Playwrights’ Center is thrilled to announce the playwrights who will be included in our first public season in our new home at 710 Raymond Avenue in Saint Paul.
Producing Artistic Director Nicole A. Watson finds inspiration in both the work that led to this season and the work that lies ahead. “It’s no small feat in these times to be able to open a new Center and curate a season that celebrates and amplifies the artistry of these playwrights. The variety of stories will agitate our conscience and be a balm for our hearts. There is a uniqueness and vibrancy to each of these plays and it is our collective responsibility to support these artists and declare that the strength of our communities lies in the quilting of multiple narratives, not the narrowness of a single story.”
On October 24 our annual PlayLabs Festival returns, beginning with Affiliated Writer JuCoby Johnson’s Help! Help! Want. Want. Want. Playwrights’ Center has long been JuCoby’s artistic home, and we will begin our next act with his beautiful play about a woman escaping to the woods to be alone with her ghosts.
PlayLabs will continue with Core Writer Cristina Luzárraga’s Autorefract—a wild, wonderous, “dark-bordering-on-blind comedy about marital complicity,” and Affiliated Writer Yilong Liu’s Stupid Little Fire: a “shapeshifting, darkly funny, and surreal exploration of representation, power, and the act of art-making itself.”
Also part of PlayLabs will be our Fellows Showcase, inviting audiences to hear scenes from brand-new plays in progress by our 2025–26 cohort of playwriting fellows.
Following PlayLabs, our Ruth Easton New Play Series will welcome five singularly brilliant Core & Affiliated Writers to workshop new plays full of fantasy, farce, poetry, politics, music, and magic.
These exceptionally gorgeous and occasionally outrageous plays each expose and explore moments of transformation. They flow together in conversation, asking which versions of our histories, our families, and ourselves we celebrate or reject. In the words of Harmon dot aut, whose play Electro Archipelago, a (dif)ability romp with a dash of F.U. will be included in the series: “Queering is all about moving right into the heart of what triggers you, and singing and laughing about it.”
The Ruth Easton series will begin as 2025 ends, with The Optimizers by Katie Bender, “a farce about trying to have it all and what happens when it all falls apart.”
In addition to Harmon’s play, winter 2026 will offer The Treatment by Amy Berryman and by style / by color / by cut / by size (or) SORTED by Whitney Rowland. The series concludes in the spring with THE MERRY WIVES OF GRENOBLE by francisca da silveira, who says she’s “excited to go into this workshop with vulnerability and to explore how sisterhood always endures in the face of adversity.”
Whitney Rowland believes that her play has been waiting to emerge in exactly this moment: “These characters have been bouncing around my head for over a decade. But it wasn’t until this year—this particular political climate—that the structure suddenly snapped into place.”
During this time—when many of us are contemplating the past and asking how we might greet the future—these playwrights will each invite us inside a uniquely captivating world full of surprising answers.
Our public season will also take audiences In the Lab, and into process with playwrights exploring new forms and pushing theatrical boundaries. Time is fluid and memory becomes present, as this year’s plays address urgent themes of safety and freedom, exile and home.
Almacén by Core Writer Julián Mesri is a memory play exploring “how ordinary people navigate political pressure” through Yiddish and Spanish folk songs. And American Carnage by Affiliated Writer Marvin González De León is “part allegory” and “a work of Looney Tunes Dada” about a man who hid in the basement as a 10-year-old, while his parents were disappeared in the night.
Playwrights’ Center is a place of experimentation for writers. Our new building allows the Center to experiment with additional programming as well, as we look for new ways to support the creative processes of playwrights and the robust artistic conversations they inspire. Our new Fridays@4 series will begin in January, offering informal public readings to four Core Writers at the conclusion of their workshops.
We also look forward to welcoming in-person audiences into events that were only offered virtually in recent seasons: our Artists in Conversation series and Member Open Play readings. On June 22 our 2025–26 McKnight Theater Artists will share sneak peeks into their new works–a celebration we’ve usually hosted off-site, but can now comfortably hold at 710 Raymond.
Tickets for PlayLabs are available now and can be reserved here. Dates and additional details for the entire season are below, and don’t forget to save the date for our grand opening community celebration on September 20.
If you can’t join us in person, we’ll still continue to record PlayLabs and Ruth Easton projects to share online for one week each. Those details will be available as the season progresses.
The building is built, and the playwrights are writing. We can’t wait to see you at the Center, where we can lift up these vital voices and continue this joyful work together.
The plays and playwrights
PlayLabs Festival
Help! Help! Want. Want. Want.
by JuCoby Johnson
Friday, October 24 at 7 p.m.
Thursday, October 30 at 7 p.m.
A woman escapes to the woods to be alone and is haunted by the ghosts of her past and present. Help! Help! Want. Want. Want. is a play about love, regret, and finding the will to live.
Autorefract
by Cristina Luzárraga
Saturday, October 25 at 7 p.m.
Friday, October 31 at 7 p.m.
The wives of President Bashar Al-Assad and Senator Rand Paul are trapped in an autorefractor (that machine you squint into when you get your eyes checked) and are trying to piece together how they wound up where they are and if there’s any escape. Do their husbands have something in common? Well, they were both mild-mannered eye doctors before they succumbed to the lure of power and followed in their fathers’ footsteps—but is that all? Are these two women caught in their husbands’ gravitational pull, or does a shared desire ensnare them? Autorefract is a dark-bordering-on-blind comedy about marital complicity.
Stupid Little Fire
by Yilong Liu
Sunday, October 26 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, November 1 at 8 p.m.
Two student leaders must decide whether to escape or stay as a protest in China turns dangerous. A cast in present-day America struggles to stage this very story. A playwright spirals as a talkback unravels. Stupid Little Fire is a shapeshifting, darkly funny, and surreal exploration of representation, power, and the act of art-making itself. With theatrical flair and playful forms, the play examines who gets to tell which stories, how we expect them to be told, and what burns when artists are asked to perform not just their work—but themselves.
Fellows Showcase
Saturday, November 1 at 1 p.m.
Be the first to hear scenes from plays in progress by our 2025–26 cohort of playwriting fellows.
Ruth Easton New Play Series
The Optimizers
by Katie Bender
Monday, December 8 at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, December 9 at 7 p.m.
Bradley Bradlison is a wellness guru with millions of followers. He preaches happiness through the neuroscience of physical and mental control. For three years he’s also been in three different relationships with different women, all of whom believe him to be monogamous. This is a play about those women. The Optimizers is a farce about trying to have it all and what happens when it all falls apart.
The Treatment
by Amy Berryman
Monday, February 9 at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, February 10 at 7 p.m.
A newly-released treatment ends human aging and, presumably, death by natural causes. Will is the first to sign up, but after tragic side effects are revealed his relationship with his daughter falls apart. Through decades and generations, The Treatment takes a speculative look at a medical marvel’s impact, asking how you take the measure of a life if that life never ends.
Electro Archipelago, a (dif)ability romp with a dash of F.U.
by Harmon dot aut
Monday, March 9 at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, March 10 at 7 p.m.
A revue of scenes, songs, and poems created by a group of Neurodivergent, (dis)abled & Gender Nonconforming friends. They build a new system together using their own processing differences, celebrating their bodies & minds defiantly, and performing as a way to stop “performing.”
by style / by color / by cut / by size (or) SORTED
by Whitney Rowland
Monday, April 13 at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, April 14 at 7 p.m.
In the backroom of a semi-professional, femme-forward, aspirational chain fashion store (think Ann Taylor LOFT), a varied and vibrant female-led staff weathers the turbulent tides of life in retail. But when new corporate leadership brings sudden drastic changes to the store, the staff discover just how much pressure they are willing to take. SORTED is a scathing social commentary, with hints of magic and a dollop of dance party.
THE MERRY WIVES OF GRENOBLE
by francisca da silveira
Monday, May 11 at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, May 12 at 7 p.m.
On an island in Cape Verde, a French Count has found himself a wife for every day of the week, thanks to the arrival of his newest prize, Jesuína. But her rebellious personality causes dissent among the other wives, shaking up their routine and causing some to finally see the inequity of this unorthodox polygamous marriage. When Jesuína makes a bold proposal that would radically alter all their destinies, the women are forced to reevaluate their relationships to one another, to themselves, and to their home.
In the Lab
Almacén
by Julián Mesri
Friday, January 16 at 7 p.m.
The Rotnicks run a dusty almacén (general store/café) in the rural province of Chaco, Argentina in 1939. Their daughter Flora’s upcoming wedding to the wealthy Ezra Mainen brings unexpected gifts and troubling revelations to their family and their small Jewish community. Through Yiddish and Spanish folk songs and shifting time, this memory play explores how ordinary people navigate political pressure, and asks: if we never truly belong anywhere, how do we make home with each other?
American Carnage
by Marvin González De León
Friday, February 20 at 7 p.m.
While 10-year-old Martín hid in the basement, his parents were disappeared in the middle of the night. Thirty years later, Martín is still in that very same basement, surviving yet isolated from others. The world is in disarray, but Martín finds solace in the ritualistic performance of a play with the help of a stuffed-man made of old burlap bean sacks. American Carnage is part allegory, a work of Looney Tunes Dada, and an exploration of Mexican and familial history that speaks with humor and tenderness about the darkest parts of history playing out in plain sight.
Fridays@4
These informal readings will conclude the workshops of four Playwrights’ Center Core Writers. Plays and playwrights to be announced at a later date.
January 30 at 4 p.m.
March 27 at 4 p.m.
May 1 at 4 p.m.
June 5 at 4 p.m.