PlayGround-NY Announces Best of 4th Season
PlayGround-NY, a leading national playwright incubator and theatre community hub, is pleased to share the lineup for Best of PlayGround(NY) ‘25. Originally developed among thirty-six new short plays through PlayGround-NY’s Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, these plays will receive a special one-night encore performance on April 28, 2025 at 7pm ET at The Producers Club and simulcast under a unique new media agreement with SAG-AFTRA. Free to stream, watch on-demand, and at the door on show nights (donations gratefully accepted), advanced in-person reservations start at $10. For tickets and more information, visit playground-ny.org/bestof.
PlayGround-NY presents Season 4
BEST OF PLAYGROUND(NY) ’25
April 28, 2024 at 7pm ET at The Producers Club & Simulcast
Admission: Free (donations gratefully accepted)
Learning to Trust and Love Again by Madi Fabber
Isabella Speaks by Saiya Floyd
New Edition by Le’Kee Antonio Horton
A Nightmare on Oak Tree Lane by Howard Ho
In Your Own Sweet Time by Wade Lawrence Hollomon
Marcus & Martin by Camron Wright
Honorable Mention Finalists:
The Real Mah Jong Ladies of Venice, Italy by Claire Abramovitz
Hello in There by Dana Leslie Goldstein
Oh Christmas Tree by Jacob Marx Rice
About the Plays & Playwrights
In Your Own Sweet Time by Wade Lawrence Hollomon
The Midnight Collective – Season 1 – Episode 10 – “In Your Own Sweet Time” – Original Airdate: 3/14/1960 – Episode Description: A refugee out of time shares a fateful dinner with a young woman from the past.
WADE LAWRENCE HOLLOMON, he/him, is a playwright, director, and actor based in New York City. Produced plays include HEATWAVE (Horizon Theatre Company), Brutal Youth (Market Theatre), Weekend Warriors (Anderson University), and While You Were Asleep (Columbia College Chicago). Wade has a drama degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School and the South Carolina School of the Arts, was a Playwriting Apprentice at Horizon Theatre Company in Atlanta, and is a current member of PlayGround-NY’s Writers Pool. He can be heard on the weekly film podcast Cinema Bums.
New Edition by Le’Kee Antonio Horton
A couple’s experience with a high tech newborn gets deadly.
LE’KEE ANTONIO HORTON, he/him, is an enthusiastic and passionate storyteller, fresh to New York. Deeply inspired by the macabre, Le’Kee bends genres to create colorful stories that reflect the world around us today.
Learning to Trust and Love Again by Madi Fabber
Sometime after A Winter’s Tale, Queen Hermione returns home after spending sixteen years as a statue. Now she needs to rebuild rocky relationships with her husband and daughter.
MADI FABBER (she/her) an honors graduate of Harvard College’s English and Theater, Dance, & Media departments, Madi’s full-length thesis play Dressed In White and Covered in Blood received a grade of magna cum laude. Madi’s work has been featured in The Tank’s Limefest, the RE/VENUE x The Paradise Theater’s Pop-Up Festival, the Harvard Playwrights Festival, the Gone In 60 Seconds Festival, and Literature Today. Madi is a member of Dramatists Guild.
Isabella Speaks by Saiya Floyd
Shortly after the end of Measure for Measure, Isabella reconsiders her ending.
SAIYA FLOYD (Isabella Speaks), she/her, is a Japanese-American writer based in Brooklyn. She studied screenwriting at Boston University. Her short play Five Star First Date was part of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s NuWorks festival, and she co-wrote the short film Sorry Dumpling, which was featured at the LA Shorts Fest. Saiya’s scripts have been recognized in the top 50 of the Launch Pad, and she has been a winner of WeScreenplay Diverse Voices, and a finalist at the Austin Film Festival.
A Nightmare on Oak Tree Lane
A horror film star is haunted by the real life monster he portrays on film.
HOWARD HO, he/him, is a playwright/composer. His play Reset was produced by Moving Arts and was an O’Neill Finalist. Other works include Beethoven’s Third (Samuel French OOB Winner), Various Emporia (O’Neill Finalist), Where I’m From (Samuel French OOB Finalist), End of the Line (Samuel French OOB Finalist), and Parity (Pan Asian Rep’s NuWorks). He has over 120,000 subscribers on Youtube (youtube.com/HowardHoMusic) and is recognized by Lin-Manuel Miranda for his musical analyses. He has sound designed 50+ productions, earning Ovation Award and SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominations. He holds degrees from UCLA and USC. Instagram: @howardwho
Marcus & Martin by Camron Wright
Marcus Jackson is an inmate at the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama and his cellmate is Martin Luther King Jr.
CAMRON WRIGHT, she/her, is a 2023 graduate from Howard University who majored in English and minored in playwriting. She is originally from Daytona Beach, Florida and has always loved storytelling in all forms. She has interned in the Archives Department of the John F. Kennedy Center of Performing Arts, the press team of American Ballet Theatre and recently for the Ojai Playwriting Conference in California. Her goal is to become a full time creative and pursue her passion for writing.
About PlayGround
PlayGround was founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins, and Denise Shama, beginning as a professional-academic partnership in residence at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and with initial sponsorship from SFSU’s Creative Writing Program. Early participating artists included Prince Gomolvilas, Garret Jon Groenveld, Daniele Nathanson, Sandra Hunter, Colman Domingo, Kent Nicholson, Antigone Trimis, Mary Coleman, and Rhonnie Washington. The fledgling organization moved to Project Artaud and A Traveling Jewish Theatre’s new 80-seat black box theatre in 1996, at which time Kleinmann took on sole leadership as PlayGround’s founding artistic director.
The company was in residence at Berkeley Repertory Theatre from 2003 until the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and has also presented at the San Francisco Main Library, Freight & Salvage, Zeum, A.C.T.’s Costume Shop, and Thick House, as well as co-producing with such notable Bay Area theatres as San Francisco Playhouse, Shotgun Players, Impact Theatre, San Jose Stage, and Magic Theatre, among others. PlayGround first brought its work to New York City with the 2008 co-production of Garret Jon Groenveld’s Missives, followed by the 2009 NY International Fringe Festival hit co-production of Aaron Loeb’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, 2013 NY International Fringe Festival co-production of Katie May’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. PlayGround celebrated its 25th anniversary with a one-night program of original short musicals at NYC’s Theatre Row in 2019.
PlayGround’s first ongoing regional expansion came in 2012 with the launch of PlayGround-LA at West Hollywood’s Zephyr Theatre. In 2018, PlayGround-LA relocated to Hollywood’s Broadwater Theaters (home of Sacred Fools Theater Company), where the company continues to present its Monday Night series. PlayGround expanded to NYC in 2021 and Chicago in 2022, with in-person performances (and simulcasts) beginning in the Spring of 2023, at NYC’s Producers Club and Chicago’s Theater Wit, respectively.
Over its 30 year history, PlayGround has grown into a leading national playwright incubator and theatre community hub, providing unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s and, more recently, Los Angeles’, New York’s, and Chicago’s best new playwrights through innovative programs such as the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, full-length play commissions, playwright residencies and production support through the New Play Production Fund.
To date, PlayGround has developed and staged more than 1,500 original short plays through Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned and/or developed several hundred new full-length plays by PlayGround alumni through its Commissioning Initiative, Playwrights Residency and Alumni Programs and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 40 full-length plays at theatres of every size, including many that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities across the country.
In 2017, PlayGround launched Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays, a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance venue to serve as a shared community resource for dozens of local companies and hundreds of artists. New programs in residence at Potrero Stage like the Free-Play Festival, Solo Performance Festival, and Innovator Incubator provide opportunities for local and national artists to self-determine and showcase their work in San Francisco at little to no cost.
More than 350 early-career playwrights have gotten their start at PlayGround, including Lauren Yee, Jonathan Spector, Geetha Reddy, and Cleavon Smith, helping to expand and deepen the canon of American Theatre. PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Steinberg Awards, Glickman Awards, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. PlayGround serves one of the largest theatre artist networks in the nation, connecting hundreds of Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York artists in support of a common vision: the development of bold and diverse new voices and new works.
This work has not gone unnoticed. PlayGround has received numerous awards, including Playwrights Foundation’s Inaugural New Play Champion Award, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s Paine Knickerbocker Award for ongoing contributions to Bay Area theatre, and American Theater Wing’s National Theater Grant. In 2016, Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann was recognized by Theatre Bay Area as one of the Bay Area’s top 40 leaders. Three of PlayGround’s commissioned plays have won the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle award for Best New Play, and three have had subsequent productions in NYC. Four of the past five Will Glickman Award winners for best new play are PlayGround alumni. When other theatre companies think of producing new work, PlayGround artists are often their first call. As a result of PlayGround’s strong leadership, planning, and a willingness to take bold risks with high payoff, the new play ecosystem has been utterly transformed by PlayGround. For more information, visit PlayGround-NY.org.