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Among the Dead

Ana is a Korean American who travels to Seoul in 1975 to retrieve her recently deceased father’s ashes. Luke is a young American soldier fighting in the jungles of Myanmar in 1944. Number Four is the name of a Korean comfort woman camping out on a bridge in Seoul in 1950, waiting for the return of the young American soldier who fathered her daughter. Three separate time periods collide in a small hotel room in Korea, mediated by a shape-shifting Jesus who first shows up as a bellboy. Among the Dead is a dark comedy about a family broken apart by betrayed promises, and finding each other through SPAM, journals, and Jesus. Mostly Jesus.

Samuel French
Premiere Year
2016
Premiere Theater
Ma-Yi Theater Company
Premiere City
New York, NY
Premiere Creative

Cast: Will Dagger, Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Diana Oh, and Mickey Theis; Director: Ralph B. Peña

Major Production Year
2019
Major Production Theater
Theatre Exile
Major Production City
Philadelphia, PA
Major Production Creative

Cast: James Kern, Bi Jean Ngo, Claris Park, and Cathy Simpson; Director: Deborah Block

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The Wind and the Breeze

Sam, the legendary, undisputed greatest emcee in Rockford, Ill., plans to rest on his laurels all winter and, if possible, stake out an early spot to watch the Independence Day fireworks — but his closest mentees and their outsize dreams challenge him to a battle he can't win. The Wind and the Breeze explores the politics of place, the unspoken expectations of friendship and what happens when we choose to stand our ground on shifting sands.

Premiere Year
2018
Premiere Theater
Cygnet Theatre
Premiere City
San Diego, CA
Premiere Creative

Cast: Demetrius Clayton, Monique Gaffney, Nadia Guevera, Chaz Shernil Hodges, Cortez L. Johnson, and Terrell Donnell Sledge; Director: Rob Lutfy

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(Not) Water

Playwright Sheila Callaghan & director Daniella Topol’s epic exploration of their epic exploration of an element so epic it’s taken a decade to explore.

Premiere Year
2017
Premiere Theater
New Georges / 3-Legged Dog
Premiere Creative

Cast: Rebecca Hart, Carmen M. Herlihy, Ethan Hova, Polly Lee, April Matthis and Mike Shapiro; Director: Daniella Topol; Associate Playwright: Liza Birkenmeier

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Master

20th century African American artist “Uncle Jimmy” Clemens, who died poor and alone, has left behind an enormous body of work for which he was never recognized.  Uncle Jimmy’s paintings, sculptures and collected artifacts constitute Uncle Jimmy’s life’s work: a radical retelling of Huckleberry Finn which he referred to as “The Illuminated Twain.”  Uncle Jimmy’s widow, Edna Finn, has curated and installed the definitive collection of her late husband’s work to share with the public.  And tonight her show will be visited by Uncle Jimmy’s estranged son, James.  

Written in collaboration with visual artist Wardell Milan, Master exists between the language of theater and the silence of art as it confronts the inadequacies of our American stories head-on, and imagines another kind of freedom.

Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)Bookshop
Premiere Year
2017
Premiere Theater
The Foundry Theatre
Premiere City
New York
Premiere Creative

Cast: Mikeah Jennings, Annie O’Sullivan; Director: Taibi Magar

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Archduke

Three hapless and hungry young men fumble their way through history as they take on a mission of martyrdom. Are they fighting for Serb independence or a sandwich? Patriotism or pudding? With Archduke Franz Ferdinand as their target, a depraved Captain sends Gavrilo, Nedeljko, and Trifko on a darkly comedic journey towards immortality.

Premiere Year
2017
Premiere Theater
Center Theatre Group
Premiere City
Los Angeles, CA
Premiere Creative

Cast: Josiah Bania, Joanne McGee, Ramiz Monsef, Patrick Page, Stephen Stocking, and Todd Weeks; Director: Giovanna Sardelli

Major Production Year
2019
Major Production Theater
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Major Production City
Mountain View, CA
Major Production Creative

Cast: Scott Coopwood, Jeremy Kahn, Luisa Sermol, Adam Shonkwiler, and Stephen Stocking; Director: Giovanna Sardelli

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Autobiography of a Terrorist

Two actors, a director and a playwright — also named Saïd Sayrafiezadeh — attempt to stage a play about the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. But fear of retribution by the American government, as well as the performers’ own untruthfulness, causes the players on stage to unwittingly create an incendiary story about September 11th.

Premiere Year
2017
Premiere Theater
Golden Thread Productions
Premiere City
San Francisco
Premiere Creative

Cast: Jenna Apollonia, Patricia Austin, Cassidy Brown, Alan Coyne and Damien Seperi; Director: Evren Odcikin

  • Print Books
The Brick House
A Novel

The Brick House is a place where people dream of love and loneliness, of the world's beauty, and of ongoing environmental degradation. In this short but moving work, travelers confront their lives in the strange, elemental language which dreams allow for, a strangeness mirrored in the accompanying illustrations by Fowzia Karimi. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and following in the tradition of Armenian illuminated manuscripts, The Brick House is a delight to the eye and mind.

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The Man Among the Seals & Inner Weather
Poems

Johnson’s work transforms the stuff of everyday life into something vibrant, wonderful, and strange. These are poems of grief and regret, of nightmare and acceptance, of redemption and the possibility of grace. They present a vision of the American landscape at once unique and startling, terrifying and true.

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Tropic of Squalor
Poems

Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous—that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power—illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you’re an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.

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American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Poems

In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered--the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.

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Pagination

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