Latinx Playwrights Circle & Primary Stages

ANNOUNCE

NEW YORK (April 23, 2023) – Oscar A. L. Cabrera and Latinx Playwrights Circle are thrilled to announce that the playwrights selected for this year’s Intensive Mentorship are: Iraisa Ann Reilly for Miss American Pretty; and Justin Santory for Time, Don’t Take It Away.

The Intensive Mentorship this year gives two playwrights the space and support to develop a full-length play and are partnered with mentors to help guide the process. This year’s mentors include Migdalia Cruz and Georgina Escobar.

In addition to mentorship and a stipend, the playwrights will be able to take Tools of Dialogue at the Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts, as well as inquire about any other classes that may benefit their process. Over the course of the intensive, playwrights will each have two private table reads as well as a public industry reading at participating theaters. The public staged readings will occur in Fall 2023.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Iraisa Ann Reilly - Miss American Pretty

Iraisa Ann Reilly (She/Ella) is a writer and performer who is half Cuban, half Irish, and whole New Jersey. Iraisa Ann’s work is bilingual and often examines the “American experience” because she still isn’t sure what that phrase means. Select full-length plays include Good Cuban Girls (Teatro del Sol, at The Arden Theatre), The Jersey Devil is a Papi Chulo (Sol Fest 2022, Yale Drama Series Shortlist 2022, Finalist Leah Ryan Prize, KCACTF) Saturday Mourning Cartoons (Winner, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival 2022, Finalist Goldberg Playwriting Prize, 2022). Her work has been developed with Theatre Exile, The New Harmony Project, The Chain Theatre, The Workshop Theatre, NYU Production Lab’s Development Studio and the Latinx Playwright’s Circle. Her play “House Bill 3979: Amendment #10: The Life and Works of Dr. Hector P. Garcia” was commissioned and produced by Texas A&M-University-Corpus Christi in 2022. She is currently under commission with the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia and Michigan State University, and is a member of the Art House INKubator for 2022-23 in Jersey City. As a screenwriter, her screenplay La Reina del Bronx won best screenplay at Fusion Film Festival, and was a semifinalist for the Vail Screenwriting Competition. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, B.A. in Theatre and English from the University of Notre Dame. iraisaannreilly.com

Justin Santory - Time, Don’t Take It Away

Justin Santory is a gay native Nuyorican playwright and performer. He is a graduate of AMDA New York and later received his B.A. in Media Studies from Queens College. In July 2021, his first play Three’s a Party had its world premiere as part of the Juntos Project with Teatro Bravo and Mesa Community College in Arizona. He is one of the inaugural recipients of the Creative Access Grant from Primary Stages. His second play, On a Higher Vibration, had a reading at 59E59 Theaters in New York. He contributed to DIQUE, a commissioned piece for the Arte Pa Mi Gente Festival. Justin’s goal is to write plays that add a pinch of adobo to the American theatrical canon.

ABOUT THE Producers

The Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) is an artist-led development and production organization for Latinx(é) playwrights. Founded in 2017 by playwrights Guadalís Del Carmen and Oscar Cabrera with the mission to build a network of Latinx(é) playwrights nationwide in order to promote, develop and elevate their work while making their plays accessible to theater makers looking to find the next generation of American Storytellers. Its programs include Sunday Service, Fresh Draft Series, Greater Good Commission and Festival, Intensive Mentorship Program, LPC Community Nights and Page-to-Stage, whose inaugural production is Sancocho by Christin Eve Cato. In 2020 LPC received a residency at Kabayitos Theater, located in the Clemente Soto Velez Center where it produces a portion of their programming. In 2022 LPC was awarded a Creatives Rebuild New York Grant (CRNY) as well as the HOLA Award for Excellence in Theater. For more information on Latinx Playwright Circle and its many programs please visit http://www.latinxplaywrights.com LPC embraces the ever evolving landscape of Latinidad and the names used to describe this community, including Latiné, Latinx, Hispanic, and the next generation of names to come. Like language itself, this is an ever evolving name.