Photos: BILL, Roger Q. Mason's LAVENDER MEN Sequel, Gets PlayPenn Reading

On Monday, July 27th award-winning playwright Roger Q. Mason received a developmental reading of their new play BILL, the much anticipated sequel to the critically-acclaimed Lavender Men, at Open Jar Studios (1601 Broadway 11th floor, New York, NY 10019) as part of PlayPenn's 2026 New Play Development Conference. Check out photos of the production.

The reading was directed by Danilo Gambini (Obie Award-winner for Ni Mi Madre with Rattlestick; Beauty Freak with What Will the Neighbors Say?) and featured Charlie Thurston (Drama Desk Award-winner for Liberation; Here There Are Blueberries at NYTW) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Jefferson, Nick Jonczak (Dopplebanger at The Tank) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Paine, David Ingram (New Voices Festival) as Founding Mothafucka Ben Franklin, Anthony Martinez-Briggs (The America Play at Wilma Theater) as Bill, and Roger Q. Mason (Lavender Men at Skylight Theatre) as Taffeta with Dramaturgy by Amrita Ramanan (The Waterfall) and a special musical performance by Amyra.

Democracy is dead, to begin with, and Taffeta, a Black, queer femme of impossible brilliance, refuses to be this country's janitor once again. Instead, she appoints herself freedom's only mourner, digging its grave.

As she honors a system that feasted on her people's rights, three crusty yet resplendent Founding Muthafuckaz (Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine) drag their ghostly essences onto the scene and try to enlist Taffeta to build them a new nation for free, brick by brick. But a stranger named Bill forces Taffeta to confront whether the country she's inherited is worth fighting for, or whether it deserves to be rebuilt at all, forcing her to choose a louder, riskier dream built on our rage, our care, and our refusal to succumb to the status quo in silence.

Bill, a sequel to Mason's critically acclaimed play Lavender Men, excavates Constitutional history and asks who was intentionally excluded from the founding vision of 'We, the People.'

Playwright Roger Q. Mason was awarded a 2026 Creative Capital Award for Bill which supports the creation of risk-taking, groundbreaking new works by providing the awarded artist up to $50,000 in unrestricted project funding, plus professional development services and community-building opportunities.

Photo credit: Michael Kushner Photography