THE PELICAN, ORCHIDS & More Set for 18th Season of NYTB's New Works Series

 New York Theatre Barn will launch the 18th season of its award-winning New Works Series in 2025. The series will make space for six original culture-shifting musicals, featuring excerpts of each show and an opportunity for the writers to speak in community about their authentic process.

On March 31st, 2025, the series will feature stories about untold queer history with the original musicals Orchids - written by T.C. Lind, Phoebe Kreutz, and Derek Gregor (Unlock’d, Island Song), and Skin - written by Yuriko Shibata and Andrew Strano. Set in the 1950s in Florida, Orchids follows Evelyn Pierce, a fiercely intelligent English professor, who secretly falls in love with the strident new dean at her university, Betty Kincaid. The two women set off on a path of self-discovery, while a state committee investigates claims of communism at the university, threatening their careers. Set on the coast of Western Australia, Skin is an elemental, impressionistic, and painful examination of entanglement, and the damage that keeping secrets can do. 

On May 19th, 2025, the series will center stories about women, women's bodies, and reproductive rights with the original musicals Unzipped - written by Douglas J. Cohen (The Evolution of Mann, Children’s Letters to God) and Eva Margolies, and Female Complaints - written by Kate Mulley (Razorhurst) and Billboard-charting songwriter Tina deVaron. Set in the Bay Area in the late 1970s, Unzipped explores a culture of sexual liberation and the development of modern sex therapy practices. Female Complaints tells the untold true story of underground abortionist Inez Burns who ran a successful and illegal abortion clinic for half of a century in San Francisco. Female Complaints raises the rallying cry for reproductive rights and highlights the world that we’re in danger of living in once again.

In November, the series will amplify stories that uniquely explore environmental issues and climate change with the original musicals The Pelican - written by Will Lacker and Dylan Glatthorn, and Today We Celebrate Earth Day - written by Fernanda Douglas and A.J. Freeman. The Pelican follows the inhabitants of a Florida coastal town devastated by climate change and forced to make a choice before the next category hurricane approaches: exchange their freedom for safety in a nearby Corporate City or risk the storm to keep their town alive. Today We Celebrate Earth Day begins as a seemingly ordinary Earth Day celebration for a group of teens at a civic center. But the celebration takes a dark turn when the truth is slowly revealed: Earth is destroyed, and this small colony of survivors is locked in an authoritarian nightmare.

The March and May installments will be presented at 7PM ET at the Five Angels Theater in NYC (789 Tenth Ave.) and will also be streamed live. More details will be announced soon, including casting.
 

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