Writer Director Lab
About
Instigated in 1998, the Writer Director Lab is an engine for the generation of new plays. The programâa beacon in the city for formally inventive workâsupports four projects created by collaborative teams. The Lab culminates in presentations at Soho Rep that are free and open to the public.
Current Lab
Nkenna Akunna & Nana Dakin
If we think of our conditioning as spells that have been cast on our consciousness, what could help us break them? Nkenna and Nana will be working on a piece inspired by the subversive healing practices of astrology and tarot card readings.
Carolina Äá» & Annie Jin Wang
Using Chekhovâs The Seagull as a point of departure, Carolina and Annie are generating a four-act theatrical investigation-love letter to their families, ancestors, selves, and fellow Asian American community members who have had to sublimate their identities in the pursuit of being understood.
Ran Xia & Risa Puno
Ran and Risa are interested in creating an interactive theatre/game hybrid piece using TTRPGs (table top role playing games) mechanics to generate narratives around the exploration and expression of Asian female rage.
Past Labs

Keenan Hurley & Kedian Keohan
BLUSH
At the center of the Black Hole is the Event Horizon. Crawl inside and save me a dance. Internal transformations become external. Let’s reckon with one another or become unrecognizable. It’s ok if you’re a little smelly.

Talia Paulette Oliveras & Nia Farrell
A Map to Nowhere (things are)
A Map to Nowhere (things are) is a reminder that this is Real Lifeâand that means there is real hope for tomorrow. It is a chakra-based ritual and abolitionist practice in closing the gap between dreams and reality.

Kate Moore Heaney & Divya Mangwani
Speak American
Speak American is an insider/outsiderâs perspective on the disorienting construct that is the American languageâhyperlinking to the future (insert emoticon here).

Jeesun Choi & Bryn Herdrich
Bust
Sein fights for the leadership of her Model United Nations team. An economist gives one last lecture. Fish Grandma goes to the bank. Meanwhile, the global market teeters on the brink of collapse. BUST explores the money in our wallets, the illusions it buys, and the future it promises.

Jen Goma & Haruna Lee
plural (love)
âWith the performance installation plural (love), Jen Goma & Kristine Haruna Lee flirt with the boundaries of desire, power, and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. Always written and performed anew based on its audience and physical surroundings (from the NY Hall of Science planetarium, to theatre festivals, to a hotel), plural (love) is an opportunity for Goma and Lee to report their latest findings on love, desire, intimacy, sex and sexuality, and its relationship to transparency, ethics, and equity.
Originally inspired by auto-theorists such as Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson, and Roland Barthes, Goma and Lee layer political, cultural, and social theory with their own autobiographical stories as Asian American femme women, and their experiences of desire and being desired. They perform their musings through a pastiche of intricate styles that include pop songs with lyrics by Sartre, femme rituals, live podcasts, intimate humor, radical truth-telling, and community engagement.â

Ann Marie Dorr & Paul Ketchum
Good and Noble Beings
âGood and Noble Beings is a stupid adaptation of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattariâs A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The performance is the result of a compilation of bits of language that Ketchum found funny in the post-structuralist textâand that ultimately started to sound like pieces of dialogue between as many people as possible.
Dorr and Ketchum have no idea what they are doing because A Thousand Plateaus is impossible to readâbut it seems, to them, that the book is about nonhierarchical structures of being. They are hoping to deconstruct late capitalist notions of hierarchy and structural meaning while simultaneously blowing everyoneâs mind. God is a Lobster. Welcome to the Rhizome.â

Daaimah Mubashshir & Raja Feather Kelly
The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente
âCollaborators Daaimah Mubashshir & Raja Feather Kelly were drawn together out of a desire to locate truths, the sublime, and to expand the vocabulary of blackness on stage. Kellyâs artistic practice combines dance, sketch comedy, minstrelsy, and devised theatre; Mubashshir conceived Everyday Afroplay, a daily theatrical writing practice on blackness and the black body that serves as a well-spring of material for her company of collaborators.
Together, they have developed one Everyday Afroplay into the first episode of a larger workâThe Chronicles of Cardigan and Khenteâwhich centers the experience of two black corporate executives as they navigate climbing the ladder toward financial liberation. In the style of a Post â Black Minstrelsy, Cardigan and Khenteâs first question is: Why does success and freedom always come down to âwhat do they think of us?ââ

Virginia Grise & Shayok Misha Chowdhury
rasgos asiaticos
âOn October 24th, 1871, 20 Chinese men were tortured and hanged in downtown LA. This mass lynchingâthe largest in U.S. historyâtook place on Calle de los Negros, named for its original inhabitants: dark-skinned Californios of indigenous, African, and Spanish blood. This coincidence of space insists: the American story, of migration and displacement, is a palimpsestâa parchment written on, erased, then written on again, the traces of the old words ghosting underneath the new. Virginia Griseâs rasgos asiaticos looks to a history thatâs been (imperfectly) erased: Chinese settlement in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Itâs about moving bodies and porous bordersâHow do you make a home in inhospitable country?
rasgos asiaticos is part hybrid-bookâcomprising drafts of scenes, splinters of text and poetry, as well as non-textual source materialâand part multimedia performanceâcreating a mosaic of layered voices (speaking English, Spanish, and Cantonese), music, and movement. Director Shayok Misha Chowdhury has selected pieces of the book to excavate in this performance about moving bodies and porous borders, which aims to re-imagine how we think about immigration in the US-Mexico borderlands.â

Peter Mills Weiss & Julia Mounsey
while you were partying
âPeter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey take a fantastical approach to analyzing their own histories of aggression, impotence, and mental health with while you were partying. This piece takes the form of a staged reading of a screenplayâa bizarre, self-sacrificing hero fantasy of an aging man-child, whose relationship with his highly supportive mother manifests as a dream ballet with a chilling conclusion.
Weiss and Mounsey began working together after noticing their shared interest in speaking directly to audiences as âthemselvesâ in a way that complicates identity and authenticity. Their work, like [50/50] Old School Animation (which will be performed at Under the Radar at The Public Theater this January 2019) places audiences in uncomfortable spaces as it gets at the heart of challenging moral questions.â
Jacob Perkins & Jaki Bradley
Where Have You Gone
(Writer Director Lab 2015/2016)
Tony Meneses & Michael Leibenluft
Clinton Hill
(Writer Director Lab 2015/2016)
Stephanie Del Rosso & Zi Alikhan
Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill
(Writer Director Lab 2015/2016)
Catherine Yu & Tiffany Nicole Greene
Le Jeté
(Writer Director Lab 2015/2016)
Milo Cramer & Benjamin Kamine
Cute Activist
(Writer Director Lab 2014/2015)
Jordan Seavey & Hannah Wolf
November 4, 2008
(Writer Director Lab 2014/2015)
Kate Benson & Will Davis
Desert (For Now)
(Writer Director Lab 2014/2015)
Dipika Guha & Andrew Neisler
Unreliable
(Writer Director Lab 2014/2015)
Clare Barron & Louisa Proske
You Got Older
(Writer Director Lab 2013/2014)
Jiehae Park & Lilian Meredith
Untitled High School Macbeth
(Writer Director Lab 2013/2014)
Amelia Roper & Knud Adams
Everything is Nice
(Writer Director Lab 2013/2014)
Jerry Lieblich & Kareem Fahmy
D Deb Debbie Deborah
(Writer Director Lab 2013/2014)
Evan Twohy & Jess Chayes
Permission
(Writer Director Lab 2012/2013)
Max Posner & Jesse Jou
Judy
(Writer Director Lab 2012/2013)
Anna Greenfield & Mary Birnbaum
This Is Gonna Be Great
(Writer Director Lab 2012/2013)
Tracy Thorne & Kristan Seemel
The Nature of Things
(Writer Director Lab 2012/2013)
Elizabeth Irwin & Sarah Krohn
My Mañana Comes
(Writer Director Lab 2012/2013)
Trish Harnetiaux & Jeremy Bloom
How To Get Into Buildings
(Writer Director Lab 2011/2012)
Joshua Conkel & Jen Wineman
Sprawl
(Writer Director Lab 2011/2012)
Peter Gil-Sheridan & Anna Brenner
Cockfight
(Writer Director Lab 2011/2012)
Jackie Sibblies Drury & David F. Chapman
Really Really Really Really Really
(Writer Director Lab 2011/2012)
Lloyd Suh & Sarah Rasmussen
Fort Lee
(Writer Director Lab 2010/2011)
Andy Bragen & Mike Donahue
Loop Tape
(Writer Director Lab 2010/2011)
Susan Soon He Stanton & Alice Reagan
Takarazuka!
(Writer Director Lab 2010/2011)
Michael Yate Crowley & Rachel Chavkin
The Dead, Inc.
(Writer Director Lab 2010/2011)
Jess Barbagallo & Meghan Finn
I'll Meet You in Tijuana
(Writer Director Lab 2009/2010)
Amy Herzog & Pirronne Yousefzadeh
4000 Miles
(Writer Director Lab 2009/2010)
Matthew Korahais & Michael Silverstone
Trigger Warning (NSFW)
(Writer Director Lab 2009/2010)
Kate E. Ryan & Mia Rovegno
Science Is Close
(Writer Director Lab 2009/2010)
Janine Nabers & Adam Greenfield
Welcome to Jesus
(Writer Director Lab 2009/2010)
Jonathan Bernstein & Katherine Kovner
The Children's Employment Commission
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Sylvan Oswald & Rafael Gallegos
Sun Ra
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Kate E. Ryan & Stephen Brackett
Him
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Susan Tenneriello & Jerry Ruiz
Mirage
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins & Shoshona Currier
The Change
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Gregory S. Moss & Arin Arbus
Orange, Hate & Grace
(Writer Director Lab 2008/2009)
Mike Daisey & Maria Goyanes
The Moon Is a Dead World
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Maller Avidon & Jose Zayas
The Past Is Not a Foreign Country: (Very Personal) Maps of Seattle
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Amber Reed & Alec Duffy
Apocope
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Madeleine George & Miriam Weiner
Precious Little
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Dan LeFranc & Linsay Firman
In the Labyrinth: A Spectacle with Stories
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Deron Bos & Jimena Duca
Putting the Days to Bed
(Writer Director Lab 2007/2008)
Scott Adkins & Kenn Watt
Running Commentary NO. 4
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Tommy Smith & May Adrales
White Hot
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Annie Baker & Debbie Saivetz
Nocturama
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Kristen Palmer & Awoye Timpo
The Melting Point
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Karinne Keithly & Maria Goyanes
Do Not Do This Ever Again
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Jason Grote & Brooke O'Harra
Maria / Stuart
(Writer Director Lab 2006/2007)
Thomas Bradshaw & Mallory Catlett
Purity
(Writer Director Lab 2005/2006)
Jenny Schwartz & Sarah Cameron Sunde
Somewhere Fun
(Writer Director Lab 2005/2006)
Heidi Schreck & Sarah Benson
Creature
(Writer Director Lab 2005/2006)
David Adjmi & Shana Gold
Marie Antoinette
(Writer Director Lab 2005/2006)
Jason Grote & Maria Goyanes
Hamilton Township
(Writer Director Lab 2005/2006)
Kate E. Ryan & Evan Cabnet
Brian
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
Anna Ziegler & Maureen Towey
BFF
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
B. Walker Sampson & Josh Hecht
Alcestis
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
Mat Smart & Ellen Beckerman
Telescopes
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
Jason Grote & Liesl Tommy
1001
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
Erin Courtney & Sarah Benson
Quiver & Twitch
(Writer Director Lab 2004/2005)
Rob Handel & Robert Davenport
Being Difficult
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Jason Grote & Andrew Grosso
This Storm Is What We Call Progress
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Peter Morris & Jessica Bauman
The Salivation Army
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Eisa Davis & Marie-Louise Davis
Six Minutes
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Ann Marie Healy & Laramie Dennis
When He Gets That Way
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Sheila Callaghan & Linsay Firman
Lascivious Something
(Writer Director Lab 2003/2004)
Adam Bock & Linsay Firman
The Thugs
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Madelyn Kent & Jonathan Spector
Peninsula
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Crystal Skillman & Trip Cullman
4 Edges
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Peggy Stafford & Lear deBessonet
Little Miss 1565
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Ken Urban & Davis McCallum
Sense of an Ending
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Anne Washburn & Laramie Dennis
The Internationalist
(Writer Director Lab 2002/2003)
Ruben Carbajal & Mike Shapiro
The Gifted Program
(Writer Director Lab 2001/2002)
Savitri Durkee & Laramie Dennis
Sky/No Sky
(Writer Director Lab 2001/2002)
Judy Elkan & Jude Domski
Bakar
(Writer Director Lab 2001/2002)
Dan O'Brien & Melissa Kievman
Three Christs at the Majestic
(Writer Director Lab 2001/2002)
David Wiener & Linsay Firman
The Life of the Bird
(Writer Director Lab 2001/2002)
Mellisa James Gibson & Jay Scheib
Suitcase
(Writer Director Lab 2000/2001)
Colin Hodges & Anne Kauffman
The Mercy Seat
(Writer Director Lab 2000/2001)
Madelyn Kent & Laramie Dennis
Blank Dragon Sky
(Writer Director Lab 2000/2001)
Kevin Oakes & Keith Geller
The Vomit Talk of Ghosts
(Writer Director Lab 2000/2001)
Anne Washburn & Linsay Firman
Apparition
(Writer Director Lab 2000/2001)
Sponsors + Partners
Thanks to the following friends for supporting the Writer Director Lab: Lawrence Sutton & Rick Titone, The Jerome Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.