I Don’t Wanna See That?!!?!
Project: The Mannequin Play
April 8–14 | Presentation: April 14 at 2:30 PM
“The Mannequin Play is a folk-rap musical devised by NYC drag performers and members of the performance art collective “I Don’t Wanna See That?!!?!” The play follows three mannequins, Sale, Glossy, and Liver, working at a Rainbow Shops in Bushwick. Much like every family, they have their conflicts, but are united in their goal of one day escaping Rainbow and visiting the beach painted as a mural in their store. Golden Gardens Beach. These plans are interrupted by the abrupt closure of their store, which starts the biggest fight the family of mannequins have ever had. Ultimately the stores closure separates them. Glossy is sent to a sex shop in Michigan where she falls in love with the shop’s clerk, Delilah. Liver is sent to the garbage dump where they meet another mannequin who is just a head, HairKitt. The two form an unlikely friendship and fight through roaches and crows to escape the dump. Meanwhile, Sale is forgotten at the Rainbow; left alone to ponder the immortality of a mannequin who is made of plastic, and thus, will never decompose into the earth again. The play travels through decades until the mannequins are finally reunited at the beach.
Đavid Lee Huỳnh
Project: X#*! you very much, Mom
June 11–23 | Presentation on June 22 & 23 at 8:00 PM
“X#*! you very much, Mom” is Theatre meets TED Talk meets dark family secrets, Đavid Lee Huỳnh shares how the effects of French colonialism shaped Vietnam, rippled out, and made it so #%@#ing hard for his mom to say “I love you.” This work in development is told with whimsy, sardonic humor, and heart.
Joey Massa & Katharine Lorraine
Project: Workshop
July 22–28 | Presentation on July 28 at 7:00 PM
WORKSHOP follows estranged college friends Yuri and James as a chance encounter after six years breaks open their past. As they navigate a complicated history of intimacy and harm the play explores consent, boundaries, and accountability, and it examines the question: how do we move forward from harm?
Kaili Y. Turner
Project: Sheen the Musical
August 19–25 | Presentation on Aug 24 at 7:00 PM & Aug 25 at 2:30 PM
Segregation banned at Rydell! American teens, Dorothy and Lenny navigate friendship, romance, and the shift from crinolines to pencil skirts in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education and the integration of Rydell High. Sheen the Musical brings all new music and a new luster to a classic tale of teen turmoil at the dawn of the 1960’s. Sheen is the answer to Grease you never knew you needed, but are damn sure glad you have!
Reynaldo Piniella
Project: Son of an Unknown Father
February 3–9, 2025
Son of an Unknown Father remixes the story of the first Black saint of the Americas, Martin de Porres, bringing the world of 17th-century Lima, Peru into present-day East New York, where I grew up in Brooklyn. Canonized during the Civil Rights movement as the patron saint of mixed-race people, Martin was born into slavery. Even through exceptional piety and devotion, he could not escape bondage and the violent racism of his time until one day, he discovered he had a miraculous power to cure people simply by touching them with his bare hands. Suddenly viewed as the second son of God, people come from far and wide to meet the man with the magic hands. Martin’s burden becomes too much to bear and he is forced to make a decision – self-preservation or self-sacrifice?
2024 Residency Panelists: Daniel Carlon, Alejandro de la Guerra, David Deblinger, Craig MacArthur Dolezel, Maria Fontanals, Kate Fuglei, Pat Golden, Deirdre MacNamara, Achiro Olwoch, Jaime Sunwoo, Ashley Teague, Rhys Samuel Washington
