The Second Annual
Greater Good Commission & Festival
LGBTQIA+ Latinx Playwrights Have Their Say
This will take you to a separate form.
Founded by playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes, the Greater Good Commission offers $500 mini grants to Latinx playwrights to write short plays, innovative in form, that reflect the times. The commission’s second round will focus on LGBTQIA+ Latinx- identifying playwrights.
The year’s commissioned plays will be presented at the second annual Greater Good Theater Festival produced by the Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) and Pregones Theater/PRTT. The festival will be streamed online in the fall and the plays will later live in digital archives.
ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS
Dominic Colón
is an award-winning actor & writer, from The Bronx, New York. His play PROSPECT AVE OR THE MISEDUCATION OF JUNI RODRIGUEZ premiered as part of THE MTA RADIO PLAYS at Rattlestick Theater. Dominic’s play THE WAR I KNOW, has been developed by the Latinx Playwrights Circle, and LAByrinth Theater Company as part of the 2021 Barn Series. His directing credits include: THE WAR I KNOW (LAByrinth Theater Company), Eduardo Machado’s MARQUITAS (Rattlestick Theater/Pride Plays) & Episodes 4-6 of THE MTA RADIO Plays at Rattlestick Theater. Dominic’s half hour television pilot PAPI, made the inaugural Latinx TV List, a curated list of the ten most promising pilots created by Latinx Writers, received a blind pilot deal from HULU. Dominic was recently selected to be a part of the inaugural cohort of the Sundance Uprise Grant. He is repped by CAA & Artists First.
Where’s Our Angels?
by Dominic Colón
On the evening of March 11, 2020, the night before Broadway shut down, fiancés, E.G. and Alex, have just gotten home from seeing, “the most important play of our generation.” After having extremely different reactions to the play, a visit from their doorman inspires a debate that brings into light issues that have been plaguing their relationship and ultimately tests whether or not they can remain together.
Lily Gonzales
is a playwright from Texas, based in NYC. Their work has been developed or read at The John F. Kennedy Center, Teatro Vivo, Repertorio Español, Stages, San Diego Rep, AlterTheater Ensemble, and The Workshop Theater. Their play (trans)formada was runner-up for three Kennedy Center awards, as well as a finalist for the Miranda Family ‘Voces Latinx’ Competition, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. B.A: UT Austin, Theater & Dance / English.
no me dejas
by Lily Gonzales
After twenty years, Perla's, the last lesbian bar in San Antonio, is closing down. Three queers, across generations, try to figure out what's next for their city and themselves as the bar has its very last call.
Tavi Juárez
is an award-winning queer Chicana playwright and performer based in New York City. Raised in the Deep South, this Cancer-Sun likes to write Southern and Latinx queer stories from a joyful perspective. She is an alumni of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, the University of Montevallo, and the Circle in the Square Theatre School. In 2021, she accepted an invitation to join the Board of Directors for the International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP) where she now facilitates the Script Feedback Group. Her theatrical work has been produced at Dixon Place Theatre, Theatre for the New City, WOW Cafe Theatre, and the Village Playwrights in New York City.
Zoom Wedding
by Tavi Juárez
It’s Marisol and Isela’s wedding day! They set up a Zoom Room for online guests to "attend" the big day, but when the couple’s internet connection breaks up during the backyard ceremony chaos erupts online.
Phanésia Pharel
writes from a Caribbean feminist perspective on the divine metaphysical dilemma of colored girlhood. Through Afro-futurism her plays span revolutions, islands and combat gendered violence. She explores futures built on love by centering women's pleasure, safety and joy.
During her time at Barnard College of Columbia University she won four literary prizes. Other honors include City Theatre National Short Playwriting Finalist, Jane Chambers Finalist, O’neill Semi-Finalist, Blank Stage “Future of Playwriting” Semi-Finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi-Finalist. Commissions include City Theatre Miami and Thrown Stone Theatre. Residencies include New York Stage and Film, Echo Theater Company of Los Angeles and the Playwrights Center Core Apprenticeship. Publishing: Concord Theatricals, Smith and Kraus Best Plays of 2020, Reset Coalition 2020 Anthology and the City Theatre Anthology.
Phanésia is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America.
Domestication, PLEASE
by Phanésia Pharel
After years of feeling nothing, Tamara, a well-established Miami cam girl, is electric in love. Her lover wants her to leave the cam life once and for all, but when a rant of hers is leaked online, her façade is shattered, her escape is upended, and her love hangs in the balance.
Andrew Rincón
is a Queer Colombian-American playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been developed with Rising Circle Theatre Collective, Amios, the Austin Latino New Play Festival, The Amoralists Theatre Company, Pork Filled Productions (Seattle), Out Front Productions (Atlanta) and The 24 Hour Plays. He was a member of INKtank Lab for Playwrights of Color (2017) and the 2017 Fornés Playwriting Workshop (Chicago). He is the winner of the 2018 Chesley/Bumbalo Grant for writers of Gay and Lesbian Theatre and the New Light New Voices Award (2019). He is a company member of Unit 52 at INTAR, a Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow (19-20) and a MacDowell Fellow (Winter 2020), and Visiting Artist in Residence in Playwriting at Skidmore College (21-22).
“GUAU”
by Andrew Rincón
Oscar is just out of a relationship and looking to finally let his "puta" side out and take Truvada. However, with no insurance to pay for the drug, he’s out of luck. That is until Oscar hears about an underground dealer selling a different kind of pill to prevent HIV called “Guau,” unapproved by the FDA. Oscar goes to the dealer and spins his world into an explosion of Queer Puta Magic that shows Oscar what he’s really been searching for all along.
The plays will be presented at the 2021 Greater Good Theater Festival on October 23rd by the Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) and Pregones Theater/PRTT. The Event will be streamed online, and the plays will live in digital archives, along with a possible in-person covid-compliant screening of the work on or before the 23rd of October. The festival supports the playwrights with a small production budget, administrative support, casting services, and video recording and editing for the virtual festival.
Meet our Creators
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Special Programs Director- “I’m thrilled to partner again with LPC and Pregones/PRTT on this fun initiative. The LGBTQIA+ community has been through so much this past year with unemployment, homelessness, and medical issues at all-time highs due to the pandemic that I’d like to dedicate this second round to queer+ Latinx/e playwrights. It’s important that emerging playwrights have a chance to earn a living from their craft and with theaters only now beginning to re-open many continue to struggle financially; these mini grants will help those selected get on their way to a more sustainable artistic practice and help make US/American theater more inclusive and representative of this nation’s greatest strength, its diversity.”
Guadalís Del Carmen
Co-Artistic Director- “We learned and grew so much from our inaugural launch of the Greater Good. The fruit was in the wonderful playwrights we were able to connect with continue and to support. I’m beyond excited to continue this meaningful work and keep this family growing. We must continue to be bold and loud in our work and this second iteration of The Greater Good is no different from the first in creating space for our communities to be their unapologetic selves.”
Alisha Espinosa
Producer- “The beauty of the Greater Good Commission and Festival is more than its artistic merit. The Latinx community is vast and full of intersectional identities, yet is often reduced to a monolith, a generic story. By celebrating one of these intersections each year, we’re able to bring the richness and depth of our community into focus and to challenge flat narratives about who we are. ¡Estamos aquí!”
Check out last year’s festival below…
Greater Good Theater Festival 2020
You may catch the broadcast on PRTT’s social media platforms. Click here to get the links!
Meet our Award Recipients
Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and Pregones/PRTT are thrilled to announce that the playwrights selected for the Greater Good Commission and Festival are Christin Eve Cato, Julissa Contreras, Candice D’Meza, Shenny De Los Angeles, and Rachel Lynett. Founded by playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes, the Greater Good Commission offers mini grants to Latinx playwrights to write short plays, innovative in form, that reflect the times. The Commission’s mission is to help sustain Latinx playwrights and to support their contributions to American Theater. The commission’s inaugural round will focus on Afro/Black-Latinxidentifying playwrights, and this year’s selection committee chose five women playwrights. The inaugural plays will be presented at the 2020 Greater Good Theater Festival by the Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC) and Pregones Theater/PRTT. The Festival will be streamed online, and the plays will later live in digital archives. The festival supports the playwrights with a small production budget, administrative support, casting services, and video recording and editing for the virtual festival. More information about the Commission and Festival is available on the LPC website.
ABOUT THE PLAYS
“Las Mujeres de Hierro” by Shenny De Los Angeles - Three generations of Dominican women are forced to live together after the pandemic. Conjuring sacred soil of the last remaining tree, they face generational pain in order to source joy.
“The Anarchists of Nueva Yol” by Christin Eve Cato - During an internet civil war, Lucilla Lebrón stumbles upon a secret online group planning to take over NYC and discovers that she only has 48 hours to plan a defense!
“Echo Me” by Rachel Lynett - As time flows in and out of this memory play, Massiel experiences many different 2020s as she tries to reconcile moving back to New York and the world changing forever.
“Alien Abduction” and “Answer the Bloodline” by Candice D'Meza follow one Afro-Latinx pregnant teen’s escape from Earth into space and her great-great-great grandson who returns to Earth to reconnect to a cousin 100 years later.
“Entre Dos” by Julissa Contreras explores the dynamic between Samira, “millennial” living in NYC, and her Dominican parents, Rosa and Victor, whose plans to retire in Dominican Republic were delayed due to COVID.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS
Julissa Contreras is a Dominicana from the Bronx; she is a creator of the YouTube hit “Shit Spanish Girls Say” and creator of the “Ladies Who Bronche” podcast. Julissa is a playwright, actor, director, and current member of The Middle Voice at Rattlestick Theater. Currently, Julissa is working on her new play “La Greña” which was part of the MLK Festival at Teatro LATEA. She was a writer for Mitu’s “the Kat Call” (season 3) and recently wrote an episode for “Lenny Says” as part of the Spotlight program. She was a member of the Lather, Rinse, Repeat playwright collective and the Gingold Group’s Speakers Corner. Julissa has had her work presented at The Rattlestick Theater’s Play Jam Festival 2010 and 2017, Rebel Verses at Developing Artist Theater, One-Minute Play Festival (INTAR 2012-2017, NY Indie Theatre 2017), and in the Irene Fornes HPRL New Play Festival at Intar Theater.
Candice D'Meza is a social practice multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, and activist. Her art ritualizes the public space for the reclamation and repatriation of self through song, dance, theatrical performance, audio-visual installation, diary/memoir, and film. Her work explores themes related to identity, diaspora, African spiritual technologies for connection, land and water. Heavily inspired by Theater of The Oppressed, all of my work intentionally invites those present to invoke, whether physically or sonically, the construction or reconstruction of self-determined liberated identities. Currently, D'Meza's creative work explores the uses of fantasy and imagination LatinX Playwrights Circle ▪ LatinxPlaywrights.com ▪ nyclatinxcircle@gmail.com as a radical liberatory practice. Her speculative fiction playwriting series, "30 Ways To Get Free” and her recursive memoir-mythology theatrical performance entitled "Fatherland” (funded by the City of Houston) use fiction as a call to arms to invent new and exciting possibilities of freedom. Candice is a proud mother of two boys, a daughter of water, and a child of Ayiti. More about her work can be found at www.candicedmeza.com.
Christin Eve Cato is a playwright and performer from the Bronx. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Indiana University. She completed her BA degree from Fordham University, and is also a graduate from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. Cato is affiliated with NYC theater companies: Pregones/PRTT, INTAR Theatre, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle. With a Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage, Cato’s artistic style is heavily influenced by Caribbean culture and the Afrolatinx diaspora. Workshop productions & staged readings include: "Stoop Pigeons" (CTH's Future Classics Reading Series; O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); "jelly beans" (Indiana University); "What’s Up With Marjorie?" (Teatro Vivo); "From Hunts Point To Whitlock" (Pregones Theater/Harlem9); "Smacked-Up Love" (Indiana University); "Just A Visit" (Play Your Part Seattle). Check out more stuff here: www.christinevecato.com
Shenny De Los Angeles is a Dominican-American storyteller based in Brooklyn. Shenny centralizes Black Caribbean femmes in her writing, captivating the power of their joy. Currently, she is a 2020 Suite Space Artist at Mabou Mines Theatre, where she is developing her one woman show entitled “What Happens to Brown Girls Who Never Learn How to Love Themselves Brown?” During this vulnerable and confusing time, she decided to tap into abundance and create a short film integrating text from her original play to tell the story.
Rachel Lynett is a queer Afro-Latinx playwright. All of her plays are dark comedies that center on queer people of color and how they attempt to navigate through the various complexities of their existence. Her plays have been featured at Mirrorbox Theatre, Laboratory Theatre of Florida, Barrington Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Theatre Prometheus, Florida Studio Theatre, Laughing Pig Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Teatro Espejo, the Kennedy Center Page to Stage festival, Theatresquared, Equity Library Theatre, Chicago, Talk Back Theatre, American Stage Theatre Company, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre. In 2017, her play “Well-Intentioned White People” was an honorable mention for The Kilroy’s and in 2020, “Last Night” and “HE DID IT” made the Kilroy’s List. Rachel Lynett is also the Artistic Director of Rachel Lynett Theatre Company. ###
