The Bushwick Starr Presents its Annual Starr Reading Series

The Bushwick Starr is thrilled to announce our 2018-19 STARR READING SERIES. This annual program allows us to celebrate and explore the plays of the city's most exciting playwrights. We feature new work from a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers who are approaching writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. We are proud to continue to offer this ongoing series to our audiences FREE of charge. This program is curated by William Burke, Jillian Walker, and John Del Gaudio.

DEC 10: DOES THAT FEEL GOOD TO YOU, MY LARK?: A Doll's House Adaptation by Raquel Almazan

We travel through the inner workings of Laura Keiler (the "skylark")'s mind during her forced institutionalization in an asylum as she reshapes the narrative of that infamous play that contributed towards the "woman's revolution". The worlds between parallel fact vs fiction diverge, as multiple endings collide in search of who really built A Doll's House.

DEC 11: SPECIES: HUMAN by Georgina Escobar
Love. Entropy. Beauty. Suicide. A not-at-all relaxing meditation on the cacophony that makes the human orchestra viewed as glimpses of present shock after present shock after present shock (scroll, refresh) and back again.

DEC 17: LOVE OF MY LIFE by Seonjae Kim
Before Heather (chosen name) meets Natasha (same), she thinks there is no one else like her in the whole world. After their friendship begins, there is no going back. Set in a New England boarding school and told in both Korean and English, Love of My Life is about twinship, being extraordinary, and belonging somewhere very far away from home.

DEC 18: HOTFIREPOETICS by Diane Exavier
A winter whiter than most forces a man to venture to the land of the dead to bring back his wife, whose spirit has other plans all while the next door neighbor is watching in this ghost story/elegy/spiral into the erotics of grief.

MARCH 4: OPAL ROOT by Jonathan Payne
It's 1872 and the people of Cascade, Montana, are giving into the fashion and modernization of the era, but Opal Root, a black recluse and lover of nature, ain't havin' none of that.

MARCH 5: THE BRIGHT TERRIFIC by Carlos Sirah (in collaboration with visual artist Erik Ruin)
Keesh, an aquanaut from the Mississippi Delta, encounters her memories while voyaging the depths of the Atlantic. Izpapapotl mines tunnels in the Guatemalan earth to rescue her lover from the core. A storm in the heavens threatens to descend and sweep away every living thing. The Bright Terrific is a primer in how to be when annihilation wants to destroy the imagination.

MARCH 11: NASCENT PHASE by Emily Gardner Xu Hall
This is the sexiest date ever. You look ideal in this candlelight. Wait, what was that? The sound of the global economy crashing around us? Nah, probably not. God, you're gorgeous.

MARCH 12: THE SEEKERS by Jeesun Choi
Ilhan Yusuuf Warsame, a Somali high school student living in Minneapolis, is at the loneliest point in her life when she starts having visions. People on the fringes of Europe, Arctic circle and urban landscapes populate her consciousness, drawing her into this forgotten world that exists just beyond reality. What happens when people, who feel the most alone on earth, find others?

The Bushwick Starr is an Obie Award winning non profit theater that presents an annual Season of new performance work. We are an organization defined by both our artists and our community, and since 2007, we have grown into a thriving theatrical venue, a vital neighborhood arts center, and a destination for exciting and engaging performance. We provide a springboard for emerging professional artists to make career-defining leaps, and we are a sanctuary where established performance companies come to experiment and innovate. We are also a neighborhood playhouse, serving our Bushwick, Brooklyn community's diverse artistic needs and impulses. Our past Seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as Heather Christian, Darian Dauchan, The Mad Ones, Clare Barron, Dave Malloy, The Debate Society, and the TEAM.

2026 Theater Fans' Choice Awards - Live Stats

Best Sound Design - Top 3

1. Adam Fisher - The Lost Boys

30.3% of votes

2. John Shivers - Chess

15.6% of votes

3. Tony Gayle - Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

8.3% of votes

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