law in Hungary adopted under the current Orbán government, which has also sought to censor art and free expression, made funding of cultural institutions conditional on the government having a say in appointments to senior positions.
Unduly restrictive conditionality of arts funding is also present elsewhere. In Hungary, artists and performers who criticize the government are largely unable to receive any public funding, often facing censorship in addition to funding challenges. And, since 2018, Decree 349 in Cuba has required that Cuban artists, long targeted by the government, must seek permission from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs before any exhibitions and private or public performances.
Argentina presents a particularly interesting example. Following the 1976 military coup in Argentina, the Argentine Public Information Secretary (SIP) issued directives aimed at the “reconstruction of the national being” through films, theater, and other artistic productions. Specific plays were prohibited, and many artists were individually targeted. Scholars have termed much of the pullback of the arts scene “autocensura” (self-censorship) in the years of the dictatorship. However, artists such as Argentine author Héctor Lastra have pushed back on this idea, with Lastra saying in 1986 that “self-censorship does not exist. What exists is censorship.” It is clear from the Democracy Playbook that the reality of self-censorship is likely somewhere in between. Though censorship pressures are very real, so too is self-censorship and “anticipatory obedience.”
More...
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/defending-american-arts-culture-and-democracy/
***
In an important victory for First Amendment rights, a federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled in favor of four arts organizations in their challenge to the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) policy disfavoring any grant applications for projects that the government believes “promote gender ideology.” The court held that the NEA’s policy violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and enjoined and set aside its implementation of an executive order that prohibits federal funding for grants that express ideas disfavored by the government.
U.S. Senior District Court Judge William Smith held that the NEA’s grant application review process “violates the First Amendment because it is a viewpoint-based restriction on private speech.” The order explains, “the NEA intends to disfavor applications that promote gender ideology precisely because they promote gender ideology. The Final Notice therefore promises to penalize artists based on their speech.”
More...
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-in-favor-of-artists-free-speech-in-case-against-the-national-endowment-for-the-arts
***
What will happen is that a teacher or a theater director who works in a high school will choose “The Laramie Project,” the students will start rehearsing it and then the school board will get wind of this and try to cancel the production, always under the guise of “Oh, some of this material may not be appropriate for this age group.” They never say it’s because of the gay subject matter. Then either the students and community fight back and the play is reinstated, or they fight back and still don’t win. I can’t say I’ve been surprised. We’re at a moment in history where America is deeply divided and, fortunately or unfortunately, this play resides in that space.
But it’s been encouraging to see the vehemence with which the students have fought. A couple of times, they’ve rented a space near the school and put the play on there instead. Another thing that’s happened is that people from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas have come to protest the play, so, in order to get to the rehearsal room or the theater, students have had to walk through these people holding signs that say, “God hates fags.” So the play ceases to be a uniquely theatrical endeavor. It becomes a visceral experience where the students get to understand some of the bigotry and homophobia.
More...
https://archive.ph/vHe5K
***
The Dramatists Guild of America Statement on ABC's Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The Dramatists Guild of America stands in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers. We condemn any and all threats against freedom of speech made by the current administration and the FCC chair.
It is one thing for the government to threaten ABC’s broadcasting license because they don’t like what was said on the public airwaves, and quite another for a major media company to bow down to such an abuse of authority.
The Dramatists Guild is built on the principle of the writers' full creative freedom and agency, and the 1st amendment rights guaranteed to everyone in the Constitution.
Attacking the media and silencing its critics is the first strategy of all oppressive authoritarian regimes. When it happens, it needs to be called out and confronted and we support the statement from the Writers Guild of America and many others for doing just that.
More...
https://playbill.com/article/dramatists-guild-speaks-out-about-jimmy-kimmel-firing-criticizing-abc
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Your Limp Wrist Makes a Fist: The Legacy of Hot Peaches
An Archives Onstage panel featuring Hugh Ryan, David Getsy, Joe Jeffreys, and others, and moderated by Helen Shaw.
Describing themselves as “revolutionaries in action,” Hot Peaches made unabashedly queer, political theatre following the Stonewall Riots in the early 1970s and continuing into the early 2000s—working through the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and culture wars in the 90s. Through it all, the group demonstrated the co-constitutive resilience of queer art and life, and their archives, held in NYU Special Collections, offer deeply relevant and timely insights toward collaborative queer survival in hostile times. Moderated by Helen Shaw and featuring David Getsy, Joe Jeffreys, Hugh Ryan, and others, this panel will explore the legacy and ongoing importance of the Peaches and of downtown queer performance more broadly, from post-Stonewall to the present, asking: What is the potential of queer and trans performance during times of political crisis?
This discussion is presented as part of Archives Onstage: Hot Peaches—a semester-long celebration of the ongoing impact of the group, with events across campus, starting in September.
NYU's "Archives Onstage," an interdisciplinary, cross-campus series, aims to activate the NYU Division of Libraries’ significant performing arts-related archival holdings in relation to contemporary art and scholarship on campus. Using panels, talks, performance and more, the series situates these archives as integral to the past, present, and future lives of the university and its neighboring downtown artistic communities. Co-sponsored by NYU Libraries and NYU Skirball.
As a part of NYU's commitment to global inclusion, our events and initiatives are open to individuals of all backgrounds and identities.
Thursday, October 23 · 6 - 8pm EDT. Doors at 5:30pm
Bobst Library | 2nd Floor | Richard A. Chase North Reading Room and Event Space
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/your-limp-wrist-makes-a-fist-the-legacy-of-hot-peaches-tickets-1669921142089?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Flynn is committed to using the arts to build connections and strengthen communities. The *snap* Festival is a celebration of the power of first-person narratives. We believe everyone has stories to tell and that sharing these stories teaches empathy by allowing us to recognize commonalities and learn about each other’s unique experiences.
***
Eight Annual Eric Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists
The musical must:
• Be a full-length show (at least 80 minutes)
• Have no more than eight actors (actors may play multiple roles, if so, please include a suggested breakdown of role distribution)
• Be complete and ready for readings, workshops and/or productions
• Have a demo that is an accurate representation of the music and style of the show (at least five songs)
• Have full underlying rights clearance of any pre-existing material used in the script (music, source material, etc.)
• Not have had a full production or be published in any way, even if with a different name.
***
Go Try Playwrite September 2025
The prompt for September 2025 is:
A “There’s actually nothing funny about this” prompt. Writers, it’s our job to hold people in power up to ridicule when they deserve it. That’s our job as artists; to lessen the fear that keep the people in power in power by pointing out their idiocy and hypocracy. That being said, write a 10-page maximum scene about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** STAGE & FREE SPEECH ***
Oklahoma college administrators reportedly shut down a historically accurate student play about the boy actors performing as Shakespeare’s leading ladies over concerns about anti-trans laws—so students raised nearly $10,000 to bring the show to life.
Oklahoma Central University approved a student-led fall production of Boy My Greatness by Zoe Senese-Grossberg. “As the plague and rising religious conservatism threaten their way of life, they are all forced to reconsider their futures on the stage,” the show’s blurb read ahead of its world debut. “[It’s a] play about growing up, gender, and a chapter of theater history we seek to forget.”
Evidently, the school deemed this a liability. In order to avoid even the potential threat of a lawsuit, they revoked funding and permissions for the production, which had been pitched by two 20-year-old juniors at UCO’s theatre program, Liberty Welch and Maggie Lawson. They told Erin in the Morning they received school approval for the show this past spring.
More...
https://www.advocate.com/politics/oklahoma-student-play-shakespearean-theatre-shut-down
***
The playwrights are listed but, for their protection, not linked to their particular work(s) — itself a damning commentary on 2024 Britain. The caution is justified. People in the UK have been arrested and convicted on terrorism charges merely for the possession of an image of a paraglider as a symbol of resistance, or any placard whose message suggests active resistance against the slaughter. People, including most recently the child of survivors of Auschwitz, have been imprisoned for voicing solidarity with Gaza’s struggle within earshot or twitter-shot of the authorities. British journalists have been detained or arrested, and their equipment confiscated, under British “anti-terror” legislation, such as Richard Medhurst, Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson, and blogger/author Tony Greenstein. Even this writer, hardly any threat to Western hegemony(!), was once closed down by Prevent, the UK’s supposed anti-radicalization initiative. Prevent has still refused to reveal its secret charges against me, which were based on secret evidence from secret sources, or to clear my name.
More...
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/theater-production-cutting-the-tightrope-takes-on-the-british-governments-censorship-of-palestine/
***
A Republican candidate for US congress in Michigan has called off a scheduled drag show by Drag Syndrome, a UK-based group of drag performers with Down syndrome. Peter Meijer, who owns the venue in which the troupe was set to perform, said in a letter that he feared the group was being ‘exploited’, and described the performers as ‘special souls’ who needed to be ‘protected.’ Drag Syndrome was set to perform at the opening event for Project 1, the first in a series of public art exhibitions run by ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. However, Meijer cancelled the event last week after he learned of Drag Syndrome’s involvement in the event. Meijer owns Tanglefoot, the venue in which the performance was scheduled to take place.
In a letter to ArtPrize, Meijer said: ‘The differently abled are among the most special souls in our community, and I believe they, like children and other vulnerable populations, should be protected.’
More...
https://www.frieze.com/article/republican-congress-candidate-censors-drag-show-due-performers-down-syndrome
***
The tightening control over artistic freedoms and content is common under autocratic regimes and aspiring authoritarian leaders, given that art and culture often allow opposition through political commentary. Globally and across history, autocratic actors have taken actions like those we are starting to see in the early days of the current administration, attempting to supplant artistic endeavors in favor of censorship and propaganda.
Overreach of government powers to control boards and positions on cultural institutions is not a new tactic. In 1930’s Germany, we saw similar actions. In 1933, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Nazi Joseph Goebbels, led the newly established Reich Chamber of Culture. The institution took control of cultural production across Germany as part of the early Nazi regime’s growing attacks on anyone who did not meet “Aryan” standards, including Jews and other religious, political, racial, and sexual minorities. The Nazis conducted racial and political purges across a variety of cultural spaces, including theatrical and visual arts but also extending to the press, film, and broadcast media.
Other examples saw governments installing pro-party individuals to leadership roles in cultural institutions, leading to artistic censorship. Under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland in 2015, President Andrzej Duda appointed a new head of the Ministry of Culture, Piotr Gliński. Gliński selected leadership of national and municipal theaters across the country without following the required recommendations from expert advisors, instead installing party loyalists. PiS also used a blasphemy law, Article 196 of the Polish Penal Code, to silence any artistic expression that “offended religious [Catholic] beliefs.” Similarly, a 2019 Culture Law in Hungary adopted under the current Orbán government, which has also sought to censor art and free expression, made funding of cultural institutions conditional on the government having a say in appointments to senior positions.
Unduly restrictive conditionality of arts funding is also present elsewhere. In Hungary, artists and performers who criticize the government are largely unable to receive any public funding, often facing censorship in addition to funding challenges. And, since 2018, Decree 349 in Cuba has required that Cuban artists, long targeted by the government, must seek permission from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs before any exhibitions and private or public performances.
Argentina presents a particularly interesting example. Following the 1976 military coup in Argentina, the Argentine Public Information Secretary (SIP) issued directives aimed at the “reconstruction of the national being” through films, theater, and other artistic productions. Specific plays were prohibited, and many artists were individually targeted. Scholars have termed much of the pullback of the arts scene “autocensura” (self-censorship) in the years of the dictatorship. However, artists such as Argentine author Héctor Lastra have pushed back on this idea, with Lastra saying in 1986 that “self-censorship does not exist. What exists is censorship.” It is clear from the Democracy Playbook that the reality of self-censorship is likely somewhere in between. Though censorship pressures are very real, so too is self-censorship and “anticipatory obedience.”
More...
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/defending-american-arts-culture-and-democracy/
***
In an important victory for First Amendment rights, a federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled in favor of four arts organizations in their challenge to the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) policy disfavoring any grant applications for projects that the government believes “promote gender ideology.” The court held that the NEA’s policy violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and enjoined and set aside its implementation of an executive order that prohibits federal funding for grants that express ideas disfavored by the government.
U.S. Senior District Court Judge William Smith held that the NEA’s grant application review process “violates the First Amendment because it is a viewpoint-based restriction on private speech.” The order explains, “the NEA intends to disfavor applications that promote gender ideology precisely because they promote gender ideology. The Final Notice therefore promises to penalize artists based on their speech.”
More...
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-in-favor-of-artists-free-speech-in-case-against-the-national-endowment-for-the-arts
***
What will happen is that a teacher or a theater director who works in a high school will choose “The Laramie Project,” the students will start rehearsing it and then the school board will get wind of this and try to cancel the production, always under the guise of “Oh, some of this material may not be appropriate for this age group.” They never say it’s because of the gay subject matter. Then either the students and community fight back and the play is reinstated, or they fight back and still don’t win. I can’t say I’ve been surprised. We’re at a moment in history where America is deeply divided and, fortunately or unfortunately, this play resides in that space.
But it’s been encouraging to see the vehemence with which the students have fought. A couple of times, they’ve rented a space near the school and put the play on there instead. Another thing that’s happened is that people from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas have come to protest the play, so, in order to get to the rehearsal room or the theater, students have had to walk through these people holding signs that say, “God hates fags.” So the play ceases to be a uniquely theatrical endeavor. It becomes a visceral experience where the students get to understand some of the bigotry and homophobia.
More...
https://archive.ph/vHe5K
***
The Dramatists Guild of America Statement on ABC's Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The Dramatists Guild of America stands in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers. We condemn any and all threats against freedom of speech made by the current administration and the FCC chair.
It is one thing for the government to threaten ABC’s broadcasting license because they don’t like what was said on the public airwaves, and quite another for a major media company to bow down to such an abuse of authority.
The Dramatists Guild is built on the principle of the writers' full creative freedom and agency, and the 1st amendment rights guaranteed to everyone in the Constitution.
Attacking the media and silencing its critics is the first strategy of all oppressive authoritarian regimes. When it happens, it needs to be called out and confronted and we support the statement from the Writers Guild of America and many others for doing just that.
More...
https://playbill.com/article/dramatists-guild-speaks-out-about-jimmy-kimmel-firing-criticizing-abc
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages