Justin Borak is a playwright currently receiving his MFA in acting at West Virginia University. He is the recipient of the Sean Cercone/Broadway Licensing New Works Grant where he started the development for his play, A Writer's Room. He then wrote the environmentalist vignette TYA play, Community Garden, which was recently published by the largest TYA theatrical publisher in the country, Playscripts. He has since curated a relationship with Playscripts and is on track to write and publish two more plays through them by August of 2023.
Plays
The play follows five late-night comedy writers who are thrust into a plain room in an office building and are told to write jokes in order to get a TV writing job. The five of them slowly realize that they have completely different beliefs and ideologies and using a politically charged location, like a comedy writing room, the play becomes a tense, political comedy that takes a deep look at human behavior using the lens of comedy writers. The piece also has an eerie element, placing the writers in a locked room and having their one connection to the outside being a Man in White Coat who doesn’t seem to be letting them all know what is going on around them.
Uptown, Chicago, newbie Ralph doesn’t quite know what to expect during his first volunteer shift at Uptown City Gardens. It’s certainly not the vibrant, bustling community that passes through the green space, checking on their plants, composting their food scraps, meeting up with friends, and—surprisingly often—falling in love. After a few hours, Ralph begins to understand seasoned volunteer Donald’s claim that the garden is magic. In a series of heartfelt and humorous vignettes, Community Garden digs into the ways taking care of the environment helps people take care of each other.