PlayGround-NY Celebrates The Best Plays & Playwrights Of Season 1

Help celebrate the best writers and short works from PlayGround-NY's inaugural season at the BEST OF PLAYGROUND-NY GALA, on Monday, April 25, 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT, simulcast via Vimeo Live and on-demand for one week!

The Best of PlayGround-NY Gala features a special live online presentation of six short plays originally developed through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series. Advance reservations are required. Admission is free but donations are gratefully accepted and all proceeds support PlayGround-NY artists.

Audience members will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite play/playwright through the Best of PlayGround-NY People's Choice Award and help initiate a new full-length commission to be adapted from the award-winning short. For more information or to reserve tickets, visit https://playground-ny.org/bestof.

The evening's plays include:

This is Beauty by Bailey Jordan Garcia
Kimchi Slap by Nina Ki
A Great Fall by Christian Missonak
Six Weeks by Jacob Marx Rice
That Ever I Was Born to Set It Right by Leela Velautham
A Mice Infestation by Maggie Wilson

Honorable mention goes to Athbrhreith [rebirth] by Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin.

ABOUT THE PLAYS

This is Beauty by Bailey Jordan Garcia

Two young adults find beauty within a snowstorm, and ultimately within each other.

Kimchi Slap by Nina Ki

Infamous Korean mafioso Brian Park conducts a series of interviews of people named Kim Seonwoo with his claw hammer - and also practices his English.

A Great Fall by Christian Missonak

Humpty Dumpty attempts to speak his truth and piece together his life in the aftermath of his famous fall.

Six Weeks by Jacob Marx Rice

Maddie made a mistake. It wasn't even sex, it was just practice. And now she just needs a little help so she can get back to her amazing life plan.

That Ever I Was Born to Set It Right by Leela Velautham

Hamlet realizes that the circumstances surrounding the death of his father are more complex than he first thought.

A Mice Infestation by Maggie Wilson

A roommate investigation gone wrong.

About The Playwrights

AILEY JORDAN GARCIA (This is Beauty), they/them, is a NYC-based playwright and actor earning a BFA in Playwriting from The New School. In May 2021, their full length The Pedo Punchers Play was a part of The Blank Theatre's Living Room series. They're also a winner of The Young Playwrights Festival in 2020. With Playground-NY: "The Rebirth of Zora Audley Jones", "Until the Sun Rises", "This is Beauty". When they aren't writing, Bailey can usually be found at Bethesda Fountain or cuddling with their 3-legged pup, Mushu. Love to the family, Teddy, and Taylor. baileyjordangarcia.com

KAELA MEI-SHING GARVIN (Athbrhreith [rebirth]), they/she, is a writer, producer, performer, and educator. Kaela is a 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival selection, a 2021 Kendeda Playwriting Award finalist, and the recipient of six Kennedy Center playwriting awards. Kaela's plays have been developed at The Alliance Theater, Montana Repertory Theater, and Sewanee Writers Center; they've been produced in New York at venues like Dixon Place, the New Ohio, and Ars Nova. They currently teach playwriting at Cornish College of the Arts. MFA, Indiana University; BFA, NYU www.kaelameishinggarvin.com | @kaemeishing on IG, Twitter

NINA KI (Kimchi Slap) is a Queerean (Queer + Korean) American playwright who graduated from NYU Tisch with a BFA in Dramatic Writing. Her plays have been read, recorded, and presented nationwide, including with MCC Theater, Queens Theatre, Brave New World Repertory, Yale Summer Cabaret, and The Parsnip Ship. Her play "Moon Bear" was given special consideration for the Relentless Award, and her play "Ravage" was a finalist for The Playwright's Realm's Writing Fellowship. To contact her or learn more about her work, please visit her website at www.nina-ki.com.

CHRISTIAN MISSONAK (A Great Fall), he/him, is a NYC-based playwright originally from Chicago, where he was a graduate of Columbia College and The Second City Conservatory. He was an ensemble member at Under the Gun Theater where his Chicago Reader-recommended play, SAVE FERRIS, was performed. In 2021, his new play SHERIDAN premiered at MadLab Theatre in Columbus, Ohio. Next up: His short play "Cooperative" will be performed at the Metropolitan Playhouse as part of their East Side Chronicles, May 19th-29th. For more visit www.christianmissonak.com

JACOB MARX RICE (Six Weeks), he/him, plays have been produced and developed at The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, The Finborough Theatre in London, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Flea Theater, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play Chemistry has premiered in seven cities across three continents, and Jacob's screenplay adaptation is currently in development with Anonymous Content. Recent prizes include the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an Ensemble Studio Theater Sloan Commission, the Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing and the Excellence in Playwriting Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. MFA: NYU.

LEELA VELAUTHAM (That Ever I Was Born to Set It Right) , originally from the UK, is doing a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. She was a member of Playground's Playwright Residency Program (2020-21), has been featured in the Best of Playground 24 and 25, and won the 2011 University of Oxford's New Writing Festival for her play 'Schroedinger's Hat'.

MAGGIE WILSON (The Mice Infestation), she/her, is a playwright from Cayucos living in Brooklyn. Her musical JOCKAMO, that she co-created with blues singer Wayne Harris, just played to sold-out houses in Berkeley, California at The Marsh's Festival of New Musical Voices. Her mother-daughter two hander, FROM THE BATH, was recently named a Jane Chambers finalist and received a developmental reading at HERE Arts in NYC. For more on Maggie www.MaggieWil5on.co.

PLAYGROUND-NY is the second regional expansion of the celebrated Bay Area playwright incubator and theatre community hub, PlayGround(SF). PlayGround, California's leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area's, Los Angeles' and now New York's best new playwrights, including the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, full-length play commissions and support for the production of new plays by local playwrights through the New Play Production Fund. To date, PlayGround has supported over 250 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1,000 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 90 new full-length plays by 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 34 plays at theatres of every size, including three that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities. Most recently, PlayGround renovated and relaunched the former Thick House Theater in San Francisco's Potrero Hill as Potrero Stage, a state-of-the-art center for new plays, home to PlayGround's expanding artistic programs and some of the Bay Area's most distinguished new play developers and producers. Over the past twenty-eight years, PlayGround has served to identify some of the most important new local voices for the theatre. PlayGround's alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Humana Festival, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark's Playwrights' Week, New York International Fringe Festival, and others. PlayGround received the 2009 Paine Knickerbocker Award for outstanding contributions to Bay Area theatre, 3 BATCC Awards for Best Original Script for PlayGround commissions, a 2014 National Theatre Company Grant from the American Theatre Wing (founder of the Tony Awards), and a 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. For more information, visit https://playground-ny.org.