After devising a revamped submission process centering equity that garnered an incredibly diverse, engaging array of plays, we are thrilled to share our 2023-2024 season playwrights and plays, along with our finalists! This season explodes with innovative storytelling at the intersection of relentlessly nuanced BIPOC familial relationships and queer joy.

This year we’re offering three residencies with public performances: our Ink Spot Residency, which includes a workshop exploration and a public staged reading, our Development Residency, which includes two workshops and a public staged reading, and our year-long Production Residency, which includes two workshops, one public staged reading, and a world premiere production.

Additionally, in celebration of dramaturgically driven processes, we were inspired to create one more residency: The Incubation Residency, where a playwright will work one-on-one with a dramaturg for the entire season to develop their play.

Join Fresh Ink as we grieve into catharsis through a kaleidoscope of memories (Honey Girl), step dance and find love through the streets of New Orleans (The More the Man), and totally rock out in a queer and trans Texan reimagining of Orpheus and Eurydice (Orpheus in the Overworld).

We are proud to be able to offer a home for our season playwrights to grow these worlds while celebrating the stories they have to tell. Learn more below and join us!

Production Residency

April 26 - May 12, 2024
Boston Center for the Arts

The gods have forced Orpheus and Eurydice to repeat their tragedy for centuries, but this time everyone (and everything) is a bit more queer than usual: tomboys, fairies, gods, and god-ish bartenders abound. Join this cast of characters for a celebration of queerness, genderfullness, and staking claim on our own story. 

Dante Gonzalez (he/they) has hyphens for days. They insist that gender is to be carried fragrantly and flagrantly, openly and preferably near an open flame. His work shares new perspectives on our genders and cultures, and you’d better embrace that: you’d better work. Dante is from Texas, and is grateful for his loved ones and communities in the south, northeast, and beyond. Most recently he had his costume design debut on Robert O'Hara's Mankind at BU (dir. Rani O'Brien), and looks forward to his final year at BU.

Development Residency

Staged Reading - February 24-25, 2024
Boston Center for the Arts

Follow the parade from the streets of New Orleans to Fresh Ink Theatre in Boston! A love letter to New Orleans, The More the Man follows a young Black man as he connects to the ancestors of the land and lineage, while navigating the highs and lows of romantic and familial love..

Jameson P. Murray (he/him) is an actor, writer, and director, once receiving a silver medal in filmmaking at his regional NAACP ACT-SO competition. His experience led him to acting in the short film "Late to the Party," a 2023 Atlanta Film Festival selection. While studying at Boston University, Murray helped create "Going Down," a weekly sketch comedy show. Being a New Orleans native, Murray trained at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Comedy Uprising, then at London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), receiving a certificate in Classical Acting. In 2023, he received his BFA from Boston University. He continues to work in theatre, television, film, and comedy in Boston, NYC, LA, and Atlanta.

Ink Spot Residency

Ink Spot Staged Reading - October 20-22, 2023
Boston Center for the Arts

After her sister, Asal, dies by suicide, Fey and their mother, Leila, are left to cope. But how do you cope with a loss like that? Fey needs to get creative. She’ll do anything to get her sister back.

Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens (she/her) is a writer, performer, and artist whose work tends to center love and loss and responds to questions that don’t have concrete answers. Low-income, Queer, first-gen Iranian-American with a found family of immigrants and refugees from different backgrounds, there’s a dream in her heart that is always reminding her of its presence: to amplify her communities’ voices, experiences, and languages, and put them on U.S. stages front-and-center. Isabelle is a recent graduate of Smith College where she studied Theatre, English, and Translation. She is currently a first-year MFA Playwriting Candidate at Boston University. @isabellesanatdarstevens #MahsaAmini #ArmitaAbbasi #SayHerName #ZanZendeghiAzadi

Incubation Residency

If Girls Trip, The Hangover, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The L-Word got together and made a play, this is what it would be. Crystal, Jay, Sasha, and Rachel are ready for their weekend in Miami but one crazy night changes everything for them.

Pascale Florestal (she/her) is a first generation Haitian American Queer Woman. She is an Elliot Norton Nominated Director, Educator, Dramaturg, Writer and Collaborator based in Boston, MA. Recent directing Credits: Fairview with SpeakEasy Stage, Spring Awakening at Brandeis University, The Colored Museum with The Umbrella Performing Arts Center, Once On This Island with SpeakEasy Stage, This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing with Emerson Stage, Everybody with Boston Conservatory and others. As an Assistant to the Director she has worked with Timothy Douglas, Liesl Tommy, Billy Porter, Paul Daigneault and M. Bevin O'Gara. Pascale served as the Associate Director to Gil Rose on X:The Life and Times of Malcolm X with Odyssey Opera and Kimberly Senior on Our Daughters, Like Pillars at The Huntington Theater. Pascale also serves as the Associate Director for The Broadway National Tour of Jagged Little Pill. Pascale was named one of the WBUR ARTery 25 Artists of Color Transforming the Cultural Landscape in Boston. In 2020 she won the Inaugural Greg Ferrell Award for her excellence in teaching and supporting young people. She serves as the Education Director and Associate Producer for The Front Porch Arts Collective and is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music. Pascale is also a full member of the SDC Union.

2023/2024 Finalists

Congratulations to our brilliant, thought-provoking, innovative season finalists! These artists inspired us with their radical artistic visions, easy-to-love characters, and unique play structures. We hope you will put these artists on your radar, support their work, and engage with them as collaborators. Make sure to look up to see their stars on the rise!

Tina Esper, State of Maine
Claire Gardner, Be Who You Want to Be
Fig Lefevre, The Skin of Other Men
Alexis Elisa Macedo, Chicana Legend  
Jesús I. Valles, LLERMO! (or My Big Fat Mexican Apotheosis with Gratitude to L*rca)
Sharifa Yasmin, Bone by Bone
Jingwen Zhang, Triangle Potato