OCCUPATION: WOMEN'S WORK SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL to Return for 18th Annual Edition at NPTC

New Perspectives Theatre Company has announced Occupation, our 18th annual Women's Work Short Play Festival, running Monday, August 3 through Saturday, August 8, 2026. The Festival performs in two programs on an alternating schedule of 4:00pm and 8:00pm, with a combined program on August 8th at 2pm and 5pm. Performances are at NPTC Studio, 458 West 37th Street (at 10th Avenue.)

The festival is comprised of six plays performed in two programs. Program A includes: Welcome the Stranger by Katelin Wilcox, directed by Christina Shea-Wright, Who's Your Boss by Tyler Exum, directed by Jenny Greeman, and Mothers & Daughters by Hannah Irene Rubenstein, directed by Felicia Lobo. Program B includes: Pancreas by Bella Panciocco, directed by Dani Ortiz, Lemon Stew by Haile Eshe Cole, directed by Janani  Sreenivasan, and Below the Line by Darline Corchado, directed by Melody Brooks.

Fionn McCardle is Scenic and Graphic Designer, Anabel Giacobbi is Lighting Designer and Hadley Todoran is Production Stage Manager. Kristen Kelso is the Program Manager for the Women's Work Short Play LAB and Associate Producer for the festival.

Named after Meganne George, who served as Resident Production Designer at NPTC for 19 years and was instrumental in creating its structure and design elements, the festival presents original short plays developed in NPTC's Women's Work LAB which takes writers from the first impulse for their play to a rehearsed and staged performance for live audiences, all within six months. There is no other program of its kind in New York City. All themes stem from the social and political discourse percolating in the U.S. at the start of a new LAB. Occupation was inspired by the presence of ICE agents in multiple cities, global conflicts and the changing realities of the job market in the U.S. As always, each writer found her own take on this theme, enabling the creation of plays that are as unique and diverse as the talented writers themselves.

Program A begins with Welcome the Stranger, set in the not too distant future, wherein a “respectable” couple – and their dog – are offered a highly exclusive opportunity: to sponsor a “worthy” candidate for legal entry to the U.S. Who's Your Boss looks at the difficulty in taking control of your own destiny when you can't see into the C-suite. Especially when the boss seems to be invisible…and yet knows everything. The power of unresolved baggage and the sweet strains of ABBA resurrect the ghosts of the past in Mothers and Daughters, as four generations of women navigate the messiness of their life choices.

Program B opens with Pancreas. Five college friends. One apocalypse. Who has the guts to make it out alive? In Lemon Stew, a close-knit family of Black women bestow their wisdom on the youngest daughter and share the recipe for the good life, even with the burden of inherited wounds.

And in Below the Line, a headstrong, big-name producer runs into literal and figurative roadblocks while crafting his “authentic” vision of El Barrio on the set of his new film.

NPTC is an award-winning, multi-racial company performing at its home in the Theatre District, communities throughout NYC and as of 2015, internationally. Notable recent productions include the multi-media It CAN Happen Here: Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theatre Project at Culture Lab LIC; the Women's Work LAB developed How to Melt ICE by Amalia Oliva Rojas (Winner 4 LATA Awards including Best Script; 3 HOLA Nominations including Best Production, co-produced with Boundless Theatre Company) and She Calls Me Firefly by Teresa Lotz, co-produced with Parity Productions (Outstanding Short Play, NY Innovative Theatre Awards). Since 1991 we have developed and presented 122 original full-lengths and short scripts and produced a range of classical works.

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