Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Reveals Casts and Creative Teams for the 2023 National Playwrights Conference

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center has announced the casts and creative teams for the six plays being developed at the 2023 National Playwrights Conference.

"We are so excited by this gathering of artists at the O'Neill this summer,” Guest Artistic Director Melia Bensussen said. “An abundance of talent and generosity filling our spaces, and we are looking forward to six extraordinary readings."

bogfriends by jose sebastian alberdi will feature Michael Benz (Broadway’s The Little Foxes) and Jon Norman Schneider (Lincoln Center’s The Coast Starlight). It is directed by Joshua Kahan Brody (MTC’s Where the Mountain Meets the Sea, co-founder of THE TRIP) with dramaturgy by Charles Haugland (Director of New Work for the Huntington).

In bogfriends, Tanner & Archie work at a museum, Finn & Cillian are Americans in Ireland, and Osgar & Irial died over four thousand years ago. It’s a play about power-dynamics, love, and preserving dead things (or trying to) that traverses place, time, and culture. bogfriends will be performed June 21 at 8:15pm and June 23 at 7:15pm.

The cast of Pluck by Jan Rosenberg includes Heidi Armbruster (Broadway’s Time Stands Still), Jess Gabor (Netflix’s Shameless), Sky Lakota-Lynch (Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen), Brigette Lundy-Paine (Netflix’s Atypical), and Neil Tyrone Pritchard (Member of LABryinth Theater Company). Pluck is directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt (Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur) with dramaturgy by Carrie Chapter (freelance dramaturg; Adjunct Faculty, Temple University School of Theater, Film, and Media Arts) .

Pluck features fourteen-year-old twins Cleo and Bea. Cleo can't stop running away from womanhood. Bea can't stop running away, period. It is a dark coming-of-age play about the feelings we have as teens that we're not given words for, so we make up monsters and myths instead. Pluck will be performed June 22 at 8:15pm and June 24 at 7:15pm.

a.k. payne’s Love I Awethu Further will feature Whitney Andrews (NBC’s Manifest), Ngozi Anyanwu (Off-Broadway’s Good Grief), Rosalyn Coleman (Broadway’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Radio Golf, Seven Guitars), Abigail Onwunali (New York Theatre Workshop’s for the honey you gotta say when), Alicia Pilgrim (Off-Broadway’s Cullud Wattah, I’m Revolting), Cristina Pitter (member of Ensemble Studio Theatre), Madeline Seidman (Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own), and N’yomi Stewart (The Public’s Richard III, A Raisin in the Sun). It will be directed by Tamilla Woodard (Resident Director at Yale Rep) with dramaturgy by abigail jean-baptiste (assistant director for Broadway’s King Lear, Jagged Little Pill).

In Love I Awethu Further, from Callie’s plans drawn out between tobacco rows, come a collective: her twin, her friends, her nameless mother and ancestor. In this adaptation of Julius Caesar, seven plan a revolt in the Antebellum South. Love I Awethu Further will be performed June 28 at 8:15pm and June 30 at 7:15pm.

CHINESE REPUBLICANS by Alex Lin features Christine Toy Johnson (Broadway’s The Music Man, Grease, Chu Chem, & First National Tour of Come From Away), Vanessa Kai (CW’s Kung Fu), Ben Langhorst (Off Broadway’s Beardo), Jully Lee (Broadway’s KPOP), and Jeena Yi (Broadway’s Network). It is directed by Chay Yew (Cambodian Rock Band, City Center Encores! Light in the Piazza) with dramaturgy by Zeina Salame (co-founder of 5&Dime).

In CHINESE REPUBLICANS, when high-flying finance it-girl Katie Liu loses the promotion of a lifetime to a nepo-baby colleague, she embarks on a treacherous endeavor to make a labor union out of her Republican work aunties. CHINESE REPUBLICANS will be performed June 29 at 8:15pm and July 1 at 7:15pm.

The cast of Collin Van Son’s Natural History will include Adam Langdon (First National Tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Russell Jones (Broadway’s Saint Joan), and Emilia Suarez (Hulu’s Up Here). It is directed by Jackson Gay (Off-Broadway’s Goldi, Max, and Milk) with dramaturgy by Chelsea Radigan (Artistic Producer of Mosaic Theater).

In Natural History, the year is 2165. As wildfires rage across the West, environmental activists and partners-in-crime Jane and Clyde embark on a daring caper to steal the last taxidermied bison from the American Museum of Natural History. Only problem? It's already gone. This apocalyptic cowboy heist spotlights the tensions between history and nostalgia, personal and public interest, and representation and art. Natural History will be performed July 5 at 8:15pm and July 7 at 7:15pm.

The Matriarchs by Liba Vaynberg will feature Rachel Botchan (Off-Broadway’s The Sorceress, And Away We Go, Di Froyen), Molly Carden (Signature Theatre’s Emotional Creature), Rebecca S’Manga Frank (Lincoln Center’s At the Wedding), and Anna O’Donoghue (Broadway’s Rock and Roll) with additional casting to be announced. It is directed by Melia Bensussen (2023 National Playwrights Conference Guest Artistic Director, Artistic Director of Hartford Stage Company) with dramaturgy by Kristin Leahey (Assistant Professor, Dramatic Literature & Dramaturgy at Boston University).

In The Matriarchs, six squabbling teenage girls at a weekly Talmud lesson negotiate snacks, sex, and the Sabbath—and everything in between. Loosely based on the underwritten women of the Torah, The Matriarchs charts the journey of six friends as they grow up and out of orthodoxy. The Matriarchs will be performed July 6 at 8:15pm and July 8 at 3:15pm.

Casting for the 2023 National Playwrights Conference is by Dave Caparelliotis Casting. More information about the National Playwrights Conference and the rest of the O’Neill’s 2023 summer conferences can be found at theoneill.org/summer23.

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