We are bringing theater into your living room with new and innovative works written for the virtual world. These one-acts will amplify essential voices while reinventing the form, ensuring we can still share stories while socially distant. Living Room Commissions are made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of the Primary Stages Board Commissioning Fund for BIPOC Artists. Commissioned artists include...
INDA CRAIG-GALVÁN (Melnick Award-winning Playwright) is a playwright and TV writer based in Los Angeles. Plays include Black Super Hero Magic Mama (Geffen Playhouse) and I Go Somewhere Else (Playwrights’ Arena). Inda was a recipient of the Kesselring Prize and Jeffry Melnick New Playwright Award for her play Welcome to Matteson! www.indacraig-galvan.com
KATE HAMILL (Pride & Prejudice and Little Women at Primary Stages) is an actor/playwright. Wall Street Journal Playwright of the Year, 2017. Previous work includes Pride & Prejudice at Primary Stages / HVSF (in which she originated the role of Lizzy; Nominee, Off-Broadway Alliance Award); Sense & Sensibility at Bedlam (originated the role of Marianne; Winner, Off-Broadway Alliance Award; Nominee, Drama League Award); Vanity Fair at the Pearl (originated the role of Becky Sharp; Nominee, Off-Broadway Alliance Award); Mansfield Park at Northlight; Little Women at Primary Stages and the Jungle; Dracula at Classic Stage Company (originated the role of Renfield); upcoming Emma and Scarlet Letter. She is currently developing a new adaptation of The Odyssey; a Christmas play called Scrooge for Senate; several original plays (Prostitute Play, The Party, The Piper– O’Neill NPC Finalist); and In the Mines (with music by The Bengsons). Kate was one of the most-produced playwrights nationwide for 3 seasons running (2017-2020). www.kate-hamill.com
CHESNEY SNOW (In Transit at Primary Stages and on Broadway) is a Drama Desk winner and 3x Artist in Residence at Harvard University. Most recently, he appeared in Two River Theater’s production of Oo Bla Dee written by Regina Taylor and directed by Ruben Santiago Hudson. Composer/lyricist for the McCarter Theatre and Long Wharf Theater’s 2018 Crowns. He also appeared in McCarter Theatre’s Princeton and Slavery Plays directed by Carl Cofield. His critically acclaimed choreopoem The Unwritten Law premiered at Dixon Place in 2017. A pioneering figure in American beatbox culture, he originated the role of Boxman at Primary Stages and on Broadway in In Transit at Circle in the Square. The Primary Stages production of In Transit received more nominations than any other Off-Broadway musical of the 2010/2011 season. Snow headlined Carnegie Hall twice. He produced and starred in the music documentary American Beatboxer, which was placed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and numerous other archives throughout the United States. www.chesneysnow.com
Chesney's commissioned piece, SOIL BENEATH: AN EMPIRICAL DECAY is a visceral, timely, and nuanced exploration of race, class, and American political culture told through the mediums of poetry, storytelling, dance, and music. CLICK HERE to learn more and purchase tickets.
SUSAN SOON HE STANTON (Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group member at Primary Stages) is a playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer from Aiea, Hawaii. Plays include we, the invisibles (Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival), Today Is My Birthday (Page 73), Takarazuka!!! (Clubbed Thumb and East West Players), Solstice Party! (Live Source), Cygnus (Women’s Project Pipeline), Moana Jr. (book) for Disney Theatrical Group, Navigator (Honolulu Theatre for Youth), and more. She is a Sundance Theater Lab Resident Playwright and was awarded the Leah Ryan FEWW, the Venturous Playwrights Fellowship at the Lark, and is a member of New Dramatists and Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab, and an alumna of the Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, the Public’s Emerging Writer’s Group, and SoHo Rep’s Writer/Director Lab. Commissions include Yale Repertory, American Conservatory Theater/Crowded Fire, South Coast Repertory, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, among others. She has received a Feature Film Development Grant from the Sloan Foundation. Her film Dress won the audience award at the Hawaii International Film Festival. She writes for HBO’s “Succession.” BFA: NYU Tisch’s Dramatic Writing, MFA: Yale School of Drama. www.susansoonhestanton.com