Good Apples Collective Unveils 2025 Season

Good Apples Collective (Sophie McIntosh and Nina Goodheart, Artistic Directors), an orchard for new theater, has announced programming for their 2025 season including another round of their popular Director/Playwright Speed Dating event this month, the World Premiere of Road Kills by Sophie McIntosh this summer, the second annual Rootstock Reading Series in the fall, and several ongoing events and resources for emerging artists. 

On Sunday, April 27 from 2-4pm, Good Apples Collective will host the next round of their popular Director/Playwright Speed Dating event at Tompkins Square Park. Designed to help emerging playwrights and directors network with their peers, last year’s Speed Dating event led to several successful creative collaborations between attendees. RSVPs are now open. 

Good Apples Collective and Ryan Duncan-Ayala will present the World Premiere production of Sophie McIntosh’s Road Kills, directed by Nina Goodheart at the Main Theater at Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street New York, NY 10003), August 15-September 6. Road Kills follows Owen, a roadkill collector, and Jaki, a drunk driver stuck doing community service. As they traverse the highways of Wisconsin, they connect over their common ground as outsiders, challenge each other on issues of faith and family, and careen towards a collision that threatens to shatter them both. Sophie McIntosh’s unflinching new play forces us to confront the long-lasting repercussions of abuse — and urges us not to look away.

This fall Good Apples Collective will present the second annual Rootstock Reading Series, three readings of three new plays, all penned by emerging gender-marginalized playwrights and directed by emerging gender-marginalized directors, presented over the course of a single weekend at a TBA venue. Last year’s participants included Among the Coats by Noma Mirny, directed by Kenny Castro, I Am Malala Book Club Meeting by Mehrnaz Tiv, directed by Sabina Sethi Unni, and The Morbs by Jen Diamond, directed by Britt Berke. 

Alongside their reading series and mainstage production, Good Apples Collective will host events and publish free resources intended to uplift emerging artists and indie producers. In the coming months, Good Apples will continue hosting co-working days for the theater community in the Signature Theater lobby. The next co-working days will be structured around constructing resumes and writing artist statements. Good Apples is also planning several more installments of their free resources for indie theater producers, including an update to their widely circulated rehearsal space database.

Good Apples Collective will also continue to work with the Apple Corps, an advisory committee composed of Paige Seber, Saawan Tiwari, Mia Fowler, and Willow Funkhouser, throughout the coming season to shape their ongoing and upcoming programming. These four handpicked artists have been extensively involved in previous Good Apples productions and they will help guide the artistic and managerial decisions of the company as it continues to expand and make its mark on the indie theater community.  

Good Apples Collective is a developmental orchard for new theatrical works that expose abuses of power, challenge taboos around desire and sexuality, and uplift the voices of queer and gender marginalized communities. Co-led by director Nina Goodheart and playwright Sophie McIntosh, Good Apples Collective empowers emerging artists to create work with trusted creative peers and revolt against oppressive hierarchies that undercut and isolate new voices.