The Parsnip Ship Announces Sixth Season Exclusively Featuring Queer Playwrights

The Parsnip Ship (Artistic Director + Host, Iyvon Edebiri) has announced the line-up for the radio play and music series' sixth season, a selection of dynamic and powerful stories from LGBTQIA+ playwrights to be recorded in front of a live audience and streamed to listeners around the country.

In addition to featuring new plays on the platform, The Parsnip Ship features independent musicians paired with the plays and a playwright's interview, culminating in a uniquely curated theatrical event.

Live recording dates will be announced in 2021. Sign up for The Parsnip Ship newsletter to be notified when the free reservations are open. Musical guests and casting will be announced closer to the episode's live recording date.

MLM is for Murder (Or, Your Side Hustle is Killing Us)

By John Bavoso (he/him/his)

John Bavoso (he/him/his) is a Washington, DC-based playwright, book and theatre reviewer, marketer, and aspiring wrangler of unicorns. He mostly writes plays about women and queer people who are awkwardly attempting (and generally failing) to engage with serious subject matter using only dry wit and impeccably timed combative taunts. John is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, a Pinky Swear Productions company member, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow. More info at John-Bavoso.com.

For Minerva, the way to escape the doldrums of her graphic design job is to write and narrate her own feminist true crime podcast. Meanwhile, across the country, Felicity, a Mormon stay-at-home wife and mother-and Minerva's high school nemesis-has just started selling leggings for the multi-level marketing company Linen & Fate. But when mild-mannered Felicity suddenly snaps and realizes the only way to get ahead in a rigged pyramid scheme is to literally start killing off the competition, both women suddenly experience the kind of overnight success they've been so desperately craving.

Cockfight

By Peter Gil-Sheridan (he/him/his)

Peter's work has been developed and/or produced by Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab, The New Harmony Project, PlayPenn, InterAct Theatre, The Guthrie, The Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Borderlands, Sundance, Ars Nova, The Millay Colony, Ucross Foundation, P73, and The Playwrights Center (Jerome Fellowship.) Topsy Turvy Mouse was the winner of The Smith Prize awarded by the National New Play Network for political work. Peter is on the faculty at Vassar College. MFA: Iowa, BA: Fordham.

Juanie is a painter. His canvas: a giant egg, big enough to hold a full grown adult man. Inside that egg is Juanie's father's dream: a prizewinning rooster that he hopes will become a star on the cockfighting circuit. When the egg hatches, the bird's nature collides with Big Juan's vision for him. He embarks on a campaign to toughen the bird, to turn the bird into a warrior. When Juanie learns that most roosters that fight in cockfights die, Juanie searches for ways to save his family and his bird from total oblivion.

American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables

By Sam Hamashima (they/them/theirs, he/him/his)

Sam Hamashima is a Queer Japanese-American Writer mixing poetry, magical realism, and anime into pieces that explore their identities and the country in which they live. With an emphasis on oral history and archival research, Hamashima loves to blend the real with the surreal and the pain with the joy. IG @shygodzilla, BFA in Musical Theatre, The University of Michigan.

News travels across the Pacific on Dec. 7 resulting in foolhardy claims of Japanese sympathizers. As calls for war perpetrate a nation, The Ishii Family undertakes radical assimilation to calm the local police and fearful neighbors. Mixing family testimony and cartoon studio-ghibli charm, AMERICAN SPIES (...) is a Queer Japanese American grandson's interpretation of the Japanese Americans' response to national disaster and their struggle to prove their patriotism.

Sadboy Hours (this is a coping mechanism)

By Mary Harriman (she/her/hers, they/them/theirs)

Mary Harriman is a playwright based in Rochester, NY. Her favorite past credits include Ollie/Bassoon in Julia May Jonas' We Used to Wear Bonnets and get High All The Time, and as Nana the Dog and the Crocodile in Dake Jr. High's production of Peter Pan. She graduated from Skidmore College in 2020.

Sadboy Hours (this is a coping mechanism) is a series of funny, honest, and tender vignettes about queerness, weight, and moms, because Mary couldn't seem to write about anything else. This is an experiment in Theater of Self Care, where writing prompts are more like wellness exercises, and performers are encouraged to write their own sadboy hours and follow the prompts! (Or not! That's ok too <3)

Bird of Prey

By Darrel Alejandro Holnes (he/him/his)

Holnes is a playwright and screenwriter. His plays have received productions or readings at the Kennedy Center for the Arts American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), The Brick Theater, Kitchen Theater Company, Pregones Theater/PRTT, Primary Stages, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, Civilians R&D Group, Page 73's Interstate 73 Writers Workshop, and other groups. His plays include Black Feminist Video Game, Bayano, Franklin Ave, The Burning Room, and others.

Shaquille's attempt at suicide is disrupted when Jem, the ghost of a fellow soldier killed for being gay, suddenly appears and makes a proposition: Shaq must share his body with Jem's soul instead of sacrificing it to the vultures in exchange for absolution. With an impending hurricane forcing his hand, Shaquille must quickly choose between saving a fellow soldier he failed to save at war or escaping his worldly problems by starting over in the afterlife.

Are You There Truman? It's Me, Just Another Guy Who Grew Up Secretly Worshipping Your Chiseled Porn Star Body Online, And Now I Think I Love You

By Garrett Kim (he/him/his)

Garrett David Kim (he/him/his) is a theater-maker, citizen artist, and educator based in New York City. His plays include: Are You There Truman? (Pride Plays/Rattlestick, Piper Theatre Co.), No Man's Land (Sprout Works), Kim's Fine Food (Finalist, Blue Ink Playwriting Award), and several short plays written for young performers at The 52nd Street Project, where he works as their Program Director. B.A. Fordham University. Member of Dramatists Guild of America.

How's a gay, Asian, hopelessly romantic twenty-something from Ohio supposed to get off when the porn--*ahem*adult film--star he's fallen for has gotten out of the biz? Guy looks for love online & IRL, in the past & in the present, but all roads lead back to the rugged, All-American (white) stud Truman. Are You There Truman? follows one queer person making sense of his relationships, his colonized desires, and his own consciousness to tear down the walls around his heart.

Trenzas

By Janelle Lawrence (they/them/theirs)

Janelle is an interdisciplinary artist that investigates communal and individual strength with stories. They have had their works at various Theaters in the NYC area such as Club Cumming, Teatro La Tea, and Joe's Pub. They are the Co-Moderator of Musical Theatre Factory's Women/Trans/Gender Non-Conforming Roundtable and a 2020 Recipient of NBT's Soul Series Lab - Playwriting Micro-Development Session. www.janellelawrence.com

Assimilation can be difficult. So can growing up in an Afro-Latinx home with a mother who is holding on to her distorted nationalist Dominican past. Alisha and Carmela both have to learn to navigate their color-influenced worlds with the knowledge and outlook their mother has given them. Assimilation is based on societal influence, but what do we call the expectations passed down by our culture? And what do we do with those messages?

UNSTUCK: A One Woman Show About Growing Up With OCD

By Olivia Levine (she/her/hers)

Olivia Levine is a queer actor, comedian and writer based in NYC. Originally from San Francisco, she moved to NYC for college, and received her B.A. in Theatre from Barnard College. Other training includes The Studio/NYC, UCB, and RADA. Other recent theatre credits include SF Playhouse's The Daughters (dir. Jessica Holt) and the world premiere of Honors Students at Wild Project (dir. Leta Tremblay).

UNSTUCK explores the evolution of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and how it has engaged particularly with my sexuality and identity as a queer woman. Using elements of standup, storytelling, and movement work, the show explores the impact of my OCD on my romantic, platonic and familial relationships.

The Wild Boar of Chernobyl

By Francesca Pazniokas (she/her/hers)

Francesca Pazniokas is a Brooklyn-based playwright and filmmaker whose work explores memory and fable, trauma and identity, obsession and the occult. Her plays have been produced in London, Toronto and Melbourne, as well as across the United States, and she was recently awarded Clubbed Thumb's 2020 Biennial Commission. Francesca holds a B.A. from Georgetown University in Art History and a Master's in Playwriting from Royal Holloway (University of London). francescapazniokas.com

In the wake of a devastating nuclear war, Americans have been forced to rebuild their lives underground. Scientists insist it's impossible for citizens to return to the surface, due to deadly radiation. But a fast-growing cult, led by a preacher and his mysterious family, believe otherwise. They're determined to reach the surface, no matter the cost. THE WILD BOAR OF CHERNOBYL is a futuristic fable about the struggle of faith vs. fact, and fanaticism vs. science.

The Unfortunate Circumstance

By Casandra Vasquez (she/her/hers)

Casandra Vasquez is a transgender woman who writes plays. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she is currently based in upstate New York where she is studying playwriting and lighting design at Skidmore College. Casandra's plays cover a variety of topics, from the transgender experience, to clowns.

When Max, a closeted trans woman, is outed to her family while home from college, the family dynamic is shaken, and slowly begins crumbling. Through a series of conversations through time, the family is forced to reconcile what they want as individuals, and what is possible within the family unit.

The Parsnip Ship is a podcast play company that amplifies bold artists for audiences who crave accessible stories and storytellers. Our live events and audio podcasts are eclectic and transformative, creating communities in person and digitally. Through our work, we revolutionize the way you hear theater. Hosted by Iyvon Edebiri and recorded live in Brooklyn, The Parsnip Ship is available on iTunes, Spotify and Stitcher.

New Plays. New Music. This Is How We Hear Theater. www.theparsnipship.com

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