An epic poem for the stage, blu traces the explosive after-effects of prison and hunger, desire and war. The play follows a queer Chicana/o family as they try to envision an earth and sky without police and their helicopters. Winner of the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award.

In a world broken by war, the only things that remain are broken stories. Worlds converge and Nine Come, the bar, is hopping. Time goes backward. Anna opens The Book.

Printed in the anthology New Downtown Now, compiled by playwrights Mac Wellman and Young Jean Lee. To read a scene from the play, click here.

Jane is not okay. She's a promising poet without a muse, a single mother without lessons to pass along. Her dating life's a shambles, and her helpful friends are only helping make things more complicated. This bright, witty, un-romantic comedy captures the uncertain steps of a circle of friends backing their way into middle age.

In adjacent apartments that resemble nothing so much as broom closets with windows, the three young, ambitious neighbors of Melissa James Gibson's [sic] come together to discuss, flirt, argue, share their dreams, and plan their futures with unequal degrees of deep hopefulness and abject despair, all the while pushing the limits of their friendship to the max and demonstrating that language can be both an instrument of intimacy and a weapon of defense.

Theo is a composer trying to create a heroic theme for an amusement park ride called the Thrill-o-Rama; Babette is a writer who is trying to finish—or even start—a book theorizing that temper tantrums are the major motivating force behind historical events; and Frank is a would-be auctioneer, preparing for his future career by constantly practicing such tongue twisters as "Sally sought some seeds to sow but sadly soon it snowed." By exploring these questing lives in language that alternates between exhilarating structural inventiveness and loony comedy, poignant soul-searching and incisive analysis of the life that may actually exist beyond one's four walls, Melissa James Gibson has created a unique play that is as witty and wise as it is stylistically groundbreaking and unexpected.

Everyman Jack of You is an overture to Ehn's Soulographie series. Jack, a recurring character, abandons his first wife, leaving his Oklahoma home for a drunken spree in Vegas. He travels against the backdrop of the NATO bombings in Bosnia, conflated with the Tulsa race riot of 1921. His increasingly dissolute efforts at mindless release never succeed in drowning out the complexity of the political world (pushed into his consciousness by various avatars of Julia Caesar/Caesar’s Palace), or in rendering him innocent of his place in context with historical events. Clair, his wife, increasingly politicized, breaks free. Part of Ehn's linked multi-play series, Soulographie.

An ongoing series of short plays (over 150 to date) on faith, which have been performed in multiple iterations around the country. Watch an archival video of Sledgehammer Theatre's 1992 production here.

New York City. Right now. Ramona's going on lots of first dates but is intentionally sabotaging her chances for a second. Khalil, a social media superstar, is about to close a huge deal that will take him completely off the market. They'll do anything to float above their own lives, even as fate tries to pull them both back down to earth. Elevada is a warm, witty, and wise romantic comedy about the fear of being alone—and the fear of not being alone. A finalist for the 2014 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Say your father was the President of a multinational corporation and you were chained to the customer service desk as soon as you could dial a phone... if someone made you CEO for a day, would you go crazy? And if all around you the inner workings of the company were in turmoil——people in disguise, marriages plotted, overthrows planned——and you were told that everything happening to you is only a dream, what would you do? A modern corporate dynasty phantasmagoria freely adapted from Pedro Calderón'’s Life Is A Dream.

It’s 1980 and Reagan has just been elected. August fled the country six years prior to be with his beautiful young Greek bride on a secluded Mediterranean island, where he planted a modest vineyard. Now, his young wife is pregnant, his crop is robust, and he is about to have his first tasting, when a strange woman in a large-brimmed hat arrives at the couple’s guesthouse.

"I wasn’'t raised I was built: I was built to be this thing; and now they’'re killing me for it." The eyes of the court are on her, and nothing good can come of it. They used to love Marie just the way she was. But now change is in the air and things are about to be different for France’'s isolated young queen. Things are about to be different for everybody. Aren'’t they? Marin Ireland played Marie in the world premiere of this raw, fantastical, and funny production about a moment in time when the political suddenly got very personal. You'’ve never seen a history play quite like this.