Malikah Stafford Presents DEAD TO US At The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute

The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute will present emerging playwright Malikah Stafford's new play, Dead to Us, December 11 through 13, 2025 at the historic Irma Sandrey Theatre.

Directed by Stephanie Rolland, the production showcases an ensemble cast of NYU Tisch Drama students.

Stafford has been awarded the 2025 Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission. Sponsored by the Lee Strasberg Creative Center, the commission supports the development of an original play tailored for college-age actors each fall. Building on the legacy of The Group Theatre, the program provides an incubating space for the creation of true ensemble plays in New York City and cultivates the next generation of collaborating artists. Past commission recipients include Dan Giles, Lucy Thurber, Aniello Fontano, Lila Feinberg, Crystal Skillman, Sarah Gancher, Calamity West, and Dylan Guerra.

Dead To Us is a darkly comic, supernatural ensemble dramedy about a fractured friend group forced to confront the truth about their cruelty, jealousy, and complicity after the death of one of their own. Two weeks after Arya, a talented, outspoken member of their college theatre cohort, dies mysteriously in her sleep, the surviving friends reunite at a remote cabin under the guise of celebrating a birthday. As tensions resurface and old wounds reopen, the Angels of Death hover above, ensuring that the cosmic balance of chaos, truth, and consequence is maintained. What begins as a celebration soon spirals into a reckoning, forcing each friend to face the roles they played in her downfall.

Blending biting humor, surrealism, and poetic confrontation, Dead To Us explores how denial, envy, and silence can kill, and whether redemption is possible when the dead demand the truth.