A new selection of short works in which four storytellers crisscross paths across dimensions as they seek to survive the weight of white words and thrive.

Jaisey Bates (they/she) creates nontraditional collaborative work centering Global Majority especially Indigenous perspectives with their multicultural nomadic theater company, The Peoplehood. While East Coast born and mostly grown, they are currently West Coast based in the traditional ancestral and unceded lands of the Tongva, Tatavian and Chumash (aka Los Angeles). Bates is a recipient of the Emerging American Playwright Prize (Marin Theatre Company) and a finalist (Princess Grace Award, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and American Blues Theater Blue Ink Award), semifinalist (American Shakespeare Center New Contemporaries), and honorable mention (Kilroy’s list). Recent virtual productions include collaborations with WP Theater, SameBoat (EarthQuake Festival), and Honor Roll in association with the African American Policy Forum, National Action Network and The Breath Project. Recent development opportunities include virtual workshops with Clamour Theatre Company, Cutting Ball Theater, and The Vagrancy’s Writers Group and Blossoming Festival, and selection for Native Voices at the Autry’s Festival of New Plays.

Human Museum by Miyoko Conley is a sci-fi drama set in a world without humans that invites us to imagine humanity’s legacy through what (and who) we leave behind.

Miyoko Conley (she/her) is an Asian American playwright, games writer, and scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her plays have been presented in the Bay Area and New York City, including at the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; (2g) Second Generation; The Tank; The Wild Project; and New York University. Past works include Starship Dance Party (developed with the New Play Reading series at UC Berkeley); End of the World Place (2015 semi-finalist Bay Area Playwrights Festival); Untitled Fantasy (part of 2g’s Jumpstart Commissions); and Interchangeable Parts (part of 2g’s Free Range Commissions). As a games writer, she is a current mentee in the UK-based Talespinners Mentorship Programme. Conley holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is currently receiving a PhD in Performance Studies and New Media from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tiger Beat by Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin is a play with music that explores the intersection of power, identity and artistry when coming of age in the glittery era of early 2000’s pop music.

Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin (they/she) is a writer, producer, performer, and educator. Originally from Mountain View, CA, with stints in Indiana and New York, Garvin is a founding member of Undiscovered Countries, a Brooklyn-based incubator of new interdisciplinary art. Garvin is a 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival finalist, a 2021 Seven Devils Conference and Kendeda Playwriting Award finalist, and the recipient of six Kennedy Center awards, including the Mark Twain Comic Playwriting Award and Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Awards. Their plays have been developed with The Alliance Theater, Montana Repertory Theater, and College of the Holy Cross, and have been produced in New York at venues including Dixon Place, the New Ohio, and Ars Nova. Their work examines the spaces where privilege and oppression overlap through humor, history, and pop culture. Garvin currently teaches playwriting at Cornish College of the Arts. They received their MFA from Indiana University and BFA from NYU.

Supposed Home by Sam Hamashima, is an intergenerational time-bending tale woven through anime that explores the lasting effects of the Japanese American Concentration Camps on one family.

Sam Hamashima (them+) is an artist based in unceded Lenape Land known as New York City. Hamashima also holds space for the Tuscarora whose Lands, including North Carolina, nurtured them and their artistic voice. Hamashima’s work ranges from script to visual poetry with an emphasis on empowerment, change, and healing. Their works include American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables (The Hub Theatre, Winner of the 2018 Kennedy Center Undergraduate Playwrights’ Award, University of Michigan Hopwood Award in Drama) and Supposed Home (Seattle Public Theater, Finalist – Seven Devils Playwrights Conference). They are the second recipient of Seattle Public Theatre’s Emerald Prize and are currently under commission from Lexington Children’s Theatre. BFA in Musical Theatre, University of Michigan. @samhamashima, samhamashima.com

The Problem with Magic, Is: by Johnny G. Lloyd, is a play steeped in magic that explores the power of loss, gentrification and a spell gone wrong.

Johnny G. Lloyd (he/him) is a New York-based writer and producer. Recent productions include Or, An Astronaut Play (Co-Production, InVersion Theatre & The Tank and Round (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival). Other recent plays include love is hard and absolutely (probably) worth it. His work has been seen and developed at Second Stage Theater, 59E59, Dixon Place, Judson Memorial Church, JAGFest (White River Junction, VT), TheatreLab (Boca Raton, FL), and more. As a writer, Lloyd has collaborated with companies such as Theater in Quarantine and Salon Séance. Lloyd is a member of the 2020-2021 Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers Group and was previously a member of the 2019-2020 Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency. Lloyd was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Open-Application Commission at Clubbed Thumb and a finalist for the 2020 Columbia@Roundabout Reading Series. He is the Director of Artistic Development at The Tank and Producing Director for InVersion Theatre.