The Alcove New Play Development Program
Year Three

As the world and theatre continue to live in the greatest existential crisis of our time – the climate crisis – we look to playwrights and theatre-makers to think about and reflect upon these times, and to imagine possible futures. All the pieces under commission from the Alcove this season and those supported with leap-of-faith sessions are focused on our planetary emergency.

Commissioned Plays (2024-2025)

American Nightmare by Hassan Abdulrazzak

In AMERICAN NIGHTMARE, Sam is hoping to buy from Sheik Nabil an instrument to combat hurricanes in the US. His career at the State Department rests on it. But when Sheik Nabil makes an indecent proposal, Sam’s world is turned upside down. How far is he prepared to go to appease the Sheik?

Untitled E-Waste Play by Lucas Baisch

Lucas Baisch’s Untitled E-Waste Play charts out the Silicon Valley’s electronics industry by reaching back into California’s timeline of extraction. Through the supernatural and the strange, missionaries, gold miners, farmers and programmers can all rest on the same idea: “history” is forever speculative.

Way More Fun Than Dying in the Apocalypse by Sunny Drake

A pregnant couple bicker about decorating their new apartment, but should they be more concerned that the building is sort of permanently on fire? Probably, but at least the rent is cheaper. What will it take to get their attention before increasingly bizarre things unravel their whole world?

Species:Human by Georgina Escobar

Species:Human examines Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock theories with Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.” It is an exploration of obsession, depression, technology, and the absurdity of living in the era of the infinite NOW as related to our disconnect with the more-than-human world. An attempt to loosen our epistemology and exercise humor, Species:Human utilizes a climate lens to switch up, remix, and repurpose Darwin’s writings in a smorgasbord sci-femme about what then’s, what now’s and what if’s.

[CHALK] by Zac Kline

A word written on a chalkboard begins to tell the story of two lives intertwined. [CHALK] is a visual play drawn live that explores the lives of two literature professors over an increasingly hot fall in Los Angeles, as their everyday lives of love, loss and parenthood collide with the legacies of Virginia Woolf, Leonard Cohen, the history of psychology and world around them, as they find out what best makes a well lived life.

Alexandra Lin

Hurricane Sandy is about to hit, and NJ Transit conductor David Chung is tasked with ushering the last Northeast Corridor liner to a basin in Hoboken to weather the storm. But when David discovers that the train’s destination is headed for certain disaster, he must go head-to-head with his crew, authority, and mother nature herself in an epic race to save not only one train — but all of NJ Transit.

HINGE BABY by Tatiana Pandiani and Danny Tejera

In the near future, as waterfront properties on Miami Beach struggle to literally stay afloat, elder millennial Miranda finally commits to adulting and joins her homeowners association. As she wades through flooded parking lots, hunts down stolen Amazon, and campaigns for a new seawall, she finds herself falling for Danny, the building manager and recent immigrant, fifteen years her junior. HINGE BABY is a climate crisis romantic comedy about surviving rising tides, nosy neighbors, and finding unexpected love in the midst of chaos.

Savannah Reich

In 1988, the neighborhood daycare that Savannah Reich attended as a three-year-old was shut down by the Child Protection Agency. All through the late 80s, daycares across the US were being accused of practicing satanic ritual abuse on toddlers- claims that were later proven to be entirely false. In this free-flowing piece of semi-documentary theater, Reich tries to excavate the real truth buried under court documents, faulty memories, and a national moral panic around the idea of who and what is safe for children.

La Kasa Mita’echo by Arturo Luíz Soria

Deep in the South Florida brush sits “La Kasa Mita’echo” a lush, family-owned permaculture farm where the most menacing of predators isn’t the pesky raccoon, or the occasional gator, but the manicured millionaire mansions surrounding the property on all sides. Leo, an aging campesino with a massive debt, struggles to keep the farm from foreclosure. Unresponsive to potential buyers, including his dilettante son Eric, he puts his faith in Andres, a young Cuban farmhand he hopes will continue his legacy as steward to the land—a spiritual duty in Leo’s eyes. However, Andres might be more enterprising than he anticipated. This loose, bilingual retelling of The Cherry Orchard begs us to reflect upon our relationship to land; to confront our blindness to the impending climate crisis; and to unpack the psychological and spiritual side effects of American capitalism.

Mortal Combat by Marissa Joyce Stamps

In Mortal Combat, it’s Counselor Training Week, and a sleepaway camp is swarmed with 20somethings ready to make their summer coin. One cabin of trainees finds themselves to be quick besties in the midst of team-building exercises’ forced kumbaya. But once their training ventures out of the safety net of the pristine, state-of-the-art man-made grounds into the real wilderness of the rugged and hostile Mortal Combat [with Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!], their faux niceties are nowhere to be found and beasts are unleashed.

Andrea Stolowitz

By 1979, the world knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change—including how to stop it. From 1979 to 1989 a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists participated in a campaign to convince the world to take lasting action.
They failed.
Through interviews and first hand accounts, this new play explores the failures of the past in order to create a better future.

Virtual Artist in Residence (2024-2025)

FOREST by Annabel Nightingale

In FOREST we are On a Welsh hilltop sometime in the future a family isolate themselves from the desperate situation in the valleys and low lands. Pandemic, flooding, drought & starvation caused by worldwide climate change wreak havoc on the UK. Intolerance and prejudice is inflamed towards the growing number of desperate migrants seeking survival on higher ground. Could one unwanted visitor change lives and attitudes?

Leap of Faith Sessions (2024-2025)

Lake Mead by S.T. Brant

In his new play, Lake Mead, A barrel containing a human body is discovered in Lake Mead in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2022, the water level has dropped significantly, bringing to the surface many of the city’s past sins. As the water levels continue to deplete, reaching alarming lows each year, tensions arise over ancient water rights that see have Nevadans receiving a paltry percentage of water from their own reserve along with the mysteries about the city’s dark beginnings that continue to be unearthed as more bodies are discovered.

Extraordinary Machine by Allyson Dwyer

From the days of mailing lists and message boards to the now seamless world of iPhones and social media, Extraordinary Machine is an intimate three-act examination of computer programmer and activist Aaron Swartz’s relationship with technology, and how his story mirrors the arc, and ideals, of the Internet.

UNNATURAL CAUSES by Christine Toy Johnson

UNNATURAL CAUSES is the story of two life-weary friends racing against the clock and a former mentor-turned-politician as they fight to save what has inspired the world’s great works of art, and their own American history from extinction. A modern-day yet time bending horror story about climate change, censorship, and the fight for narrative justice.

Gloria Oladipo

Gloria Oladipo’s untitled play follows a white couple on a dysfunctional vacation that unknowingly stays at an AirBnB, a home where others were once trapped amid deadly, rising flood waters. Based in a southern city, the play uses archival 9-1-1 calls to explore questions of gentrification, white banility, and who is most vulnerable within the climate crisis.

SMOKE by Drew Woodson

In SMOKE, It’s a hot and dry summer in Lake County in the summer of 2018. And a Native family living in the small town of Upper Lake, CA, are about to have their worlds demolished when the Mendocino Complex Fire touches down. The youngest son returns for their first year of undergraduate school at UC Davis, and quickly realizes the approaching threat the fire presents. However, the patriarch of the family, a bullish old Native man set in his ways, refuses to evacuate his home that’s been in his family for generations. With the fire fast approaching, the family only has a matter of days to try and convince their father to leave his family home in order to save himself.