Broadway Bound Theatre Festival is the only playwright-centric, curated theatre festival in New York City dedicated to creating a new brand of self-producing playwright ready and relevant to the modern theatre scene.?With the aim of becoming a launching pad for regional, Off Broadway and Broadway transfers, BBTF presents rich and intriguing works from playwrights from across the continent to thousands of audience members who are invited to embrace this community-building, joyous celebration of fresh and diverse staged theatre.
Festival Line-up:
The Catamite – A play by Ben Parkhill
A poor cross country runner takes increasingly drastic action to stop his much wealthier teammate from applying for the scholarship on which he pinned his future, all while struggling to keep a cultish spiritual movement from pulling his already precarious life apart.
Performance dates: 9/7 @ 5pm, 9/8 @ 5pm, 9/10 @ 2pm
Ordained – A play by Robert Monaco
In 1986, amidst crisis in the Church, Father Jay enters a circle of prominent clerics and is forced to choose between the wellbeing of an abuse victim or the exposure of his own secrets. Ordained looks behind the closed doors of the Catholic church at a time when the abuse crises was still hidden from public view. Against this backdrop of deception and secrecy, a young priest attempts to reconcile his religion with his homosexuality under the guidance of his well-connected mentors.
Performance dates: 9/7 @ 8pm, 9/9 @ 8pm, 9/12 @ 2pm
S.U.N. in the U.S.A. – A play by Michael Hagins
S.U.N. in the U.S.A. is a story that looks at history through the eyes of one Black male, who is kindly reminded just how he has it in his time in the United States of America—from the beginning of African slavery to today’s culture.
Performance dates: 9/8 @ 8pm, 9/9 @ 5 pm, 9/10 @ 8pm
Cherry House – A play by Frank Dunham Jr.
It’s 1859 and in the heart of old New York is Cherry House, named after its proprietress, Miss Cherry. A proud and free African American entrepreneur in misogynistic, racist pre-Civil war America, Miss Cherry’s business is booming and life is good. Or so she thinks. Trouble comes to town when a Southern lowlife attacks one of Cherry House’s ladies, a runaway freed slave wanted for murder. Miss Cherry’s remarkable ability to navigate a hostile world is put to the test when she’s faced with backlash from the law, threats from a greedy bounty hunter and losing the man she loves by risking everything to do the right thing.
Performance dates: 9/10 @ 5 pm, 9/12 @ 5pm, 9/18 @ 8pm, 10/2 @ 8pm
Live from Ferguson! – A play by Gregory Carr
Live from Ferguson! is a choreopoem/poetical that chronicles the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 and the community members turned grassroots activists who daily faced armed militarized police in their quest for justice. Their stories are told through a series of songs, spoken word, raps, monologues, poetry, dance, and chants.
Performance dates: 9/11 @ 5pm, 9/15 @ 2pm, 9/16 @ 5pm
The Whimsical World of Sherlock Holmes – A musical by Marney and Anthony Makridakis
A crime has been committed, and Sherlock Holmes should be on the case! But…Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is suffering an emotional breakdown, his characters are disillusioned and exhausted, and Sherlock’s inner song-and-dance man is bursting to emerge! Sherlock sheds his detective persona and persuades his associates to leap off the page and finish the story themselves, with colorful twists, unexpected romance and, of course, fabulous production numbers. Seeing unrecognizable pages before him, Doyle believes he is going mad, until Sherlock himself meets Doyle face to face, to force a battle of wits and finally determine who’s really in control.
Performance dates: 9/11 @ 8pm, 9/14 @ 8pm, 9/15 @ 5pm, 9/18 @ 5pm
White Woman, Black Boy – A play by David Holmberg
In 2005, Carolyn Bryant, widow of Roy Bryant, one of Emmett Till’s killers, is confronted by four women from her past on the eve of a grand jury decision on whether to indict her in Till’s murder fifty years before. As a district attorney and an FBI agent await the grand jury’s action, Carolyn recalls the night that changed her life forever, realizing she’ll never be truly free, always bearing the burden of Till’s death.
Performance dates: 9/14 @ 5pm, 9/16 @ 2pm, 9/17 @ 2pm, 9/21 @ 5pm
Blood on My Mother’s Apron – A play by Rachel Leighson
Ten years after Jack the Ripper shook British society to its core, another brutal crime hits the headlines: Amelia Dyer is arrested on suspicion of murdering over 300 infants, including her own daughter and son. However, her one surviving child, Polly Dyer may be the key to her mother’s conviction — if she can bring herself to remember the past. With the help of her friend Charlotte Cullum and renowned prosecutor Horace Avery, Polly discovers that our traditional ideas of motherhood can often hide an untamable darkness.
Performance dates: 9/15 @ 8pm, 9/17 @ 8pm, 9/19 @ 2pm, 9/22 @ 8pm
Banned – A play by Iman Ahmed
Political strategist Yasmin Ali, chief advisor for her fiancé, Congressman Adam Abraham, secures a future endorsement that practically guarantees Adam’s re-election. But when an old flame of Yasmin’s reenters her life and begs Adam to obtain a travel waiver for his Yemeni wife, who’s now banned from entering the U.S., her carefully planned ascent to power starts to unravel as she must decide to reconcile her past or banish it forever.
Performance dates: 9/16 @ 8pm, 9/17 @ 5pm, 9/18 @ 2pm
In This Place – A play by Molly Nevins
Expecting their first child, newlyweds Muriel and Jake are happily settling into Jake’s hometown in the rural mountains of East Tennessee. But as Jake draws closer to his roots, Muriel becomes increasingly disenchanted with motherhood and the peculiar inhabitants—the snake handler, the rumored murderer and drug-addicted kin—of Jake’s childhood home, forcing an ever-expanding gulf between them.
Performance dates: 9/21 @ 8pm, 9/22 @ 5pm, 9/24 @ 5pm
The Last Night at the Oki Dog – A play by Jeff Smith and Len Wechsler
On a warm December night in 1985 West Hollywood, the Oki Dog, infamous hangout for runaways and misfits, is forced to close. For Twilight and her friends, this means the uprooting of all that they know: their friendships, their makeshift home, even their hopeful Hollywood dreams. As Twilight clings to the only real family she’s ever known, their last night together forces a reckoning with the past and hesitant steps towards an uncertain future – one in which their security, relationships and very lives remain in doubt.
Performance dates: 9/22 @ 2pm, 9/23 @ 8pm, 9/25 @ 5pm
Eddie Doran’s Deal – A play by Stephen Boulhosa
Eddie Doran’s alcoholism, infidelity and explosive temper have already cost him his relationship with his father & brothers, his marriage, and — possibly the only thing he still cares about — his young daughter. Knowing he’s created his own misery and ready to end his life, Eddie decides to play a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with himself, one that will either leave him dead or with a reason to keep living.
Performance dates: 9/23 @ 5pm, 9/24 @ 8pm, 9/25 @ 2pm, 9/29 @ 8pm
ReNaming Shaim – A play by Alethea McCollin
RENAMING SHAIM is a non-linear, episodic, memory play about three women’s victory over adversity. Shay/Shaim has a secret! She was sexually abused as a child! Yet, her journey to emotional freedom is complicated by the self-destructive habits she adopts as coping mechanisms. She, Danni, and Jan meet later in life when they seek therapy for their childhood trauma. It is in revealing and confronting their trauma and the stigmas they have carried all their lives that they are finally able to heal their wounds and use their experiences to help other people heal too.
Performance dates: 9/25 @ 8pm, 9/26 @ 2pm, 9/28 @ 8pm
Brilliant – A musical by Dani Tapper
Sarah always dreamed of having the perfect family, however life handed her Adam, instead; a child with an undiagnosable set of disruptive behaviors and challenging disabilities. While she and her husband Jake fight to navigate these unchartered waters, Sarah hides Adam’s challenges from those close to her, trying to protect her family but effectively isolating herself in her struggles. Seeing no other option, they reluctantly send their son away to a specialized program. In his absence, Sarah is forced to face her own emotional trauma and some ugly truths about her life. When Adam returns home, they both must learn how to trust each other.
Performance dates: 9/28 @ 5pm, 9/29 @ 2pm, 9/30 @ 5pm, 10/2 @ 2pm
The Black Count of Monte Cristo – A musical by Michele R. Hampton
Edmond Dantes, a young black sailor in 19th century France, is falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit. After fourteen years in prison, he makes a daring escape, and with newfound wealth at his disposal, sets out to even the score. Cleverly disguised, Dantes slips back into the lives of his enemies and, one by one, sets them up for a fall that will cost them their lives. Both avenging angel and defender of the innocent, Dantes fights to free himself from a past that nearly destroyed him in this musical adaptation of the Dumas classic.
Performance dates: 9/29 @ 5pm, 9/30 @ 8pm, 10/1 @ 5pm
The Love Hate Club – A play by Juan Ramirez, Jr.
Are you still friends with your ex? In this dramedy, after a bar fight, Lily finds herself in a situation where she has taken in her ex, Mia. As old feelings begin to emerge, Lily must decide if she’s going to take Mia back or not. The play asks, what exactly is a love/hate relationship and should we love or hate our exes? Is it possible to do both? Who knows? Join the club!
Performance dates: 10/1 @ 8pm, 10/2 @ 5pm, 10/3 @ 2pm
More information can be found at www.BroadwayBoundFestival.com
