Original Plays
First Look
Hear Original Plays by The Studio Playwrights!
Free!
Live readings of new, original plays from our own Studio playwrights.
The readings are free, but reservations are recommended due to limited seating.
Original, fun!
Be a part of the creative process!
In a fully collaborative environment, playwrights and audience members can ask questions and provide personal feedback, helping our writers hone the plays' elements and perfect their stories.
Monthly on Monday's 7 - 9 pm
*Second Look Workshop Readings
New this Season, there will be two Scheduled Live Workshop Readings at 7pm on Sundays (October 11, 2026 & December 27, 2026): From the ten plays presented during our 2025-2026 First Look Season, a group of finalists was evaluated using the First Look assessment rubric. The committee considered each script's: Structural readiness, Audience engagement, Theatrical potential, Production feasibility. Selection was not simply a recognition of the "best" plays. Instead, the committee looks for works that demonstrate a strong combination of artistic readiness, developmental potential, suitability for an intensive workshop process, and a playwright who is interested in collaborating through revision with a director, dramaturg, and cast.
October 26, 2026
Seeing Maya
By
Joe Bardin
Director
Jodie Weiss
Cast
What if the person that made you feel connected, excited and alive was totally illogical, inappropriate, and even impossible? In the comedy drama, Seeing Maya, Danny, 26, has escaped to Tel Aviv from the US, his overbearing parents, and the specter of law school. When the Gulf War breaks out, he meets his Israeli neighbor Maya, 52, who is scarred by a bad marriage, and has given up on men. They are immediately attracted, and more. Neither “believe in love.” They figure this affair is a safe arrangement -- how serious can it get?
December 21, 2026
Diabolical
By
Diana Grillo
Director
John Perovich
Cast
A mother in crisis, balancing on a tightrope, struggling to keep the family together as forces pull it apart, seeks help from a psychiatrist. The strange and dangerous behavior of a daughter-in-law. Lies, manipulation and a son’s isolation from family and friends. Herb gardens, health drinks, and poison. Sickness, hospital visits, and the law. It all ends with a revelation of the truth.
January 18, 2027
Encore
By
Kirt Shineman
Director
Janis Webb
Cast
Polly Chapman, Victoria Ronan, David Sussman, Richard Schultz, Lesley Tutnick, Jason Isaak & Shannon Noel Green
Encore is a backstage drama about Sarah Bernhardt's final performance season, set in Paris in 1921. It follows a single evening — a backers' rehearsal of a play called Daniel — from the dressing room through the performance and into the aftermath. The most visible woman in Paris is sustained by the most invisible one, and neither can survive without the other, and both know it, and knowing it changes nothing.
March 1, 2027
Gold & Cocaine / The Last Squirrel Camp
By
Sally Jane Kerschen-Sheppard
Director
Kirt Shineman
Cast
Two one-acts, one night!
Gold and Cocaine - Two hicks from the middle of nowhere try to rob a safe in their local dentist's office. It ought to be easy (after all, they've seen dozens of heist movies), but they soon realize that cracking a safe is a lot harder than it looks. Especially after the laughing gas and Percocet get involved. When the dentist shows up unexpectedly, the robbers discover that their get-rich-quick scheme is far more complicated than they ever anticipated.
The Last Squirrel Camp - A bachelor weekend at the last squirrel hunting camp in East Texas becomes something far more complicated as a prospective father-in-law, an aging truck driver, lifelong friends, and old secrets collide around the campfire.The French Impressionists as seen through the eyes of Renoir’s model and muse, artist Suzanne Valadon
April 12, 2027
Orb of Night
By
Tim Ashby
Director
Cast
The moon is full on a sleepless night. Frank, who's stepped out for a smoke on the patio, and his wife, Evelyn, who suspects as much and can’t sleep either, make peace with their insomnia. What the stars and quiet trickle of their backyard fountain help to romanticize, a look back at their decades-long love, is brought back to earth when Evelyn urges Frank to reconcile with his estranged brother. The ensuing dissension is only complicated when their daughter, son, and their son’s girlfriend, who all end up out back as well, overhear the deeper roots of the conflict.
May 24, 2027
Booth & Ray
By
Walker Trimble
Director
Cast
A little more than one hundred days before assassinating Martin Luther King Jr., James Earl Ray drove from Los Angeles to New Orleans with Charles Stein, a passing acquaintance, while living under several aliases, including Eric and John Starvo Galt. Months before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, John Wilkes Booth journeyed from Maryland to Montréal, pursuing a feverish conspiracy and unsuccessfully trying to involve his brother Junius and young actor Harry Ford, brother of Ford’s Theatre owner John Ford. Booth & Ray transforms these parallel journeys into haunting road trips through personal darkness and the deeper moral voids haunting America itself today.
