Art House Productions Announces 2022 INKubator New Play Festival

Art House Productions is pleased to announce the INKubator New Play Festival from Sunday, May 8 - Friday, May 20 at Grassroots Community Space in Jersey City. The festival will feature playwrights from the 2021-2022 cohort, including Jake Brasch, Nay Harris, Justice Hehir, Riley Elton McCarthy, Christian Mendonça, and Melissa Toomey. Audiences who attend the festival will also have the opportunity to participate in conversations with the writers, directors, and actors during each performance.

All public readings are free for audiences and begin at 7:30pm EST, but advance registration is required: https://bit.ly/INKubatorFestival2022. Donations will be accepted towards supporting the INKubator Program at Art House Productions. 

Grassroots Community Space is located at 54 Coles St, Jersey City, NJ 07302. All patrons must show proof of COVID-19 Vaccination at the door. Masks are required for patrons.

The venue is wheelchair accessible (entrance on 3rd Street), with air conditioning. To request open captions or ASL interpreters, please email info@arthouseproductions.org at least 2 weeks before the event. Photos of the venue can be found here: http://grassrootscommunityspace.com/wp/photos-videos. For questions about accessibility and patrons services, please email info@arthouseproductions.org. 

INKubator is a year-long generative process for a select group of 6 playwrights in residence at Art House Productions. During the program, playwrights meet on a monthly basis alongside program director Alex Tobey to share new work, receive feedback, and develop a first draft of a new play. The program culminates in a New Play Festival, where the playwrights work with professional directors and actors to hear the play read aloud for the first time. Casting will be announced at a later date.

“I’m especially excited about this iteration of INKubator,” says INKubator director Alex Tobey. “Not only does this year’s cohort feature a wide breadth of stories, perspectives, and visions for the future of playwriting, but it also marks our return to an in-person new play festival. Being ‘in the room’ with a new play is something I’ve missed deeply over the past two years, and I can’t wait to give our audiences a first look at these thrilling and provocative new plays at the earliest stages of development.”

It's midnight at the last 7/11 open 24 hours in The United States of America and impending doom of the discontinuation of the much-cherished red slurpee has sent the world as we know it into a global crisis. The 7/11 Corporation has put all of its slurpee machines on lockdown, bracing itself as a new organization known as the Red Slurpee Brigade threatens all of humanity in the pursuit of their beloved red slurpee. As for the last 7/11 still operating at 24 hours in America? Well... new hire and criminally inept cashier Daxton's on the night shift and retired Manic Pixie Dream Girl, now part-time Letterboxd critic Baby in a Corner is looking for her slurpee fix. A play about how Scott Pilgrim enabled an entire generation of men to be undateable.

Trauma's often unpredictable and as a result, memories can be...tricky. Nyx agrees to be interviewed on their ex's podcast and tries to remember their past and form connections between their self-destructive impulses, their love of kink/masochism, Queerness, and creativity. Some memories are muddled, while others painfully remain the same, no matter how much Nyx tries to rewind or edit the past. This piece serves as a reminder that oftentimes, the monsters under our beds are more terrified than terrifying and even they deserve to be cared for. 

Spin is a comedy about birthday party clowns, park rangers, endangered owls, reincarnation, and Jewish mysticism. Jumping wildly through time, the play kaleidoscopically charts the lives of several misfits manically searching for meaning. They may struggle to see the big picture, but we don't. We see how freakishly, frighteningly, hilariously, their lives are entwined.

In the American West, a freight-train-hopping Maiden teams up with the lost soul of a Missing Indigenous Woman to seek vengeance against her stalker, their enemy: a vagabond known as Death. In a surreal Western ghost story spanning all along the old Santa Fe Railroad, we are questioned : How lost do we have to become to finally be free? And are we born to die?

Self-portrait photographer Juno does her best work on solo trips to defunct industrial sites where women once labored. When a broken leg means she's unable to camp safely on her own, her recently heartbroken friend Lee joins her on a trip to a disused rope-making mill near the Watchung Mountains, forcing a change in process and perspective. A play about nakedness, pouched applesauce, and the pictures we can only take ourselves.

A social worker, Henri, gets funding to test out his pilot program "Flowers for Men," a five-week healing journey that asks men to nourish a flower into blossoming as well as a relationship in their personal life. That's easier said than done in a room filled with toxicity and preconceptions. It doesn't help when some of these personal relationships get entangled and identities are put on the line. Will this group of six men make it out of this program ready to grow, or will they be hell-bent on (self-)destruction?

This event is part of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance 2022 Stages Festival, made possible by support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; Bank of America; The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey; OceanFirst Foundation; the George A. Ohl, Jr. Trust; New Jersey Historical Commission; and Fund for the New Jersey Blind. www.njtheatrealliance.org/stages

This event is co-sponsored by Grassroots Community Space. The Grassroots Community Space is an establishment founded by artists and supporters of the arts to enrich our community’s quality of life. The venue provides a meeting place for people who want to convene, share ideas, support local artists and explore different aspects of the human experience in a relaxed environment. 

Art House Productions is generously supported by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, SILVERMAN, The Princeton Foundation, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, The Hudson County Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Alliance of Resident Theatres / New York. 

Art House Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to the development and presentation of the performing and visual arts in Jersey City, NJ. Art House Productions presents theater, performing and visual arts festivals, arts events, visual art exhibitions, and adult and youth art classes. For more information about our programs, please visit our website at www.arthouseproductions.org. Follow us on social media @arthouseproductions @arthouseprods To sign up for Art House's mailing list, please click here: http://eepurl.com/hd1FCj.