NEW EYES FESTIVAL

NEW EYES FESTIVAL

a play-reading series of new works
Nov 22 - 24, 2024
Playwrights’ Center

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Art inspired by aleksandra Gurneau / KNOCK, inc.

MU’S LONGEST RUNNING TRADITION

Our play-reading festival has been around since 1993, serving as a showcase of new Asian American work, and an artistic incubator for thoughts and ideas. To level the playing field, increase the number of opportunities for plays, and connect with playwrights we have not previously been able to engage with, this year’s line-up includes two plays selected via a national submission process—the first since 2006.

In Samah Meghjee’s Maybe You Could Love Me, two childhood friends must choose between arranged marriages or leaving their families’ Islamic culture, which is made more complicated in light of their own growing love for each other. With Fifty Boxes of Earth, Ankita Raturi takes Bram Stoker’s Dracula and queers it into a tale following an immigrant trying to plant literal and figurative roots in a new land. And in Grandmother/Bathtub, Brian Dang examines language loss as a “slow violence” through a grandmother who refuses to leave her bathtub despite its location above a fault line ready to explode.

The New Eyes Festival is free to attend, and audiences can expect a staged reading of each play. A reading is a form of theater without sets or full costumes, and actors read from scripts and incorporate minimal stage movement.

Content warning: Maybe You Could Love Me includes description of sexual situations and discussion of homophobia. Fifty Boxes of Earth includes description of xenophobia and self harm. Grandmother/Bathtub includes discussion of elder death and discussion of sexuality.

GENERAL INFORMATION

DATES

Nov 22-24, 2024, at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.

Friday at 7 pm | Maybe You Could Love Me by Samah Meghjee + a playwright talkback
Saturday at 7 pm | Fifty Boxes of Earth by Ankita Raturi + a playwright talkback
- in partnership with the Playwrights’ Center
Sunday at 1:30 pm | Grandmother/Bathtub by Brian Dang + a playwright talkback

PRICE

This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, so RSVP today!

VENUE INFO

Playwrights’ Center is located at 2301 E Franklin Ave., Minneapolis. There is a small parking lot (with one accessible parking space) and free street parking. An elevator inside the entrance takes you up to the theater auditorium on the second floor. The center is reachable by light rail and bus; learn more about the building’s accessibility.

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL?

Meet the Playwrights

BRIAN DANG (they/them) is a Vietnamese Chinese poet/playwright and teaching artist based in Seattle, WA, and Providence, RI. Brian is a proud resident playwright at Parley (Seattle), a 2021 Tennessee Williams scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a 2023 Lambda fellow. Their plays are a mixture of devised and scripted elements, often about the political domestic. Their plays include This time (Undermain Fund for New Work, O’Neill Finalist ‘22, Many Voices fellowship semi-finalist ‘22) and a white haunting (Princess Grace fellowship finalist ‘21, MAP Theatre). Their poetry work includes 49 words I wish I could write in my family’s language, a collaborative translation project. They are pursuing an MFA at Brown. They really like bread. | brianeatswords.com

SAMAH MEGHJEE (she/her) is a Muslim playwright and screenwriter based in LA. She writes about Muslim women who break the rules, and her work seeks to embolden the inner rebel inside us all. Samah is a member of the 2024/25 Geffen writers’ room, which will culminate with a reading of a new play. Her play Maybe You Could Love Me was an honorable mention for the Leah. Samah worked on the recently premiered A24/Apple TV+’s Sunny. She is a proud member of the Rickshaw Film Foundation. Samah graduated with an MFA in writing for the screen and stage at Northwestern University. Works formerly recognized by: Screencraft, 1497, the Black List, MUBI, WScripted, Amazon Prime, and more. | pyarproductions.com

ANKITA RATURI (she/her) is a currently Queens-based writer and teaching artist who grew up in capital cities, pediatric gastroenterology offices, and the bisexual closet. She writes hyper-theatrical works in Hindi/Urdu, English, and sometimes Bahasa Indonesia about living between cultural identities and contending with the ongoing legacies of colonization. New play development: Theater Mu, New York Theatre Workshop, Roundabout, Ma-Yi Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Realm, Berkshire Theatre Group, Cygnet Theatre, Artists at Play, the COOP, Atlantic Pacific Theatre, Theater Masters, Fresh Ground Pepper, Hypokrit Theatre Company, New York Shakespeare Exchange, Pete’s Candy Store, Natyabharati, Wesleyan University. 2022 Ollie Award winner. BFA in drama: NYU/Tisch. MFA in playwriting: UC San Diego. Second-year Kathak student. | newplayexchange.org

Congratulations to our submission finalists: Amanda L. Andrei (Helicopter Typhoon Carabao! Or, To Survive an Apocalypse), Mashuq Mushtaq Deen (The Shaking Earth), Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin (Ping Pong Play), Anamaria Guerzon (Skin), Gursimrat Kaur (Against the Order (An Adaption of Sophocles’ Antigone)), Ashil Lee (Me No Know Korean), Daria Miyeko Marinelli (Beautiful Blessed Child), & Sunny Thao (The Odyssey)

MEET THE SCRIPT COORDINATOR

JANE PEÑA (she/her) has used her background in dramaturgy, arts administration, and most recently her graduate degree in library science to serve as Theater Mu’s office and literary manager since 2020. As a dramaturg, reader, script supervisor, and artistic apprentice, Jane has experience with: Theater Mu, Yale Cabaret, the Playwrights’ Center, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Goodman Theatre, the Playwrights’ Realm, and others.