Works By T.J.L, J.C. Pankratz & More to be Featured in INK'D Festival of New Plays

The Playwrights Realm will present the 2024 INK’D Festival of New Plays (April 22–25). This series of readings is the annual culmination of their Writing Fellows program, which awards four early-career playwrights with nine months of resources (including a $5,000 stipend), workshops, and feedback designed to help them reach their professional and artistic goals. INK’D readings will take place at 416 W 42nd St, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10036; more information available at playwrightsrealm.org/inkd. As part of the company’s Radical Parent-Inclusion Project (RPI), The Realm will offer reimbursements of up to $75 to any participants who incur caregiving costs (babysitters, after-school care, adult caregivers, etc.) by attending an INK’D reading.
 
This year’s INK’D Festival comprises readings of Eliana Theologides Rodriguez’s Indian Princesses, directed by Miranda Cornell (April 22), Jesús I. Valles’s Tesseract, directed by Estefanía Fadul (April 23), J.C. Pankratz’s Eat Your Young, directed by cara hinh (April 24), and T.J.L’s tre, directed by Raz Golden (April 25).
 
Whether revolving around characters in a new age wilderness therapy program, a real-life Native American-themed father-daughter bonding program, on a time-traversing quest through family secrets, or submerged in the transitions of Senior Year of high school, Writing Fellows' works this year examine the formative stages in our lives and explore how we develop within (and against) family and society.
 
With a dearth of new play development opportunities out there, the INK’D Festival continues to guarantee emerging playwrights the vastly informative experience of welcoming an invited audience into the process of new work development. Festivalgoers interested in seeing a play in its early stages get a chance to encounter the voices that represent the audacious future of theater, and will vitalize America’s stages for years to come.
 
Over the nine months leading up to INK'D, Realm Writing Fellows develop a single new play, with monthly group meetings that provide a collaborative space for writers to share and refine their work, and one-on-one meetings with Realm artistic staff to support each writer's process. Fellows collaborate with a director, design dramaturg, and actors for two readings. Personalized professional development resources are tailored to the group: mentor opportunities, meet-and-greets, and professional seminars are designed to shed light on the business of theater, and empower the Fellows to be active, informed participants in their own careers.
 
The Realm’s Writing Fellows program is a career accelerator, helping emerging writers build agency and gain wider access to the New York theater world—and offering these playwrights a roadmap to navigate it. Former Realm Writing Fellows have gone on to win countless awards, accolades, and be produced across the country.
 
Most recently, 2017/18 Realm Writing Fellow Celine Song’s celebrated film Past Lives was nominated for 5 Golden Globe Awards and Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture Oscars. (Song is currently working on her follow-up film, Materialists, which will also be released by A24). Clubbed Thumb’s Grief Hotel, by 2016/17 Fellow Liza Birkenmeier, earned acclaim at SummerWorks and is returning to New York for a limited engagement, in residence at The Public beginning this month. 2014/15 Fellow Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm recently premiered at The Vineyard, while 2008/09 Fellow Amy Herzog has two plays on Broadway: an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People starring Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli, which just opened to rave reviews, and the Rachel McAdams-led production of Mary Jane, which approaches its first performance.
 
The Realm’s Associate Artistic Director Alexis Williams says, “In a year of milestones for former Realm Writing Fellows, it couldn’t be clearer what a wonderful opportunity INK’D is, both for playwrights and for those that get to encounter the future of storytelling through their early works. It’s fitting that our Fellows this year are all telling stories of young people pushing against the narratives and conditions their family and society offer them—as these emerging playwrights’ singular works forge a new story for the American theater.”
 
INK’D Schedule and Plays
 
Eliana Theologides Rodriguez’s

Indian Princesses

Directed by Miranda Cornell
Monday April 22, 3pm and 8pm
 
Based on a real-life Native American-themed father-daughter bonding program, Indian Princesses tells the story of five girls of color and their white fathers as they go through a series of exercises and excursions meant to strengthen their father-daughter bonds. But how can these men really be protectors and guides when they’re incapable of discussing gender and race?

Eliana Theologides Rodriguez is a writer and dancer whose work centers young women in various stages of development grappling with feminism in the digital age, internalized dissonances between sexual performativity and autonomy, and the general beauties and traumas of being socialized as a girl. Her plays include Marble Rooftop, Emma Has Church (2021 Princess Grace Semifinalist, 2020 John Golden Award for Excellence in Playwriting), Poor Queenie (2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship Finalist, 2021 Goldberg Play Prize Finalist, 2020 Kennedy Center MFA & Undergraduate Playwrights Workshop), JuniPerfect (2021 commission with Adventure Theatre MTC), and now, Indian Princesses (2023 Irons in the Fire Finalist). She is currently under commission at South Coast Repertory and has an upcoming production at Subtext Studio in Chicago in 2025. When she is not writing, Eliana can be found working the box office at Rattlestick Theater, pole dancing, or watching “Dance Moms.”

Jesús I. Valles’s

Tesseract

Directed by Estefanía Fadul
Tuesday April 23, 3pm and 8pm
 
Ivan comes home to visit their mom Rosa and niece Yanira — but what begins as a normal kitchen conversation soon bursts into a time-shifting quest through family secrets. This play is a spell against the impulse to narrate sexual assault as a horrifying heirloom, a blood curse some families are bound to. This play is a spell in the service of pulling the earth apart to get ourselves unstuck. This play is about a conversation we almost had at our kitchen table.
 
Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, writer-performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Valles is the winner of a 2023 Princess Grace Award in Theater, the 2023 Yale Drama Series, selected by Jeremy O. Harris (Bathhouse.pptx), the 2022 Kernodle Playwriting Prize (a river, its mouths), and was named the 2022 Emerging Theatre Professional by The National Theatre Conference. As a playwright, Valles received support from The Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb, The Flea, The Kennedy Center, The Lortel, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, OUTsider Festival, The Playwrights’ Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Teatro Vivo, and The VORTEX. As a poet, Valles received fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Idyllwild Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Undocupoets. Valles is a Core Apprentice of the Playwrights’ Center and received their MFA in writing for performance from Brown University.
 
J.C. Pankratz’s

Eat Your Young

Directed by cara hinh
Wednesday April 24, 3pm and 8pm
 
The New Frontiers wilderness therapy program, where parents send their teens to work out their capital T Trauma, seems inclusive, progressive, and all about the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and Qs. But as Lucia, Jelly, Ginger, and Quinn quickly discover, healing can have an insidious underbelly. As their out-of-touch counselors spiral out of control and the ground beneath their feet literally starts cracking open, these four queer campers must band together to reckon with monsters — manmade or otherwise.
 
J.C. Pankratz (they/them) is a queer, trans, non-binary playwright and educator creating lyrical, genre-defying work about gender, class, trauma, and transformation. Their plays are Mortals (Pridefest at The Tank), Eat Your Young (workshop production, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), Little Kingdom (2nd Place, Mark Twain Playwriting Award; Distinguished Achievement, Paula Vogel Playwriting Award), Seahorse (2021 FMM Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language), and Redeemer Mine (Finalist, O’Neill Playwrights Conference). Beloved collaborators also include Bunchaqueers, CompanyOne, and Kitchen Dog Theater. They are a 2023 Core Apprentice with the Playwrights’ Center, a 2023 Visionary Playwright with Theatremasters, and a very amateur whittler. MFA: BU.

T.J.L’s

tre

Directed by Raz Golden
Thursday April 25, 3pm and 8pm
 
On the last day of Senior Year, Tay, Rey, and Bree find themselves where they always are — together, shootin the shit and fumbling through life, contemplating what comes next. What are they doing with their lives? Where should they go to college? Who do they wanna be as grown-ups? And why do they keep kissing each other?  tre is a cosmic love letter to the 2000s and a wish for all Blck boys to love each other softly, honestly, and openly.
 
T.J.L (T.J. Lewis) is a queer, Southern, Blck playwright, actor, producer, and administrator, originally from the Carolinas, based in NYC. He received his BA in performance theatre from ASU. Since graduating, he has worked with In/Visible Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Florida Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, and Lime Arts Productions. He has been a finalist and semi-finalist for various residencies and fellowships and was recently given the honor of being a finalist for the 2023 Founders Award from NYSAF. So far, T.J.L has had his work developed and performed in the UK, New York, Los Angeles, and Massachusetts.
 

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