Page 73 Workshops Archive
Performance Department
by Scott R. Sheppard
Ready to experience a new voice in American theater?
At Page 73, our workshops offer a playwright dedicated time with professional artists to explore a script-in-process and hear their play read aloud in front of a live audience.
2024 Readings
On January 26, 2024, Page 73 presented a free reading of Heidi Armbruster’s Murder Girl, directed by Colette Robert.
Friday, January 26 at 4 pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway at 48th St, Studio 11L
New York, NY 10019
About the play: The State of Wisconsin has the highest per capita of both Supper Clubs and Serial Killers. Brother and sister, Eric and LeeAnn, inherited their Supper Club in the woods of Wisconsin after their mother's death. Family are the people you'd kill for or the people you'd like to kill. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
About the playwright: Heidi Armbruster’s plays include Mrs. Christie: Theatreworks, Dorset Theatre Festival, Primary Stages (workshop), Orchard Project (residency); Dairyland: Playmakers Rep, Chautauqua Theater Festival, and workshops at Playhouse on Park, Primary Stages, The Lark, Luna Stage; Scarecrow: Dorset Theatre Festival, Vermont Public Theater (2024), Next Act (2024), Weidner Center (2024); Murder Girl: workshops at Forward Theater Company (2024), TAP, Kansas City Rep. Heidi was commissioned by Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival to adapt Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which will premiere in their 2024 season. She was a member of the Working Farm at Space on Ryder Farm, Page 73 Interstate 73 writers group, and a founding member and co-curator of Dorset Theatre Festival’s Women Artists Writing. As an actress, Heidi has extensive theater, film, and TV credits; most notably recurring as Noelle on Manifest, Karen on Partner Track, and Michelle on Younger.
On March 8, 2024, Page 73 presented a free reading of Audley Puglisi’s Lucky/Bird, directed by abigail jean-baptiste
Friday, March 8 at 4pm
ART/NY Spaces @ 520
Aibel Studio
520 8th Avenue, 3rd floor
New York, NY 10018
About the play: Louise Evans, a three-time widow, raises peacocks on her front porch. During the neighborhood's summer parade, Louise and her birds are visited by a mysterious young woman—is she a spirit? a figment of Louise’s imagination? A tight-knit community of Black folks grapple with their past.
About the playwright: Audley Puglisi is a playwright and poet. A member of the 2023 Page 73 Writers Group, Audley has received fellowships from VONA/Voices, Lambda Literary, The Playwrights Realm, Blue Mountain Center and has worked with St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre. Writings have been published in ColorBloq and Garage Magazine. Plays include the salt women, Two Sisters (Sip Fest @ The Wild Project); blues for miss lucille (Lorraine Hansberry Award, finalist), Home on High; and The Misplaced Saints. Audley is an M.F.A. Graduate from Yale School of Drama.
Audley received a NYSCA Individual Artist Commission for Lucky/Bird, sponsored by Page 73.
On June 13, 2024, Page 73 presented a free reading of Max Yu’s Made in Chinatown, directed by Jess McLeod.
Thursday, June 13 at 4pm
ART/NY Spaces @ 520
Haimes Studio
520 8th Avenue, 3rd floor
New York, NY 10018
About the play: In 1987, Ma is a recent immigrant working in a New York garment sweatshop. In 2022, Ma's son, Fei, is trying to convince her to move back to China. An intergenerational portrait of immigration in both directions, Made in Chinatown explores the push and pull of here and there, home and away.
About the playwright: Max Yu is a first-generation Chinese-American playwright from the San Francisco Bay Area. He moved from Shanghai and is now based in New York. His play Nightwatch won the 2019 Relentless Award, was a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, and was selected for the 2022 O’Neill Playwriting Conference. He is a current member of Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speakers’ Corner and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. He was a member of Page 73’s 2021-22 Writers Group. He is currently under commission from New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA), Atlantic Theater Company, and Shaking the Tree Theater. His plays that have been workshopped and developed include Wandering (New York Theatre Workshop), Call Me Comrade (Gingold Theatrical Group), Nightwatch (O'Neill, Goodman Theatre), Distance Abandoned (Second Generation Productions), Dragonfly (American Playwriting Foundation), The Edge (Shaking the Tree Theater), and Little Red (Horizon Theatre).
Max has taught playwriting at the National Theater Institute. His poetry and prose have been published in China in Spittoon and Babel. He is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment. He received his B.A. in Theater from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied playwriting under Sylvan Oswald. You can find him at @maxyuliang and www.maxyu.carrd.co
2023 Readings
On February 22, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Haygen-Brice Walker’s ASS2MOUTH, directed by Dustin Wills.
Wednesday, February 22 at 3pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
About the play: As a series of grisly murders rocks Second Swamp County, the local teenagers are drawn into a torrid web of sex, death, and serial killers in this gay coming-of-age nightmare.
About the playwright: Haygen-Brice Walker [he/him/his] is a half-Puerto Rican, half-white trash playwright-creative producer born and raised in a Southern swamp [by professional bodybuilding parents] and currently living in South Philly with both his boyfriends (because he's that gay). In Philadelphia, Haygen-Brice is Co-Founder [along with Director-Producer Elaina Di Monaco] of ON THE ROCKS, a production company devoted to the deep fried, late-night, BYOB, theatrical shit shows Elaina and Haygen-Brice make together. Their theatrical, large-cast, low-budget dumpster fires have played to sold-out crowds in various unconventional venues throughout Philadelphia. Haygen-Brice is an Affiliated Writer withThe Playwrights' Center where he was a 2018-2019 Jerome Many Voices Fellow; is an alum Page 73's 2020-2021 I-73 Writers' Group, PlayPenn's The Foundry, Nashville Rep's Ingram New Works, and InterAct Theatre's Core Playwrights, and was a Virtual Mentee with Playwrights' Realm. He's been a Finalist for The O'Neill's National Playwrights' Conference, a Jerome Fellowship, and Page 73's Playwriting Fellowship. Haygen-Brice's work is like if A Streetcar Named Desire, Mean Girls, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Beloved got shit-faced at a Buffalo Wild Wings' happy hour and then stumbled into the neighborhood bathhouse while belting the soundtrack of In The Heights. In short: lots of cocaine, even more rim jobs, and a fistful of sequins. Every day Haygen-Brice wakes up with big "I'm J-Lo and I should have had my own half-time show" energy, which is trite for a gay Puerto Rican but he's embracing the cliche and living in his truth.
On March 23-24, 2023, Page 73 presented free readings of Majkin Holmquist’s Stargazers, directed by Colette Robert.
Thursday, March 23 at 7pm
Friday, March 24 at 4pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York NY 10019
About the play: Stargazers is a play about land. It’s land that hosts campfires and funeral pyres, pasture parties and picnic tables, ABBA and boxed wine, and skeletons buried in the corral. But most of all, it’s about the women who love this place even when it has no place for them.
About the playwright: Majkin Holmquist is a playwright originally from the Smoky Valley region in central Kansas where she was co-founder of The Next Stage Theatre Company. In January of 2023, her play Tent Revival was produced by Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate series in partnership with the McCarter Theatre Center. Other plays include Stargazers, Every Anne Frank, Quickmatch, The Dog Pack Play, and Skinflint. Credits include The Quonsets (co-written with Alex Lubischer, Yale Cabaret), Broken Melodies (WVIT Women in Theatre Festival), and Styx Songs (contributing writer, Yale Cabaret). Her work has been developed at New York Stage and Film, Woodshed Collective, Bay Street Theatre, Page 73, Ucross, and Roundabout Theatre Company. She has been a finalist for Colt Coeur, the Pacific Playwright’s Festival, and PlayPenn. She is currently a member of Midnight Oil Collective and Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, and is a Lecturer in Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She holds a BA in Secondary English Education from Bethany College and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.
On April 14, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Jahna Ferron-Smith’s Step Mom, Step Mom, Step Mom., directed by Matt Dickson.
Friday, April 14 at 4pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York NY 10019
About the play: When Kaila, a Black woman, and Louis, a white man, begin introducing kink into their sex life, the couple is forced to reckon with the insidious creep of politics into the bedroom.
About the playwright: Jahna Ferron-Smith is a recent graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship at the Juilliard School, and current member of the Obie Award-winning playwrights collective Youngblood (EST) and Page 73's Interstate 73. Her plays have been performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. Her plays include The Woods (Venturous Playwright Fellowship winner; support from SPACE on Ryder Farm), Running While Black (Ojai Playwrights Conference Foundry Project) and SIR (published by Samuel French).
On April 21, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Roger Q. Mason’s Waiting for a Wake, directed by Timothy Douglas.
Friday, April 21 at 4pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York NY 10019
About the play: Meet the Brickstones, our modern Blasian family - fashionista Quentin, his nostalgic father Ovid, escapist mother Divinia and rageful younger brother Jason. As we spend one day in their house, once a beacon of social mobility, we see a family deferred from their American dreams by co-dependence, mental illness and mutual financial abuse. How will they survive their lives without destroying each other completely? Inspired by the tradition of the American Family drama, Waiting for a Wake is a post-kitchen sink drama which will establish black and brown folks as the new protagonists of the American Dream and its struggles.
About the playwright: Roger Q. Mason (they/them) is a writer and performer who uses the lens of history to disrupt the biases that divide rather than unite us. Their playwriting has been seen on Broadway (Circle in the Square Reading Series); Off and Off-Off-Broadway; and regionally. Mason's World Premiere of Lavender Men was lauded by the Los Angeles Times as "evoking the mingled visions of Suzan-Lori Parks, Jeremy O. Harris and Michael R. Jackson." As a filmmaker, Mason has been recognized by the British Film Institute, Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, SCAD Film Festival, AT&T Film Award and Atlanta International Film Festival. Their films have screened in the US, UK, Poland, Brazil, and Asia. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They are a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, as well as an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. Mason has co-hosted the podcast Sister Roger’s Gayborhood and hosted This Way Out Radio's Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage. They are a lead mentor of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. Instagram: @rogerq.mason
On June 8-9, 2023, Page 73 presented free readings of Marvin González De León’s Too Close to Earth, directed by Jess McLeod.
Thursday, June 8 at 7pm
Friday, June 9 at 4pm
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, 11th Floor
New York NY 10019
About the play: Set in the near future—and spanning 100 years—Too Close to Earth explores the transformation of two Mexican American families as their lives intersect across generations at a seaside home in Southern California. Drawing on the traditions of speculative fiction, the play examines our changing relationships with nature, technology, and religion during times of crisis.
About the playwright: Marvin González de León is a first-generation Mexican-American who writes plays that incorporate a myriad of genres—from sci fi to horror—anchored in the traditions of Latin American literature. His work has been produced and developed at Teatro Bravo, Arizona State University, Texas State University, Teatro del Pueblo, Round House Theatre, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Page 73 Productions, The Playwrights Realm, and the Playwrights’ Center. He is the recipient of the 2022 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. He is a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, where he was previously awarded the Jerome Fellowship, the McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting, and the Many Voices Fellowship. He was a member of the 2020/2021 Interstate 73 Writers Group at Page 73 Productions and was a 2020-2021 Virtual Realm Mentee with The Playwrights Realm. His plays include Madre de Dios, Pan Genesis, and Too Close to Earth, which he is currently developing with Page 73 and the Playwrights’ Center. González De León received his MFA in Dramatic Writing in 2017 at Arizona State University. He has taught playwriting at Macalester College, Augsburg University, and ASU.
On October 13, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Scott R. Sheppard’s Performance Department, directed by Annie Tippe.
Friday, October 13 at 4 pm
Alchemical Studios
50 West 17th St, 12th Floor, Studio 1
New York, NY 10011
About the play: Performance Department is a satirical horror about a struggling liberal arts college that is swept up into a pageantry of virtue signaling around one black student’s incendiary thesis project. While the Development Office launches a quixotic fundraising ploy to meet Annual Fund goals, the Performance Department professors strategize to discreetly sabotage their “problem student.” As despair sets in over whether or not this liberal university has any lasting power or currency in America, the true politics and values of the college emerge in the form of a monster. In the end, this hackneyed but unkillable trope of terror rises up, stalking the grounds on Alumni/ae Weekend, threatening to bring this two hundred-year-old legacy to a grisly end.
About the playwright: Scott R. Sheppard is an Obie award-winning theater artist and a Founding Co-Artistic Director of the theater company Lightning Rod Special (2019 Barrymore Award for Evolving Theatre Company). He was the co-creator and performer of Underground Railroad Game which earned an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, was named by the New York Times as one of the 25 Best Plays of the past 25 Years and toured to 11 cities in 5 countries. He was a lead writer and performer in Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment at WP Theater and Next Door at New York Theater Workshop (Best of 2019 Time Out NY, NY Mag, New York times and 2023 NY Times Critics’ Pick). Other credits include lead writer of SPEECH with Lightning Rod Special; Writer of Blood Meal (NY Times Critics’ Pick) and Topside with Theater in Quarantine; and co-creator of Holden with George and Co. Scott graduated from Pig Iron’s School for Advanced Performance Training and has collaborated on several works with Pig Iron including Period of Animate Existence, 99 Breakups (deviser/performer) and Gentlemen Volunteers (performer). Scott has been an Independence Foundation Fellow, a Guild Hall Resident Artist, a Bric Lab Resident, and a member of Page 73’s Writers Group.
On October 27, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Dylan Guerra’s The Grief Eater Near North Bender, directed by Dustin Wills.
Friday, October 27 at 2 pm
Alchemical Studios
50 West 17th St, 12th floor, Studio 1
New York NY 10011
About the play: A gang of bar owners and patrons tormented by a monster that feeds off grief take matters into their own hands as the Grief Eater approaches their cursed town of North Bender. It’s a fight for their lives and their memories and their ale.
About the playwright: Dylan Guerra is a gay Latinx New York City based artist originally from Miami, Florida. He's a member of EST's Youngblood and Ars Nova's Playgroup. He has been a finalist for The Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, NBC Universal's Writers on the Verge Program, The MTC Directing Fellowship, The Drama League Hangar Directing Fellowship, and a semifinalist for the Sundance Episodic Television Writers Program. His solo show Find Him recurs at Ars Nova.
On November 17, 2023, Page 73 presented a free reading of Majkin Holmquist’s two headed calf, directed by Les Waters.
Friday, November 17
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, Studio 11J
New York NY 10019
About the play: Performance Department is a satirical horror about a struggling liberal arts college that is swept up into a pageantry of virtue signaling around one black student’s incendiary thesis project. While the Development Office launches a quixotic fundraising ploy to meet Annual Fund goals, the Performance Department professors strategize to discreetly sabotage their “problem student.” As despair sets in over whether or not this liberal university has any lasting power or currency in America, the true politics and values of the college emerge in the form of a monster. In the end, this hackneyed but unkillable trope of terror rises up, stalking the grounds on Alumni/ae Weekend, threatening to bring this two hundred-year-old legacy to a grisly end.
About the playwright: Majkin Holmquist is a playwright originally from the Smoky Valley region in central Kansas where she was co-founder of The Next Stage Theatre Company. In January of 2023, her play Tent Revival was produced by Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate series in partnership with the McCarter Theatre Center. Other plays include Stargazers, Every Anne Frank, Quickmatch, The Dog Pack Play, and Skinflint. Credits include The Quonsets (co-written with Alex Lubischer, Yale Cabaret), Broken Melodies (WVIT Women in Theatre Festival), and Styx Songs (contributing writer, Yale Cabaret). Her work has been developed at New York Stage and Film, Woodshed Collective, Bay Street Theatre, Page 73, Ucross, and Roundabout Theatre Company. She has been a finalist for Colt Coeur, the Pacific Playwright’s Festival, and PlayPenn. She is currently a member of Midnight Oil Collective and Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, and is a Lecturer in Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She holds a BA in Secondary English Education from Bethany College and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.