Brevity is the soul of Irvington Theater’s inaugural Arts Incubator Short Play Fest, streaming on demand March 26-28. Celebrating short, new plays and the playwrights behind them, this virtual festival features a musical and three plays that speak candidly to this global moment.
Rachel Yong is a Brooklyn-based writer and actor whose plays have been performed throughout the Bay Area and at some of New York’s most daring downtown theatres. In her play Guilt Is a Mother, Joy and Max work through letting go — in a time when holding on feels like all we have. What does it mean to be together when we’re all apart anyways? Sarah Hughes directs a cast that includes Leemore Malka, Rory Kulz, Ariel Estrada, and Beth Griffith.
From composer Eliza Randall and lyricist-playwright Sam Norman — two MFA candidates in the Musical Theatre Writing program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts — The Yellow Wallpaper is a musical retelling of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic, feminist short story. A new mother in 1890s New England copes with forced isolation and the repercussions of patriarchy. The cast features Vaibu Mohan, Mason McDowell, and Hannah Fernandes. Max Mackay directs, and Rikki Ziegelman and Hayden Anderson of HARP Theatricals serve as producers.
No stranger to the Irvington stage, Samuel Harps is the Founding Artistic Director of Rockland County’s Shades Repertory Theater whose plays have been staged at storied New York institutions like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the National Black Theater. Black and Blue is Harps’ trenchant exploration of identity and injustice. An African-American police officer navigates the conflict of interest he embodies as a pandemic and protests rage on. Dameon Reilly and Maiysha Jones Reilly costar, and Harps also directs.
Alli Hartley-Kong is an internationally-produced playwright, published poet, and museum educator based in Caldwell, New Jersey. The Waiting Room is her hopeful comedy that follows Natalie and Katherine as they forge a fast, if unlikely, bond over their own grapples with fertility. Jenn Bedell and Kathleen Mallon costar. Angie D’amico-Post directs.
All four plays will be available to stream on demand as part of the Arts Incubator Short Play Fest from Friday, March 26 at 12:00am EST through Sunday, March 28 at 11:59pm EST. Purchase your per-household ticket to receive the viewing link and password at irvingtontheater.com/shortplayfest.
Irvington Theater is home to a diverse range of innovative programming that entertains, enlightens, and inspires, establishing itself over its 118-year history as the cultural heart of the Rivertowns. The theater continues its tradition with unprecedented reach though its all-virtual season, #IrvingtonAnywhere.
