NEW YORK: The Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC), Primary Stages, Oscar Cabrera, and Alisha Espinosa have named the four playwrights selected for this year’s Intensive Mentorship: Julissa Contreras for La Greña; Daniela Gonzalez y Perez for Ángel Y Chupi; Luis Roberto Herrera for At the End of the Hall (a ghost story); and Phanésia Pharel for Lucky.
The Intensive Mentorship gives four 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, Carmen Rivera, Cándido Tirado, and C. Julian Jiménez.
In addition to mentorship and a stipend, the playwrights will be able to take classes at the Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts. Over the course of the intensive, playwrights will have two private table reads as well as a public industry readings at participating theatres. The public staged readings will occur in May and June.
Contreras is the creator and host of the Ladies Who Bronche podcast and creator of the YouTube series Shit Spanish Girls Say. Her work has been commissioned and featured in Intar Theatre’s MicroTEATRO festival, Atlantic Theater Company’s African Caribbean Mixfest, LPC’s Greater Good Commission, Harlem9’s 48 Hours in el Bronx, and SolFest 2021. She is also a featured playwright and actor in the MTA Radio Plays produced at Rattlestick Theater.
Gonzalez y Perez is a queer Puerto Rican playwright and actor from Brooklyn. Her 10-minute plays The Martian King and Unofficial Girlfriend were shown live at Fucked-Up Fest! 2021. She has had multiple plays receive Zoom readings with LPC, and she has had three one-minute plays featured in Gi60: International One-Minute Theatre Festival.
Herrera is a New York-based playwright who was a resident playwright at SPACE on Ryder Farm. His work has been produced at the Fort Lauderdale Fringe Festival and the New York Summer Theatre Festival, and his play Poolside Glow was chosen for the New Year New Works reading series at Fantasy Theatre Factory in 2019. He is an ensemble member of New City Players Theatre Company and is an MFA student at the New School.
Pharel writes from a Caribbean feminist perspective on the divine metaphysical dilemma of colored girlhood. She has been a finalist with the City Theatre Miami National Award for Short Playwriting and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and a semifinalist with the O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference, the Blank Stage Future of Playwriting contest, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She has received residencies at New York Stage and Film, the Playwrights’ Center, and Echo Theater Company, and her work has been published in Smith & Kraus Best Plays of 2020, the Reset Coalition 2020 anthology, and the City Theatre Anthology.
The Latinx Playwrights Circle was established in 2017 and launched its first season of digital programming and community events in 2020. Their mission is to build a network of Latinx playwrights nationwide in order to promote, develop, and elevate their work while making their plays accessible to theatremakers, and they are currently in residence at the Kabayitos Theater in the Clemente Soto-Velez Cultural and Education Center.
Primary Stages is an Off-Broadway theatre dedicated to inspiring, supporting, and sharing the art of playwriting, and has produced over 130 new plays since its founding in 1984.
