Cast Set for QUICK SERVICE at The Cape Cod Theatre Project

The Cape Cod Theatre Project is continuing its 2023 season this week on July 6 with playwright May Treuhaft-Ali’s Quick Service. Treuhaft-Ali’s play will be directed by Cristina Angeles, and feature actors Amaya Braganza, Aubie Merrylees, Malika Samuel, and Ed Ventura. Performances will run on Thursday, July 6, Friday, July 7, and Saturday, July 8 at 7:30 PM.

If you watch Hulu’s “The Bear,” you’ll love Quick Service! Quick Service is a play performed in real time, addressing the precarities of food service, and set in an empanada shop in Chicago. Angela’s trying to get home to her baby, Petey’s trying to get laid tonight, Vash is trying to graduate and get out, and Greg is trying to manage them all — while still pursuing his standup career. But as they try to make it through a particularly harrowing double shift, their dreams and desires get bent out of shape by a sinister force rising from below.

May Treuhaft-Ali is a playwright, director, and dramaturg. Her play ABCD had its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company in July 2022, and her play Escapegoat had a workshop production at Boston Court Pasadena later that year. She is the 22-23 Van Lier Fellow at Rattlestick Theater and a member of Ars Nova's PlayGroup. Her plays have been developed at Clubbed Thumb, The Playwrights Realm, The Movement Theatre Company, and MCC Theater. She is under commission at Barrington Stage Company and South Coast Repertory. She also served as Associate Director on the world premiere of SHHHH by Clare Barron at Atlantic Theater Company. May is the Literary and Community Engagement Assistant at Playwrights Horizons.

Cristina Angeles is an Afrolatina director, writer, and theater maker who develops new plays, musicals, and socially conscious adaptations of classics that place women of color at the forefront. She has been awarded the Drama League Directing Fellowship, the Roundabout Directing Fellowship, and has associate directed on and off Broadway. Today, Cristina is an Associate Artist at Roundabout Theatre Company and the Founding Artistic Director of Checkmark Productions, an NYC based company dedicated to artists of color and their stories. Recent credits include QUEEN OF BASEL (Theaterworks Hartford), and overseeing the national tour of Charles Fuller’s A SOLDIER’S PLAY,  directed by Keny Leon. More at www.cristinaangeles.com 

The cast 

Amaya Braganza’s credits include Broadway: Annie (July), King and I. National Tour: King and I. Off-bway: How to Defend Yourself (Nikki, New York Theatre Workshop). Regional: Spring Awakening (Martha, Northern Stage). TV: “Succession.” She’s in a music group with her sisters called “The Braganza Sisters” found on all streaming platforms. Currently fulfilling a BASW in Social Work at Fordham University. Proud Filipino-American. Carson Kolker Agency. (She/They)

Aubie Merrylees credits include Broadway: KPOP; To Kill A Mockingbird (original cast). Off-Broadway: Wolf Play (Soho Rep). Tours: Hamlet; St. Joan (Bedlam). Regional includes Hand to God (Philadelphia Theatre Company); Caucasian Chalk Circle (Yale Rep); The Aliens (Theatre Exile); Stupid f-ing Bird (The Arden); Superstitions (OKC Rep). Aubie is also a company member at People’s Light & Theatre, where he has acted in more than a dozen productions. Film: The upcoming JULES, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley and Zoe Winters. TV: “The Bite.” Training: Brown University, Yale School of Drama. 

Malika Samuel is an interdisciplinary storyteller & teaching artist with a career spanning over two decades. Select Credits: Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (OBC), The Music Man. NY Theater: Bite Me, Bernarda’s Daughters, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord  TV: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” “EVIL" "Orange Is the New Black” “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” “Chicago P.D.” “Law & Order: SVU” “The Good Wife” “Person of Interest” “The Big C” Hosting: “Nick Studio 10” “2013 Kids’ Choice Awards Pre- Show” “Kidz Bop Kidz Star USA”. Film: “Holiday Rush” “Submission” “Central Park” “Hello Apartment” “Kilimanjaro.”

Ed Ventura is a Dominican-Puerto Rican actor/writer/bozo born in Providence, RI and raised in the Boogie Down Bronx. He was the 2020-2021 Van Lier New Voices Fellow with The Lark, a SPACE on Ryder Farm Greenhouse Resident (2018), and is a current member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood Collective. He’s had his work developed with LAByrinth’s 2019 Intensive Ensemble, Curious Theatre Company, and more. His previous acting credits have consisted of Soft (MCC Theater) which he was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award (best ensemble), The Siblings Play(Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), and The Parlour (Middle Voice). He’s currently working toward completing his BFA in Acting, and double minor in Playwriting/Screenwriting at SUNY Purchase.

Cape Cod Theatre Project is focused on facilitating the playwright’s developmental process. For four weeks from the end of June through the end of July, a new play is presented each week receiving three staged readings and featuring professional actors from Broadway, film, and television. Further development of the play is the goal, and performances include a post-show talkback in which audience’s thoughtful feedback for the playwright, director and actors is solicited and encouraged.

All Access Passes

All Access Passes, granting admission to every performance of all four MainStage plays, plus Stephen Belber’s What Do We Do with The Deadbenefit reading and an invitation to the welcome event with Sharr White, are now available for $100 per person. In addition, All Access Pass Holders will also receive four free passes good to bring newcomers to the Cape Cod Theatre Project, good for all plays. Individual performance tickets will be available in June. For tickets and more information visit www.capecodtheatreproject.org.

About the Cape Cod Theatre Project

The Cape Cod Theatre Project began as an experiment between two actors in 1995. Andrew Polk and Jim Bracchitta sensed that Cape Cod offered the perfect sanctuary for developing new work, combining an idyllic atmosphere with a community that enjoys and engages with the arts. Led by Artistic Director Hal Brooks since 2012, CCTP continues to support established and emerging voices in the American theater.

Each July, four playwrights are invited to develop new plays, utilizing a full week of rehearsals with a director and actors that culminates in a series of readings and talkbacks. CCTP also offers a weekly, free, behind-the-scenes StageTalk discussion with the playwright and director. Plays fostered with Cape Cod Theatre Project have achieved great success: 81 of the 105 plays developed have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, at regional theaters, and internationally. Several have also been nominated for Pulitzers, Oscars, Tonys, Obies and more. Most recently, 2018 CCTP alum Will Arbery saw his Heroes of the Fourth Turning become a Pulitzer Finalist and win several Obie Awards; 2017 Writer-in-Residence Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me was also a Pulitzer Finalist, a Tony Nominee, and is currently on Amazon Prime; and Lucas Hnath’s Hillary and Clinton, developed here in 2015, had a Broadway production starring Laurie Metcalfe and John Lithgow, and Sharr White’s Pictures from Home had a 2023 Broadway production starring Nathan Lane.

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