B Coleman is a high achieving, first generation college student who has revolutionary ideas but struggles with the confidence to put them forward. When the opportunity arises to win a prestigious scholarship, she seeks out a letter of recommendation from the most popular faculty member on campus, Harrison Jones, a former member of the Black Panther Party, current Black Studies professor, and prolific author from Oakland. Harrison takes her under his wing as a mentee and challenges B to see her own worth. Over conversations on theory, jazz, and family, they unlock something inside each other, and their relationship develops into an undefined entangled web of blurred lines. When Harrison makes a bold decision, will B finally find the strength to use her voice?  

Tyler English-Beckwith is a recent graduate of the Dramatic Writing MFA program at NYU. She holds a B.A. in African and African Diaspora Studies as well as a B.A. in Theater and Dance from The University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Dallas, Texas, Tyler currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Her plays include Mingus for which she received the 2018 KCACTF Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, was a 2019 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist, and was a finalist for the 2018 Goldberg Playwriting Prize. Her play TWENTYEIGHT received a world premiere in 2017 at The Vortex in Austin, Texas where it received Honorable Mention on The Austin Chronicle’s Top Ten Plays of 2017. She is currently a member of Page 73’s 2020 Interstate 73 Writers Group. Tyler recently wrote, co-directed and starred in a series of afro-futurist short films for Meow Wolf’s narrative chapter, “The Rift” which can be seen online at meowwolf.com and in their flagship exhibit House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM. Tyler hopes to create worlds, in her writing, where black women live beyond the basic means of survival and have the audacity to be autonomous.

Final Boarding Call tells the human stories of the current Hong Kong protests revolving around seven interconnected characters whose backgrounds and perspectives run the spectrum. A protesting brother and flight attendant sister struggling to stay safe while fighting for what they believe in; a Mainland Chinese mother seeking forgiveness from her Hong Kong reporter daughter for previous wrongs and judgements of her Indian husband; and an American expat CEO and Hong Kong lover living in the shadows. We see a window into China’s grip on global capitalism, but most importantly, we see how the politics on the news every day affects the citizens of Hong Kong and their day to day lives.

Stefani Kuo (郭佳怡) is a playwright/performer and native of Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received her B.A. from Yale and is an MFA Playwriting Candidate at the Yale School of Drama. She has been an awardee of the Jerome Fellowship at PWC, finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, Jerome fellowship at Lanesboro Arts Centre, Many Voices Fellowship at PWC, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, NAP Series, DVRF Playwrights’ Program, semi-finalist for the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship, Princess Grace Fellowship, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. Her play, Architecture of Rain, premiered at the Iseman Theatre at Yale and received a reading in the DVRF Roundtable and Checkmark Theatre Company series. She was commissioned to write a play for the Rubin Museum’s Spiral Magazine, and is currently commissioned to write a play for Roundhouse Theater Company. Her play delicacy of a puffin heart was produced with the 2018 Corkscrew Theatre Festival and The Parsnip Ship. As a performer, she was most recently seen in Bedlam’s production of King Lear. She is represented as a playwright by Kevin Lin at CAA and Jacob Epstein at Lighthouse Management. www.stefanikuo.com (For more on Hong Kong).

Sofía, a NASA astronaut, and Zoe, the wife of a Greek Orthodox priest, have been friends since they were children and not a day has passed where they haven’t seen or spoken to each other. Their lives and friendship are forever changed when Zoe becomes pregnant with her first child and Sofia is chosen for the first manned Mission to Mars. As their priorities drift further away from each other, their relationship begins to become strained and their lives are changed forever. To Saints and Stars explores the intersection of science and faith and the power of lifelong friendship.

Jordan Ramirez Puckett is a Chicana playwright and lighting designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She often writes about being caught between two identities and our intrinsic desire for human connection, no matter how brief. She recently participated in the 2018-2019 Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series. Her work has also been produced and/or developed by 2Cents Theatre Group (Los Angeles, CA), Abingdon Theatre Company (New York, NY), Custom Made Theatre Co. (San Francisco, CA), Goodman Theatre (Chicago, IL), Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company (New York, NY), Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, National Winter Playwrights Retreat (Creede, CO), Playwrights Center of San Francisco, San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, among others. Her plays include En Las Sombras, To Saints and Stars, A Driving Beat, Las Pajaritas, Restore, and Inevitable. She has designed lights for the world premiere productions of Bauer by Lauren Gunderson, 77% by Rinne Groff, and 1 2 3 by Lila Rose Kaplan, among others. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the former Associate Artistic Director at San Francisco Playhouse. She is currently pursuing her MFA in playwriting at Ohio University. www.jordanramirezpuckett.com

During a sunless Pittsburgh winter in 1996, Ciara and Taryn connect over a shared love for R&B girl groups but quickly discover something deeper. While attending a predominantly white college, these two black students create their own bubble of self discovery, music and sanctuary in Ciara’s Holland Hall dorm room. However, the stress of love, financial hardship, and the persistent lack of privacy threaten to destroy it.

Deneen Reynolds-Knott is a member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2019-2020 Early-Career Writers’ Group and received a finalist grant from their 2018 Open-Application Commission. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and has developed work with Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency, Project Y’s Playwrights Group, Rising Circle’s INKtank Development Lab and Frank Silvera Workshop’s 3in3 Playwright Residency. Her full-length play, Baton, was selected for the 2018 Premiere Play Festival and received a workshop reading at Premiere Stages, the 2017 Playfest at the Orlando Shakespeare Company, and was a finalist for the 2017 PlayPenn and Bay Area Playwrights conferences. Deneen’s play, Antepartum, was presented at the 2020 Fire This Time Festival as part of their signature ten-minute play program. She received her MFA in film from Columbia University.

Hoping to join the wave of women of color elected for public office, Eugenia Silva fights for an endorsement from an old friend for her primary campaign in the Virginia General Assembly. As a storm brews, tensions between her ambitions and her sister Mercedes begin overshadowing the need to reconnect with her roots and family. As the past manifests and interrupts the present, the sisters must confront how traditional Latino values conflict with an American definition of success that is always changing. How can they swim back to each other when fragmented identity threatens to tear them apart?

Noelle Viñas is a playwright, educator, and theater-artist from Springfield, Virginia and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a resident playwright at Playwrights Foundation, was a 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist, and is an Emerson College alumna. Her play Derecho won the John Gassner Playwriting Award, was a 2019 Jane Chambers Award Honorable Mention, along with being a Semi-Finalist for both the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship and the 2019 Primary Stages Staged Reading Series. La Profesora, her one-woman show starring Virginia Blanco, was commissioned & produced by TheatreFirst and is currently in development for a podcast called Abuelito with We Rise Production. Past favorite jobs include being HowlRound’s first student staff assistant at Emerson College, running Annandale High School’s theater program alongside Theatre Without Borders in Virginia, and self-producing her play Apocalypse, Please in with Kevin Vincenti in San Francisco. She currently resides in Brooklyn, where she is an MFA Playwriting candidate at Brooklyn College under Erin Courtney and is a proud member of the NYC Latinx Playwrights Circle.