CUL-DE-SAC and HOUSE GYALZ to Receive Staged Readings at La MaMa
Playwrights Leslie Gauthier and Abigail C. Onwunali present free readings at La MaMa's Community Arts Space.
La Mama Experimental Theatre Club has announced two staged readings by this year's Morgan Jenness Experiments in Playwriting Fellows, Leslie Gauthier and Abigail C. Onwunali. Cul-de-Sac by Leslie Gauthier at 5:00PM, and House Gyalz by Abigail C. Onwunali at 7:30PM on Monday, June 8, 2026.
Readings will take place at La MaMa's Community Arts Space (74A East 4th Street, 3rd Floor, NYC 10003), tickets are free, RSVP at lamama.org/experiments. These readings are not open for review.
CUL-DE-SAC BY LESLIE GAUTHIER, 5:00PM ON MONDAY, JUNE 8
What happens to the people who live on land where there was once a massacre? In Cul-de-Sac, three women's lives unfold and intertwine as they're haunted by the same ghosts. Based on a real-life traffic circle in Mystic, CT, the men responsible for a violent past shape the relationships of the women they haunt – until they're exorcised by time, nature, and the resurrection of lost language. In this ghost-story-meets-memory play, the reverberations of a massacre, a deadly mistake, and an ever-sprawling casino eventually dissipate, and its language and story that remain. Cul-de-Sac spans across centuries to expose unmet desires, wasted talent, and missed connections—but also to expose what endures.
Leslie Gauthier (she/her) is a playwright and actress. Her plays include Elsewhere (Himan Brown Award 2024, semifinalist, Rattlestick's Terrence McNally New Works Incubator), Cul-de-Sac (AFF 2024, Terrence McNally New Works Semifinalist), Greetings! From the Mojave (BAM September 2024), and 23 (Theater for the New City). As an actor she's performed at St. Ann's Warehouse, Lincoln Center, with Target Margin, Clubbed Thumb, Columbia University, among others. She's held writing residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm and Courcommune in Voulx, Fr. She writes about mortality, desire, climate hope, and climate grief to reveal and strengthen our collective relationship to the natural world. B.A. Fordham University, Performance & Directing; MFA Playwriting Brooklyn College.
HOUSE GYALZ BY Abigail C. Onwunali, 7:30PM ON MONDAY, JUNE 8
House Gyalz is a fierce, darkly comedic thriller inspired in part by The Maids, set inside the lavish home of a Nigerian socialite whose world begins to unravel overnight. As Sorochi and Chidi, two housemaids, spiral deeper into dangerous roleplay, buried desires and impossible loyalties erupt into chaos. Blending razor-sharp satire with explosive theatricality, House Gyalz reimagines Jean Genet's classic through a contemporary Nigerian lens, examining class, power, womanhood, and what it costs to finally break free.
Abigail C. Onwunali (she/her) is a Nigerian-American storyteller whose work spans playwriting, performance, and poetry. She is a member of the 2026 Page 73 Writers Group, a 2025 NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, a New Harmony Project Resident, and a recipient of Faultline Theatre's Irons in the Fire Award. A Princess Grace Award winner and Red Bull Theater Short New Play Festival winner, Abigail is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Obie-winning Youngblood collective and an alumna of the Liberation Theater Company Residency Program. Her work has been recognized as a finalist for the Fire This Time Festival and Rattlestick's Terrence McNally New Work Incubator, and as a semi-finalist for Ars Nova's Artist-in-Residence, Forge NYC, and the Colt Coeur Residency. As a performer, she appeared in the five-time Tony-nominated Jaja's African Hair Braiding and won the Elliot Norton Award for her lead role in The Grove at The Huntington Theatre Company, where she was also a two-time nominee. She will play Martha Pentecost in the 2026 Broadway revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. A graduate of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and an inaugural member of Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad Mentorship Program, Abigail creates ritual-driven work that conjures the unseen and illuminates the inner lives of Black women through ceremony and story.
ABOUT THE Morgan Jenness EXPERIMENTS IN PLAYWRITING FELLOWSHIP
Now in its second cycle, The Morgan Jenness Experiments in Playwriting Fellowship offers two early career playwrights in the NYC area an artistic home at the legendary La MaMa for the course of one year. The fellowship seeks to encourage playwrights from underproduced communities with an emphasis on members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and people with disabilities. Throughout the course of the fellowship, playwrights work with playwright and fellowship mentor, Justin Elizabeth Sayre. Fellows meet with Sayre on a monthly basis to discuss their work and the works of previous La MaMa playwrights such as Maria Irene Fornes, Jackie Curtis, Sam Shepard, Robert Patrick, Adrienne Kennedy, and many more. Fellowship applications will re-open in Summer 2026 for the 2026-27 theatrical season. This playwriting fellowship is supported by Jerome Foundation.
ABOUT LA MAMA
La Mama Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 64th Season, LA MAMA NOW, focuses on creating solidarity and building community, exploring ways to build connections for cross-sector coalition, and invite artists, activists, organizers, and community members into the creative process.
La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, Robert De Niro, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Cole Escola, Bridget Everett, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Charles Ludlam, Tom Eyen, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Meredith Monk, David and Amy Sedaris, Stephanie Hsu, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O'Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races, and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.
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