Workshop of CODE RED Comes to Mosaic Theater Company

Mosaic Theater Company will present a workshop for CODE RED, a new play that illuminates day-to-day life in an environment perpetually alert—the American public school system. CODE RED is written and directed by Emily Mann, a two-time Tony Award-nominee and American Theater Hall of Fame honoree. This workshop presentation will run October 25 and 26, 2025, in Lab 2 Theater at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. After each presentation, the audience will join director and playwright Emily Mann and the CODE RED creative team to dive into the process behind the workshop.

This special new play development event is an example of the company's new Community Engaged Theater Fund, which brings local community organizations and experts into the creative process as dramaturgs and partners who can deepen the writing, engage in rigorous discussion with artists about the themes of Mosaic's plays, and build new audiences for Mosaic projects. The company's spring world premiere production of Precarious by Steph Del Rosso was similarly supported and developed through this new program. For CODE RED, local gun violence prevention organizations and educators will partner with Mosaic, and Kaiser Permanente will provide resources for audiences via their Community Safety programs.

“Mosaic is honored to present a workshop of Emily Mann's powerful new play, CODE RED,” said Reginald L. Douglas, Mosaic Theater Artistic Director. “With compassion, courage, and unflinching honesty, Emily sheds light on the extraordinary resilience of teachers, parents, and communities living with the ever-present reality of school shootings. This workshop continues Mosaic's commitment to nurturing bold new work that speaks directly to the urgent questions of our time.”

“It's a great privilege to be workshopping my new play at Mosaic, a theater committed to the creation of challenging new work for our times. I have dedicated Code Red to the brave teachers in our schools who risk their lives every day to teach our nation's children. The play is inspired by women I know well. Smart, funny, brave and tenacious, I hope the audience comes to love and care about them as much as I do. They are America's unsung heroes,” said playwright and director Emily Mann. 

While this presentation of an in-process new play can not be reviewed, members of the media are invited to attend this performance and interview cast and creative team members.

About CODE RED

CODE RED illuminates day-to-day life in an environment perpetually alert—the American public school system. Five women in rural upstate New York navigate teaching, parenthood and friendship while trying to grapple with their greatest fear. When unfathomable situations make for breakroom banter, the question becomes—how do normal people do their jobs when nothing is normal anymore?

About the Artists

Emily Mann (Playwright and Director) is a Tony-nominated director and playwright and a Tony-winning Artistic Director. In her 30 years as Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, she wrote 15 new plays and adaptations, directed over 50 productions, produced 180 plays and musicals, and supported and directed the work of emerging and legendary playwrights including Ntozake Shange, Athol Fugard, Edward Albee, Christopher Durang, Nilo Cruz, Joyce Carol Oates, Tarell Alvin McCraney and Danai Gurira. She is known for her productions of Williams, Lorca, Chekhov, and Shakespeare. On Broadway, she directed her own plays Execution of Justice and Having Our Say, Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics and A Streetcar Named Desire.  Her other plays include: Still Life, Annulla, An Autobiography, Greensboro: A Requiem, Meshugah, Mrs. Packard, The Pianist, and Gloria: A Life, which aired on PBS'  Great Performances. Her adaptations include: Baby Doll, Scenes from a Marriage, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, A Seagull in the Hamptons, The House of Bernarda Alba, and Antigone.  She recently premiered On Cedar Street, a new musical co-written with Lucy Simon, Carmel Dean and Susan Birkenhead. Awards include: Peabody, Guggenheim, Hull Warriner, NAACP, 6 Obies; Princeton University Honorary Doctorate of Arts; Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwrights' Award; Margo Jones Award; TCG Visionary Leadership Award; The Lilly Award, Gordon Davidson Award and Dramatists Guild awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. She has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Theater Hall of Fame. 

Johanna Day* (Tiz) has Broadway credits that include Call Me Izzy, How I Learned to Drive, The Nap, Sweat (Tony Nomination), You Can't Take It With You, August: Osage County, Lombardi, and Proof (Tony Nomination). Additional theatre credits include: Doubt: A Parable at The Hanover Theatre; Scene Partners and Middletown at Vineyard Theatre; Des Moines at Theatre for a New Audience; Floyd's at Guthrie Theater; Peace for Mary Frances at The New Group; Peter and Jerry at Second Stage Theatre (Drama Desk Nomination); Appropriate at The Pershing Square Signature Center (Obie Award, The Lilly Award); Poor Behavior at Mark Taper Forum; The Realistic Joneses at Yale Repertory Theatre; Choice at The Huntington Theatre; and The Rainmaker at Arena Stage (Helen Hayes Award). Television credits include Bull, The Good Fight, Madam Secretary, For Life, New Amsterdam, The Blacklist, Escape at Dannemora, The Knick, The Americans, and Masters of Sex. Film credits include Worth, The Post, The Great Gilly Hopkins, How Far She Went, The Breatharians.

Anne Bowles* (Mrs. Moore) has Broadway credits that include: Collected Stories, reasons to be pretty, and Inherit the Wind. Her Off-Broadway credits include: Make Believe at Second Stage Theater. Regional credits include: Eureka Day at Asolo Repertory Theatre; On Golden Pond at Florida Repertory Theatre; Twist Your Dickens and Love, Factually with The Second City at the Kennedy Center; Shear Madness at The Kennedy Center; Picnic at Baltimore Center Stage; Steel Magnolias and The Heiress at Pioneer Theatre Company, Of Mice and Men at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey; Fat Pig, This is How It Goes, The Wolves at Studio Theatre; The Matchmaker at Ford's Theatre; Elizabeth the Queen at Folger Theatre, columbinus at Round House Theatre; and Hero's Welcome and The Phlebotomist at 1st Stage Theater. Television credits include: The Good Wife, House of Cards, TURN: Washington's Spies, Law and Order, Law and Order: SVU, and FBI: Most Wanted.

Lise Bruneau* (Kaye) returns to the Atlas after winning a Helen Hayes Award with Solas Nua's The Honey Trap and performing in Eureka Day and Paper Dolls with Mosaic Theater. Select DC credits include Othello and Hamlet at Shakespeare Theatre Company and The Age of Innocence, Watch on the Rhine, and Legacy of Light at Arena Stage. Lise has also performed in productions at Studio Theatre, Round House Theatre, and Theater J. In New York, she has appeared at Park Avenue Armory and Roundabout Theatre Company. Regional credits include: Silent Sky at Asolo Repertory Theatre, Heartbreak House at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (Henry Award), Sweat for ACT San Francisco, and the world premiere of The Revolutionists at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. She is an accomplished director, recently helming Kimberly Gilbert's wonderful Cyrano, and numerous productions across the DMV and beyond. Lise trained at RADA, and is a Taffety Punk.

Kimberly Gilbert* (Mare; she/her) has been a proud DC actor for 25 years. She was last seen at Mosaic in Charm. Recent credits include: Cyrano at Taffety Punk Theatre Company, What the Constitution Means to Me at Round House Theatre, A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre, and POTUS at Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia. She can be seen next in Appropriate at Olney Theatre Center and Sally & Tom at Round House Theatre. She received her MFA in Classical Acting in 2001 at The STC Academy at The Shakespeare Theatre and GWU.

Lolita Marie* (Barb; she/her) is a four-time Helen Hayes Award recipient who has appeared in POSTMORTEM and Native Son at Mosaic Theater. Additional credits include: Hang, Well, and Doubt: A Parable, at 1st Stage; The Royale with 1st Stage in repertory with Olney Theatre Center; Tempestuous Elements at Arena Stage; The Brothers Paranormal and The Joy That Carries You at Olney Theatre Center; Sweat, The Outsider, N – A Play, God of Carnage, and An American Daughter at Keegan Theatre; The Tragedy of Hamlet and Hurricane Diane at Avant Bard; This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing, Flood City, or colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and brownsville song (b-side for tray) at Theater Alliance; The Adventures of Pericles at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company; The Skin of Our Teeth and Blood Wedding at Constellation Theatre Company; and Secrets of the Universe (And Other Songs) and Leto Legend at Hub Theatre.  

CODE RED will feature design work from Asia Christian (lighting), Nyasha Klussmann (wardrobe support), and Ian Vespermann (sound). Rebecca Rovezzi is the Associate Director/Script Supervisor and Jenna Keefer* is the Stage Manager.