SAINT VEGAS, a New Play by Enid Graham Will Come to the Chance Theater
Jennifer Chang directs the staged reading at Cripe Stage at the Bette Aitken theater arts Center
Chance Theater has announced the staged reading of Saint Vegas, written by 2026 Resident Playwright Enid Graham and directed by Jennifer Chang. This event is part of Chance Theater's acclaimed "On the Radar" (OTR) New Works Staged Reading Series, highlighting innovative and impactful works in progress. The reading will occur on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026, at 7:30 PM and Sunday, May 17th, 2026, at 7:00pm on the Cripe Stage at the Bette Aitken theater arts Center.
In this memory play, Ben returns to the hot Galveston summer of his thirteenth year. Fresca, a volatile teenaged girl, moves in and upends the small apartment Ben shares with his mom. As he and Fresca become friends, Ben faces life's complexities, including the sacrifices and challenges faced by his single mother.
Biographies
Enid Graham is a writer and actress living in New York City where she is a 2022 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Program at Juilliard. Enid's work was last seen at the Chance Theater last year when Tenderness and Gratitude Number Four was included in the OTR New Works Program. She is currently the 2026 Playwright in Residence. Her play Smoke was produced in the 2025 season at Cadence in Richmond, Virginia and How to Save Ourselves, a commission from the Farm Theater, received simultaneous productions from Sewanee College and Center College. Tenderness and Gratitude Number Four was also part of the Scripts in Hand series at the Westport Country Playhouse, and was a finalist for the Blue Ink Playwriting Festival 2025. Her play A Long Time Ago in a Dark Yard at Night was performed in a 2022 reading series at the Hudson Stage Company, and her short play for Zoom, Do Not Go, My Love was performed in an online reading series, also at Hudson Stage. Golden was presented in audio format for The Falconworks Theater Company. What Martha Did received a preview production in the Launch Pad series at UCSB. Her play Ruth was chosen for the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center and the New TACTics New Play Festival in NYC. What Martha Did was also a finalist for the National Playwrights' Conference and a semi-finalist in the Blue Ink Playwriting Festival in Chicago. Other plays include: Pathological Venus (2020 finalist NPC), Something Unrecognizable, The Plans I Have for You, and Saint Vegas (NPC semifinalist 2025) and Varenka by Miriam Leeds. As an actress, her credits include numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and Honour (Tony Award nomination), and Television/Film including The Sinner, Boardwalk Empire, Margaret, Mare of Easttown, Rabbit Hole, and A House of Dynamite.
A word from the playwright: “After completing my time at Juilliard in the playwriting program in which we were tasked to write six plays in two years, I felt like I was all out of ideas. But I wanted to write. So I gave myself the challenge of trying to write a play for my son who wants to be an actor. At the time he was in high school, and they were always looking for great scenes for teenagers to work on. So that was just a starting point – something to spur me on to create again.”
She continues, “My play ended up not being quite right for him (he's too young!)...It has themes that often recur in my work: the struggle and dreams of regular people at the lower end of the economic spectrum in America and the loneliness that comes from people having difficulty connecting to each other, in this case a young man and his single mom. I was interested in that moment of growing up when you start to realize that your parents are separate people from you and that you are really on your own in this world.”
Jennifer Chang is a director, writer, actor, producer and educator. Recent directing: On Gold Mountain (LA Opera), The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh (Milwaukee Rep World Premiere), Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Antaeus Theatre Co). Upcoming: directing, American Fast by Kareem Fahmy (City Theatre NNPN Rolling World Premiere); her play The Devil Is A Lie (Quantum Theatre). Proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographer's Society (SDC), Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), Actor's Equity Association (AEA) and the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). BFA NYU, MFA UCSD. Director's Lab West, Drama League NY Fellow, Classical Directing Fellow (The Old Globe), Beatrice Terry Residency. APAFT Advisory Board. Associate Professor UCLA School of TFT. More info: http://www.changinator.com
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