NEW HARMONY PROJECT to Celebrate 40th Anniversary Season in Indianapolis

The New Harmony Project has unveiled its 40th anniversary season, including the third season of New Plays Indy, a series of world-class play development experiences positioning Indianapolis as a national hub for groundbreaking theatrical storytelling.

The New Harmony Project is Indiana's premiere destination for the development of scripts for stage and screen, and the only Indiana-based script incubator with a 40-year track record of generating new work that is seen throughout the country. 

New Plays Indy Season Three fosters bold new plays through deep collaboration with playwrights and the vibrant Indianapolis theatre community. Each development week will culminate in public, concert-style readings that invite audiences to engage directly with the playwrights and their evolving work.

Season Three Artistic Partner Theatres include: American Lives Theatre, Fonseca Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Indianapolis Shakespeare Company, Phoenix Theatre, and Summit Performance Indianapolis.

Each partner theatre has selected a playwright from NHP's dynamic alumni network whose voice and work aligns with that theatre's mission and artistic vision. Over a four-day rehearsal period, playwrights will collaborate with directors, dramaturgs, and actors to refine their scripts,  followed by a public reading and optional post-show discussion. Readings are open to the public, with a suggested donation of $10/ticket. Reservations required at www.newharmonyproject.org/npi) Every reading will include American Sign Language interpretation. The New Plays Indy Season Three schedule follows. 

The New Harmony Project's 40th anniversary season will culminate in the organization's Annual Writers' Residency, a transformative and celebratory ten-day gathering in the pastoral landscape of New Harmony, Indiana. For four decades, NHP has acted on the belief that writers need more than deadlines and deliverables: they need time, space, community, and care. In a small town founded on the pursuit of a better world, writers are invited to step away from the pressures of everyday life, renew their creative practice, and devote themselves fully to the stories only they can tell.

With applications opening for this competitive national program opening this September, the 2027 program will bring together writers working in theatre, film, and television, embracing the rich conversation that happens when storytellers across disciplines share ideas, questions, and craft. While NHP has always welcomed writers from all three mediums, this intentional focus marks a return to the organization's founding vision and acknowledges the reality that today's writers often move fluidly between forms in pursuit of the stories that matter most. During the Residency, two new plays will also be developed, in partnership with theatre companies across the country. Applications for the Annual Writers' Residency will be accepted from September 1-October 1, 2026. More at https://www.newharmonyproject.org/residency-info.

Oct. 3, 7pm:  I Hope This Letter Reaches Mictlān 

By Amalia Oliva Rojas 
Location: Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, 705 N. Illinois St.
Artistic Partner: Phoenix Theatre

Part of The Monarch Cycle trilogy, I Hope This Letter Reaches Mictlān is a mythic work set in the very real Queens, NY after 9/11, when anti-immigrant sentiment was at a fever pitch. Against this backdrop, Sarai embarks on a journey through the nine-level underworld known as Mictlān to rescue her twin brother Saul. Along the way, Sarai must confront her understanding of love and loss, and navigate the barrier between the living and the dead, the factual and the imagined.

About the Playwright: Amalia Oliva Rojas is an award-winning Mexican poet, performer, and theatre artivist raised in New York. Her work centers and preserves the stories, myths, and legends of her family, women of color, and immigrant communities in New York. Her plays include Tonantzin On the 7 Train (PEN America), A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Succeed in the Myth-Making Business (Lehman College, Jamaica Arts and Learning Center), How to Melt ICE (or How the Coyote Fell in Love with the Lizard Who Was Really a Butterfly) (New York Women's Fund Grant, New Perspectives Theatre Company, Boundless Theater Company; Latin American Theater Award for Outstanding Playwriting), and In The Bronx Brown Girls Can See Stars Too, winner of the 2025 KCACTF Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, Darrell Ayers National Playwriting Award, 2025 Leah Ryan Prize, and a 2026 Lanford Wilson New Play Top 20 selection. Recent fellowships include Ghostlight Theater, The Opportunity Agenda's Culture and Narrative Fellowship, The Lily's Lorraine Hansberry Fellowship, and the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute Lydia Mendoza Fellowship. She holds an MFA from Columbia University.

November 7, 7pm: Bad Things 

By Shara Feit
Location: Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, 705 N. Illinois St.
Artistic Partner: Summit Performance Indianapolis

Spanning nearly a century, Bad Things follows two women finding and losing each other. As they age, they navigate the minefields of friendship, intimacy, rivalry, grief, and the shifting realities of being women. Messy, bloody, funny, physical, and dreamlike, Bad Things is a story about the person who knows you longest, and the life you make, unmake, and re-make together.

About the Playwright: Shara Feit is writer/recovering itinerant who tells sad/funny stories about messy/virtuosic people reckoning with community, grief, and the wild ride of having a body, among them little lives (Reading: The Public, starring Cynthia Nixon and Susan Sarandon; Finalist: O'Neill, Terrence McNally New Work Incubator), High School Dybbuk (Finalist: O'Neill), and Bad Things (Shortlist: Theatre503 International Competition). Shara's plays have also been seen at the Tank, the OOB Short Play Festival (Winner), the Barrow Group, B Street Theatre, the 24 Hour Plays, the Lanford Wilson Festival, Pipeline Theatre Company, Geva Theatre Center, 24/6, Williamstown Theatre Festival's Professional Training Program, Andy's Summer Playhouse, and at universities around the country. Shara's work has also been supported by the Banff Center, Barn Arts, The Sewanee Writers' Conference (Romulus Linney Scholarship), the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Dorot Fellowship, and the The New Harmony Project.

Nov. 21, 4pm: The War of the Worlds 

Adapted by Jessica Huang 
Location: Indiana Repertory Theatre, 140 W. Washington St.
Artistic Partner: Indiana Repertory Theatre 

Jessica Huang's adaptation of H.G. Wells' cult classic The War of the Worlds follows Meredith Fung, a New York businesswoman who has returned to Indiana to help her brother settle their father's estate. The night begins with a wrestle over funeral logistics, but by morning, the world is engulfed in a full-scale alien invasion. Unfolding in four scenes across the first year of occupation, The War of the Worlds takes Meredith on an epic journey from alien denier to survivor.

About the Playwright: Jessica Huang is a playwright and librettist whose award-winning work includes: Mother of Exiles (Berkeley Rep World Premiere, Venturous Award, Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award), The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (Bernice Stavis Award), Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (with music by Jacinth Greywoode), and Ten Things I Hate About You: The Musical (with Lena Dunham, score by Carly Rae Jepsen and Ethan Gruska). Her popular audioplay Song of the Northwoods is available on Audible. She is writing an adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds as a commission with Indiana Repertory Theatre, where she is the James Still Playwright in Residence. Jessica is also a Venturous Playwright Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, Hermitage Fellow and four-time Playwrights' Center fellow. She has been a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Civilians R&D Group and Page 73's Interstate 73. She is a graduate of the Playwrights Program at Juilliard. 

Feb. 19, 7pm: Ready or Not 

By Kirya Traber
Location: Fonseca Theatre, 2508 W. Michigan St.
Artistic Partner: Fonseca Theatre

It's 1999 and someone said the world might end this year, but Cece (the only black girl in this small town on the Mendocino coast), and Luce (who isn't really a girl) really don't care. When Lucky, a Black boy from The City, shows up in town, and the body of a young man is discovered in the woods, everything starts to change. As Cece gets closer to Lucky, she starts to wonder: what if the world really is coming to an end?

About the Playwright: Kirya Traber is a writer, performer, and cultural organizer. She has earned three NY Emmy Nominations for her work as a writer, voice talent, and host with local PBS affiliate, WNET. Her collaborative work with Ping Chong + Company, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, was a NY Times Critics' Pick in 2018. She was a 2024 New Harmony Project Fellow, a 2021 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, a 2021 Djerassi Artist Residency Fellow, the Curator in Residence with Hi-ARTS from 2020-2023, New York Stage and Film's 2020 Founders Award recipient, and was Lincoln Center's lead Community Artist in Residence from 2015-2020. She has been a commissioned artist for notable New York arts institutions, including the New York Philharmonic, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Orchestra of St Luke's, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, among others. Throughout her ambitious artistic career, Kirya has continuously engaged in art for social change.

April 23, 7pm: From Dust 

By Eli Campbell 
Location: Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, 705 N. Illinois St.
Artistic Partner: American Lives Theatre

In rural Nebraska, Ettie's convinced that the nuclear attack is happening right now. She closes the door on her nearly-completed underground bunker, trapping her inside with her skeptical contractor Smith, with no hope of contact with anyone outside. From Dust is a dark comedy about existential anxiety, misinformation, and the eternal question: should you open the door?

From Dust was originally commissioned by Dee Silver, MD, in association with the University of Iowa Theatre Department and Cygnet Theatre, San Diego. 

About the Playwright: Originally from Chicago, Eli Campbell is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, an alum of The New Harmony Project, and a winner of the Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award. Their work has been developed at The Story Theatre (Chicago) and Dreamwell Theatre (Iowa City), as well as various theaters in North Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and Illinois. They worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Playwriting at the University of Iowa and developed work under the Dee Silver, MD Playwriting Commission in 2025. As a queer and trans artist, their work often investigates transition, states of ambiguity, and the body. Eli avoids strict realism in favor of heightened theatricality, and their plays address loneliness, cruelty, and desperation through dark humor and attention to language. 

April 24, 7pm: Journey 

By Deborah Asante
Location: Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, 705 N. Illinois St.
Artistic Partner: Indianapolis Shakespeare Company

Across three eras, Lucy, Hurley and their descendents face the same question: who can they trust? As they flee slavery, search for family during Reconstruction, and join a modern debate over reparations, each historical moment forces a choice between safety, trust, and speaking the truth. Journey is a gripping exploration of old wounds, incomplete reckonings, and the pursuit of justice.

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