THE inaugural
Greater Good Commission & Festival
Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and Pregones/PRTT are thrilled to announce that the playwrights selected for the Greater Good Commission and Festival are Christin Eve Cato, Julissa Contreras, Candice D’Meza, Shenny De Los Angeles, and Rachel Lynett. Founded by playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes, the Greater Good Commission offers mini grants to Latinx playwrights to write short plays, innovative in form, that reflect the times. The Commission’s mission is to help sustain Latinx playwrights and to support their contributions to American Theater. The commission’s inaugural round will focus on Afro/Black-Latinxidentifying playwrights, and this year’s selection committee chose five women playwrights. The inaugural plays will be presented at the 2020 Greater Good Theater Festival by the Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) and Pregones Theater/PRTT. The Festival will be streamed online, and the plays will later live in digital archives. The festival supports the playwrights with a small production budget, administrative support, casting services, and video recording and editing for the virtual festival. More information about the Commission and Festival is available on the LPC website.
ANNOUNCING THE ‘20 WINNERS
Shenny De Los Angeles
is a Dominican-American storyteller based in Brooklyn. Shenny centralizes Black Caribbean femmes in her writing, captivating the power of their joy. Currently, she is a 2020 Suite Space Artist at Mabou Mines Theatre, where she is developing her one woman show entitled “What Happens to Brown Girls Who Never Learn How to Love Themselves Brown?” During this vulnerable and confusing time, she decided to tap into abundance and create a short film integrating text from her original play to tell the story.
“Las Mujeres de Hierro”
by Shenny De Los Angeles
Three generations of Dominican women are forced to live together after the pandemic. Conjuring sacred soil of the last remaining tree, they face generational pain in order to source joy.
Christin Eve Cato
is a playwright and performer from the Bronx. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Indiana University. She completed her BA degree from Fordham University, and is also a graduate from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. Cato is affiliated with NYC theater companies: Pregones/PRTT, INTAR Theatre, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle. With a Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage, Cato’s artistic style is heavily influenced by Caribbean culture and the Afrolatinx diaspora. Workshop productions & staged readings include: "Stoop Pigeons" (CTH's Future Classics Reading Series; O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); "jelly beans" (Indiana University); "What’s Up With Marjorie?" (Teatro Vivo); "From Hunts Point To Whitlock" (Pregones Theater/Harlem9); "Smacked-Up Love" (Indiana University); "Just A Visit" (Play Your Part Seattle). Check out more stuff here: www.christinevecato.com
“The Anarchists of Nueva Yol”
by Christin Eve Cato
During an internet civil war, Lucilla Lebrón stumbles upon a secret online group planning to take over NYC and discovers that she only has 48 hours to plan a defense!
Rachel Lynett
is a queer Afro-Latinx playwright. All of her plays are dark comedies that center on queer people of color and how they attempt to navigate through the various complexities of their existence. Her plays have been featured at Mirrorbox Theatre, Laboratory Theatre of Florida, Barrington Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Theatre Prometheus, Florida Studio Theatre, Laughing Pig Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Teatro Espejo, the Kennedy Center Page to Stage festival, Theatresquared, Equity Library Theatre, Chicago, Talk Back Theatre, American Stage Theatre Company, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre. In 2017, her play “Well-Intentioned White People” was an honorable mention for The Kilroy’s and in 2020, “Last Night” and “HE DID IT” made the Kilroy’s List. Rachel Lynett is also the Artistic Director of Rachel Lynett Theatre Company.
“Echo Me”
by Rachel Lynett
As time flows in and out of this memory play, Massiel experiences many different 2020s as she tries to reconcile moving back to New York and the world changing forever.
Candice D'Meza
is a social practice multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, and activist. Her art ritualizes the public space for the reclamation and repatriation of self through song, dance, theatrical performance, audio-visual installation, diary/memoir, and film. Her work explores themes related to identity, diaspora, African spiritual technologies for connection, land and water. Heavily inspired by Theater of The Oppressed, all of my work intentionally invites those present to invoke, whether physically or sonically, the construction or reconstruction of self-determined liberated identities. Currently, D'Meza's creative work explores the uses of fantasy and imagination LatinX Playwrights Circle ▪ LatinxPlaywrights.com ▪ nyclatinxcircle@gmail.com as a radical liberatory practice. Her speculative fiction playwriting series, "30 Ways To Get Free” and her recursive memoir-mythology theatrical performance entitled "Fatherland” (funded by the City of Houston) use fiction as a call to arms to invent new and exciting possibilities of freedom. Candice is a proud mother of two boys, a daughter of water, and a child of Ayiti. More about her work can be found at www.candicedmeza.com.
“Alien Abduction” and “Answer the Bloodline”
by Candice D'Meza
follow one Afro-Latinx pregnant teen’s escape from Earth into space and her great-great-great grandson who returns to Earth to reconnect to a cousin 100 years later.
Julissa Contreras
is a Dominicana from the Bronx; she is a creator of the YouTube hit “Shit Spanish Girls Say” and creator of the “Ladies Who Bronche” podcast. Julissa is a playwright, actor, director, and current member of The Middle Voice at Rattlestick Theater. Currently, Julissa is working on her new play “La Greña” which was part of the MLK Festival at Teatro LATEA. She was a writer for Mitu’s “the Kat Call” (season 3) and recently wrote an episode for “Lenny Says” as part of the Spotlight program. She was a member of the Lather, Rinse, Repeat playwright collective and the Gingold Group’s Speakers Corner. Julissa has had her work presented at The Rattlestick Theater’s Play Jam Festival 2010 and 2017, Rebel Verses at Developing Artist Theater, One-Minute Play Festival (INTAR 2012-2017, NY Indie Theatre 2017), and in the Irene Fornes HPRL New Play Festival at Intar Theater.
“Entre Dos”
by Julissa Contreras
explores the dynamic between Samira, “millennial” living in NYC, and her Dominican parents, Rosa and Victor, whose plans to retire in Dominican Republic were delayed due to COVID.
Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and Pregones/PRTT are thrilled to bring you the inaugural edition of the Greater Good Commission and Fest...
You may catch the broadcast on PRTT’s social media platforms. Click here to get the links!
The plays were presented at the 2021 Greater Good Theater Festival on October 23rd by the Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) and Pregones Theater/PRTT. The Event was be streamed online, and the plays moved to our digital archives after. The festival supported the playwrights with a small production budget, administrative support, casting services, and video recording and editing for the virtual festival.
Meet our Creators
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Special Programs Director- “I’m thrilled to partner again with LPC and Pregones/PRTT on this fun initiative. The LGBTQIA+ community has been through so much this past year with unemployment, homelessness, and medical issues at all-time highs due to the pandemic that I’d like to dedicate this second round to queer+ Latinx/e playwrights. It’s important that emerging playwrights have a chance to earn a living from their craft and with theaters only now beginning to re-open many continue to struggle financially; these mini grants will help those selected get on their way to a more sustainable artistic practice and help make US/American theater more inclusive and representative of this nation’s greatest strength, its diversity.”
Guadalís Del Carmen
Co-Artistic Director- “We learned and grew so much from our inaugural launch of the Greater Good. The fruit was in the wonderful playwrights we were able to connect with and continue to support. I’m beyond excited to continue this meaningful work and keep this family growing. We must continue to be bold and loud in our work and this second iteration of The Greater Good is no different from the first in creating space for our communities to be their unapologetic selves.”
Alisha Espinosa
Producer- “The beauty of the Greater Good Commission and Festival is more than its artistic merit. The Latinx community is vast and full of intersectional identities, yet is often reduced to a monolith, a generic story. By celebrating one of these intersections each year, we’re able to bring the richness and depth of our community into focus and to challenge flat narratives about who we are. ¡Estamos aquí!”