BILL by Roger Q. Mason to Receive Developmental Reading with PlayPenn

Award-winning playwright Roger Q. Mason will receive a developmental reading of their new play BILL, the much anticipated sequel to the critically-acclaimed Lavender Men, on Monday, July 27 at 7pm at Open Jar Studios (1601 Broadway 11th floor, New York, NY 10019) as part of PlayPenn's 2026 New Play Development Conference. 

The reading will be directed by Danilo Gambini (Obie Award-winner for Ni Mi Madre with Rattlestick; Beauty Freak with What Will the Neighbors Say?) and feature Charlie Thurston (Drama Desk Award-winner for Liberation; Here There Are Blueberries at NYTW) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Paine, Nick Jonczak (Dopplebanger at The Tank) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Jefferson, David Ingram (New Voices Festival) as Founding Mothafucka Ben Franklin, Anthony Martinez-Briggs (The America Play at Wilma Theater) as Bill and Roger Q. Mason (Lavender Men at Skylight Theatre) as Taffeta with Dramaturgy by Amrita Ramanan (The Waterfall). Additional cast will be announced later this month.

Democracy is dead, to begin with, and Taffeta, a Black, queer femme of impossible brilliance, refuses to be this country's janitor once again. Instead, she appoints herself freedom's only mourner, digging its grave.

As she honors a system that feasted on her people's rights, three crusty yet resplendent Founding Muthafuckaz (Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine) drag their ghostly essences onto the scene and try to enlist Taffeta to build them a new nation for free, brick by brick. But a stranger named Bill forces Taffeta to confront whether the country she's inherited is worth fighting for, or whether it deserves to be rebuilt at all, forcing her to choose a louder, riskier dream built on our rage, our care, and our refusal to succumb to the status quo in silence.

Bill, a sequel to Mason's critically acclaimed play Lavender Men, excavates Constitutional history and asks who was intentionally excluded from the founding vision of 'We, the People.'

Playwright Roger Q. Mason was awarded a 2026 Creative Capital Award for Bill which supports the creation of risk-taking, groundbreaking new works by providing the awarded artist up to $50,000 in unrestricted project funding, plus professional development services and community-building opportunities.

Roger Q. Mason (Playwright) (they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer, and thought leader whose work uses history as a lens to challenge systems of exclusion. Roger's plays are theatrical mythologies for the marginalized, especially those who are Queer, Black, Filipinx, TGNC, plus-sized, and previously erased from the classical canon. Their plays include The Duat (Barrymore Award Winner), Lavender Men (Los Angeles Times Critics Pick), The Pride of Lions, Califas Trilogy (featured in the Los Angeles Times), The Pink, Waiting for a Wake, and Night Cities: A Bayard Rustin Ritual. The award-winning cinematic adaptation of their play Lavender Men continues to resonate with audiences and is available to stream online on AppleTV+. rqmason.com

Danilo Gambini (Director) is an NYC-based director and producer originally from São Paulo, Brazil. Recent directing credits include: Beauty Freak at the cell theatre; A Case for The Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter at Mosaic Theater; Wipeout by Aurora Real de Asua and The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh at Studio Theatre; the world premiere of Ni Mi Madre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (OBIE Award Winner, Drama Desk Nomination, NYT Critics Pick); and The Rake's Progress and Iolanta at Yale Opera. His production of Agreste (Drylands) at Spooky Action Theater received six Helen Hayes Awards Nominations, including Outstanding Director. Other credits include: the new operas When the Smoke Clears and Treaty Between Self and Earth by Colin Greer and N. Scott Johnson; the world premiere of the musical Sabina at Portland Stage Maine; Fun Home, The Tempest, Rock Egg Spoon at the Yale School of Drama; and Agreste (Drylands), Bakkhai, The Swallow and the Tomcat, and Truck at Yale Cabaret. Operas include Don Giovanni, Ariadne auf Naxos, Eugene Onegin at Theatro São Pedro. As a producer, he has held the positions of Associate Artistic Director at Studio Theatre, Associate Artistic Director at Rattlestick Theater, and Co-Artistic Director at Yale Summer Cabaret; he is also a Tony Nominated Co-Producer of the Broadway production of Cats: The Jellicle Ball. He is a member of Roundabout Theatre's Directors Group, Immigrant Theatermakers Advocates, and TPOC - Theatre Producers of Color. He has developed work at The Public Theater, Joe's Pub, The Old Globe, LaJolla Playhouse, Ars Nova, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Woolly Mammoth, Working Theater, Playwrights Realm, Chautauqua Opera, Gulfshore Playhouse, LatinX Playwrights Circle, amongst others. Danilo holds an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama, a BFA in Film and Television and an artist diploma as an actor from the School of Dramatic Art, both at the University of São Paulo. danilogambini.com

PlayPenn is an artist-driven organization dedicated to the long-term development of new plays and playwrights. PlayPenn reengineers the relationship between time, labor, and creation so artists can move beyond urgency and expectation and feel limitless in their work. For over twenty years, PlayPenn has served as a regional and national anchor for new play development, rooted in Philadelphia and shaping the American theatre field. To date, PlayPenn has helped develop more than 160 new works, which have gone on to receive more than 400 full productions at theatres throughout the United States and abroad.

PlayPenn has helped launch or support the careers of many of today's nationally recognized theatre writers including Stephen Belber, Kara Lee Corthron, Ty Defoe, Steven Dietz, Gabriel Jason Dean, L M Feldman, Dominic Finocchiaro, Jacqueline Goldfinger, Kate Hamill, Jeffrey Hatcher, Jordan Harrison, Michael Hollinger, Willy Holtzman, Samuel D. Hunter, James Ijames, MJ Kaufman, Sarah Mantell, Deb Margolin, Roger Q. Mason, Antoinette Nwandu, Erlina Ortiz, Aaron Posner, Iraisa Ann Reilly, J.T. Rogers, Jonathan Spector, Jen Silverman, R. Eric Thomas, Bess Wohl, Stefanie Zadravec, and Lauren Yee.

PlayPenn is currently represented on Broadway by three PlayPenn playwrights during the 2025-2026 theatrical season. Alumni of PlayPenn's developmental programming include Jordan Harrison, author of Marjorie Prime; Samuel D. Hunter, whose play Little Bear Ridge Road received a 2026 Tony Award nomination and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play; and Bess Wohl, whose play Liberation won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize and received a 2026 Tony Award for Best Play. www.playpenn.org

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