By Renae Simone Jarrett
Directed by Sarah Hughes

World Premiere
LCT3
October-November 2023

“…chock-full of magical surprises and mystical transformations.”
–The New York Times

“Endlessly engaging! …natural direction by Sarah Hughes… captivating performances…and a haunting atmosphere, Daphne is impossible to look away from.”
–INTO

“A deeply imaginative and haunting tale of love, nature, and the cost that often comes with truly escaping.”
–Front Row Center

With Jasmine Batchelor, Denise Burse, Naomi Lorrain, Keilly McQuail, Jeena Yi
Set Maruti Evans
Costumes Oana Botez
Lighting Stacey Derosier
Sound Sadah Espii Proctor
Illusions Steve Cuiffo
Props Alexander Wylie
Fight/Intimacy Director Rocío Mendez
Stage Manager Kara Kaufman
Assistant Stage Manager Genevieve Ortiz
Assistant Director Kayla Amani Addison
Assistant Fight/Intimacy Director Amaal Saifudeen

Daphne left the city to live in the woods with her girlfriend Winona two months ago. Or has it been two years? They’re not in the middle of nowhere but…almost, and things in the house are beginning to sour. As a strange transformation takes hold of Daphne’s body, a series of unsettling incidents and sudden intrusions lead her to question the boundaries of reality. DAPHNE asks what truths are hidden in plain sight and what it takes to escape the worlds we construct.

Photos by Marc J. Franklin.

By MJ Kaufman
Directed by Sarah Hughes

World Premiere
Brooklyn Bridge Park
August 2022

With Nikomeh Anderson, Jojo Brown, Neo Cihi, Léoh Ghermay, Pooya Mohseni, Chris Padro, J Riley Jr, Han Van Sciver
Environmental Designer Alejandro Fajardo
Costume Designer Willa Piro
Stage Manager Cara Kienitz
Producer Emma Bergman
Assistant Producer Penzi Hill
Assistant Director Grace Castle
Production Assistant Kelleen Moriarty

A trans love story set against the backdrop of climate crisis. Loosely based on John Lyly’s 1585 play, Galatea tells the story of two young women from a village threatened with flooding who escape to the nearby woods disguised as boys and fall in love.

This site-specific, low-waste, outdoor world premiere of Galatea featured a cast of all trans and non-binary actors and was free and open to the public. Galatea was developed by Lark Play Development Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and WP Theater. The play received a workshop production as part of WP Theater’s 2018 Pipeline Festival. This production was made possible through generous support from The NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts, and was produced in partnership with The Flea Theater, with additional support from New Georges and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Photos by Emma Bergman.

By Vanessa Garcia
Co-Directed by Sarah Hughes and Victoria Collado

World Premiere
Zoetic Stage with Abre Camino Collective
May 2023

Carbonell Award Winner, Steven Covey for Video Projection Design
Carbonell Award Nominee, Outstanding New Play

“Clever, often funny, sardonic, poignant, insightful…Whatever the…collaborative process was…it works: The play moves like an Airstream on a pothole-free highway.”
–The Miami Herald

Read a profile of the team in The Miami New Times.

With Dalia Aléman, Melissa Almaguer, Kristian Bikic, Sabrín Diehl, Chris Anthony Ferrer, and Lucy Lopez
”Moonshine” Song by Nicole Garcia feat. Orlando Mendez
Set Designer B.J. Duncan
Lighting Designer Tony Galaska
Costume Designer Natasha Hernandez
Sound Designer Matt Corey
Video Direction Delavega
Video Projection Designer Steven Covey
Stage Manager Vanessa McCloskey
Assistant Stage Managers Karina Martinez and Maria Salgado

Catherine is searching for something authentic. Frustrated with her life’s direction, she embarks with her f*ckbuddy, Lewis, on a Lewis-and-Clark-esque trip across America sponsored by Monteverde Moonshine. But as Catherine travels the country, posting photos and interviews of people she meets—an immigrant worker, a wayward nun, a queer homeschooled teen—she inadvertently raises more questions than answers: about “the real America,” about her own identity, and about what “authenticity” even means anymore.

#GRACED was developed in WP Theater’s 2020 online Pipeline Festival produced by Alyssa Simmons, with Ashley Alvarez, Gabriel Bonilla, Jorge Cordova, Emma Ramos, and Zo Tipp. In 2022 it was workshopped through a BOLD Ventures Grant with support from WP Theater and Abre Camino Collective, featuring Maggie Bofill, Jason Canela, Sabrín Diehl, Keren Lugo, Cesar Rosado, and Ana Villafañe. It was previously workshopped through the South Florida Theatre League in 2021, and with JustA Theatre Company.

All photos by Justin Namon.

By Julia Izumi
Directed by Sarah Hughes

Playwrights Horizons Soundstage
August 2022

Listen to the play here.

With Jess Barbagallo, Jorge Cordova, Midori Francis, Haruna Lee, Ronald Peet, Saori Tsukada
Sound Designer Fan Zhang
Edited by Dylan Carrow
Recorded at CDM Studios, New York by Cathleen Conte
Production Manager Caren Celine Morris

A little meditation on what it is to carry what we can and can't control, and the crossroads of being and belonging.

This audio play was presented as part of the second season of Soundstage, produced by Playwrights Horizons to provide scripted audio experiences of new plays and musicals.

By Julia May Jonas
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Music by Brian Cavanagh-Strong

Forthcoming production with The Bushwick Starr & New Georges in the 2024 season.

A Woman Among Women is one of five plays in ALL LONG TRUE AMERICAN STORIES, an epic play-cycle in which Julia May Jonas reimagines canonical American male-experience plays for other people (mostly women). Developed with director/producer Sarah Hughes (among others) and consisting of five new full-length plays responding to All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Long Days' Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Zoo Story by Edward Albee, American Buffalo by David Mamet and True West by Sam Shepard, ALL LONG TRUE AMERICAN STORIES gleefully ignores patriarchal constraints, creating an epic theatrical event that imagines a more inclusive and expansive American canon.

Recent work on the project has included a series of readings and workshops presented by New Georges, The Tank, Prelude Festival, NACL, NYU, Skidmore College, and The Bushwick Starr.

By MJ Kaufman
Directed by Sarah Hughes

Purchase College
October 2021

Read more from Purchase students about doing this show in person after more than a year of Zoom theater.

With Nicole Castillo, Michael Friary, Chris Padro, Lillian Perez, Joann Maxwell, and Kaira Rivera
Scenic Designer Tifarah Melman
Lighting Designer DJ Fralin
Sound Designer Peter Lopez
Costume Designer Kim Hernandez
Assistant Director Milan Castro
Production SM Stephanie Rhodes
Stage Manager Carly Friedman
Assistant Stage Manager Bela Howard

A support group for things inside of things. A class for women writers. A raucous frat party. Strangers from different worlds meet on a train and unravel who they think they are. An absurd exploration of language and gender.

This production of A Walrus in the Body of a Crocodile was developed with students in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, SUNY. The play was commissioned and first presented by Clubbed Thumb; Maria Striar, Producing Artistic Director, as part of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship in collaboration with Zoë Geltman, Fernando Gonzalez, Keyana Hemphill, Jesse Jae Hoon, Birgit Huppuch, Jess Kantorowitz, Emily Levanthal, Mary Neufeld, Kate McGee, Harmony Stempel, Courtney Williams, and Molly Wurwand. It was also developed at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Photos by Zoë Markwalter and Meredith Young.

Directed by Sarah Hughes
Co-Devised by Sarah Hughes & Laurie Churba with the ensemble

Dartmouth College
February 2023

With: Kabir Beotra, Lucy Biberman, Giovanni Adelchi Colalillo, Dawn Lim, Jamie Nicholson, Alice Inacio Oliveira, Ford Springer, Rhett Williams, Carl Ufongene, and Elaine Xiao
Costume Designer Laurie Churba
Sound Design & Original Music Ben Scheff
Environmental Design Michael Ganio
Stage Managers Lucy Biberman & Jamie Nicholson
Production Manager Brianna Parry
Choreographer Elaine Xiao
Fight Choreographer Paul West
Harpist Christian Henrich Jr
Assistant Director Kabir Beotra
Dramaturg Cypress Toomey
Transcriber Kate Budney

In 1348, people survived a plague by telling stories. 700 years later, can these tales still help us? In Boccaccio's The Decameron, a group of young people quarantining from the Black Death tell increasingly wild, hilarious, debaucherous and moving tales to keep hope alive. In this adaptation, students hunkered down in an abandoned classroom mash up music, dance and their own interpretations of the original text, rewriting the canon as they explore questions of translation, censorship and storytelling as a means of survival.

This Winter 2023 MainStage Production was a site-specific, devised work created with the students over the course of the semester with leadership from Sarah Hughes and Professor Laurie Churba.

Photos by Rob Strong.

By Zarina Shea
Directed by Sarah Hughes

LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
March 2019

BRIC
October 2019

With Dee Beasnael, Lanxing Fu, Lucy Kaminsky and Harmony Stempel
Sound Designer for LPAC John Salutz
Production Designer Alejandro Fajardo
Co-Production Designer for BRIC Bax Pitt
Sound Designer/ Composer for BRIC Eamon Goodman
Stage Manager for BRIC Allie York
Choreographer for BRIC Kate Rose McLaughlin

When climate events that destroy millions of lives become quotidian, is it the apocalypse yet?  When the big-picture problem to which we're all contributing starts to become horribly clear, is it the apocalypse yet? Does this all seem too epic, too dramatic, too over-the-top for a normal conversation? Would an opera be enough? Climate Change: An Opera? breaks open popular, canonical, and epic forms of storytelling to question how we got here and where the hell we're going.

These work-in-progress showings of Climate Change: An Opera? were presented as part of LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival in March 2019, and a BRICLab Residency in October 2019 with support from New Georges. The piece was previously workshopped in the New Georges Jam and an excerpt was shown in the 2018 New Georges Jamboree featuring Tanyamaria.

Photos by Luisa Alarcón.

By McFeely Sam Goodman
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Co-created by Limited Liability Theater Company (McFeely Sam Goodman, Sarah Hughes and Lucy Kaminsky)

New Ohio Theater
July 2019

Read more about the artists and ideas behind the piece in Culturebot.

With Marisela Grajeda Gonzalez, Lucy Kaminsky, Narea Kang, Rachel Lin, Mike Mikos, Rad Pereira
Scenic & Props Designer Ryan Goff
Lighting Designer Cha See
Sound Designer Emily Auciello
Stage Manager Allie York
Producer Alyssa Simmons
Production Management Pleiades Theater Collective

If robots are taking our jobs, why are we all still working so hard? A group of actors (actually at work onstage) delve into a dialectical exchange about Universal Basic Income, the Green New Deal, and the American economy while completing a series of strange, repetitive, and entertaining tasks that may or may not be accomplishing anything. The Drinking Bird is the first in a trilogy of plays exploring the meaning of work and the value of humans in an increasingly automated age.

This workshop showing of The Drinking Bird was presented as part of New Ohio’s 2019 Ice Factory Festival. It was previously workshopped as part of The Brick’s This Is Not Normal Festival, featuring Agnes Borinsky, Lanxing Fu, Lucy Kaminsky, J Moliêre, Stephanie Regina, and Sam Breslin Wright.

Limited Liability Theater Company uses original, unconventional, dialectical texts to create highly theatrical works addressing vital contemporary questions, myths and assumptions. The company has shown work at The Brick, chashama, Signature Theatre, Prelude, CATCH, The Invisible Dog, Little Theatre at Dixon Place, and more. Like the business structure from which it draws its name, this collaboration of McFeely Sam Goodman, Sarah Hughes, and Lucy Kaminsky is a pass-through entity; it has no offices, no staff, no annual budgets, and no bylaws.

Photos by Brian G. Aramayo.

By Corinne Donly
Directed by Sarah Hughes

World Premiere
The Tank
October-November 2017

"Strange and gorgeous...just as Donly’s language attends, through pun and playfulness, to the materiality of language, Hughes’s production invites audiences to engage with the structure of the theater itself."
                 —Kate Kremer, Culturebot

"...a sublime combination of existential depth and silliness...a springboard for each audience member to discover their own interpretation."
                 —Ran Xia, Theatre is Easy

Read an interview with Corinne and Sarah by Jerry Lieblich of Culturebot, and more reviews from OnStage Blog and StageBuddy.

With Will Dagger, Claire Fort, Lanxing Fu, Lucy Kaminsky, Connor James Sheridan, Tanyamaria, and Dara Swisher
Co-Producer Bailey Williams
Sound Designer Johnny Gasper
Set & Costume Designer Àsta Bennie Hostetter
Associate Set & Costume Designer Annie Hoeg
Lighting Designer Alejandro Fajardo
Assistant Lighting Designer Vicki Bain
Stage Manager Dara Swisher
Assistant Director Liza Couser

An adaptation of Hieronymus Bosch's 15th century triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights," Wood Calls Out to Wood is a painting presented as a play, a landscape turned into a soundscape. Written in language that is both precise and deeply silly, the play experiments with the possibilities of combination--of single syllables combining to make words and single people combining to make couples. At first, the audience encounters it as they would a picture hanging on a distant wall, in large swaths of color and pattern. When taking a closer look, however, strange Boschian beings begin to emerge: Two horses in a neigh-scent relationship, a vacant treehouse in need of a tenant, and a human with a grape for a head.

This world premiere production of Wood Calls Out to Wood was presented at The Tank in October-November 2017. A workshop production of the play was presented as part of the Brooklyn College Weasel Festival hosted by The Public Theater, directed by Polly Noonan with design by Sophia Leewah, Heather Konish, Karim Rivera-Rosado, Jon DeGaetano, and Megan Culley, performances by Marisela Grajeda Gonzalez, Connor James Sheridan, Tanyamaria, Trevon Chambers, Will Dagger, Johnathan Dougan, Kevin Koval, Dana Chavez and Emily Kaplan, and stage management by Patrick McDonnell.

Photos by Sasha Arutyunova.

By Cara Scarmack
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Music by John Gasper

World Premiere
Buran Theater at The Collapsable Hole
October-November 2018

Read Eliza Bent's TDF piece on some higher glimmer.

With Laurena Allan, Kate Benson, Lanxing Fu, LaToya Lewis, Gavin Price, Manny Rivera, and Merlin Whitehawk
Sound Designer Gavin Price
Lighting Designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Set Designers Carolyn Mraz & Cori Williams
Costume Designer Peiyi Wong
Choreographer lisa nevada
Musical Director Alaina Ferris
Technical Director Nicholas Kostner
Stage Manager Manny Rivera
Assistant Stage Manager Geoffrey Kinsey

Welcome to some higher glimmer in our landscape of flat, an immersive feminist disaster musical. In the event of a metaphysical shift you may be asked to change position. Our journey will bend genres, invite goof, and traverse the double-edged sword of solitude. Settle into your seat for a musical and choreographic exploration of motherhood, isolation, "femininity", and apocalypse (both personal and global). You will provided with all equipment required, and some that is not required.

This world premiere of some higher glimmer in our landscape of flat was produced by Buran Theater at The Collapsable Hole in October 2018. The play was previously workshopped through Buran Theater’s CartHorse Fellowship in 2017-18 at ART/NY and in The Bushwick Starr Reading Series in 2017, featuring Jessica Almasy, Starr Busby, Nikki Calonge, Zoë Geltman, Lindsley Howard, Kristine Haruna Lee, Linda Mancini, April Matthis, Sarah Matusek, Ashley Nease, Colleen O’Neill, and Katie Proulx.

By McFeely Sam Goodman
Directed by Sarah Hughes

Columbia University at Signature Theatre
April 2016

Read Jerry Lieblich's Culturebot piece on Afterward.

With Becca Blackwell, Nikki Calonge, Toussaint Jeanlouis, Lucy Kaminsky and Kourtney Rutherford
Assistant Director & Stage Manager Nic Adams
Sound Designer Michael Clemow
Set & Costume Designer Christopher Heilman
Producer Bailey Williams

Five people, all named McFeely Sam Goodman, attempt to make a low budget superhero movie while sharing stories from their childhood. Written largely in the first person from the playwright's experience as a childhood cancer survivor, Afterward mixes medical memoir with superhero movie tropes in a humorous and moving exploration of illness, trauma, survivorship, and anxiety.

This workshop showing of Afterward was presented in April 2016 as part of the Columbia New Play Festival at the Signature Theatre. An excerpt of the play was also presented in October 2015 at the Prelude Festival at the Segal Center. The cast for the Prelude workshop was Becca Blackwell, Lucy Kaminsky, Ronald Peet, and Sam West, with sound design by Eva von Schweinitz.

Photos by Kelly Stuart.

With Kippy Winston & Eliza Bent
Directed by Sarah Hughes

Presented at Abrons Arts Center, April 2017
JACK, October 2017
Barker Room Rep (LA), November 2017

"Remarkable...The real beauty of Real Talk/Kip Talk was not its endless self-reference or its anticipated punnery...[it] was the assertion that another name for [our] much-maligned echo chamber is community."
                 —Paul Ketchum, Culturebot

REAL TALK / KIP TALK is a series of live talk shows about the state of contemporary performance in New York City, hosted by Kippy Winston, media mogul, internet sensation, and citizen of the world. Formatted like a talk show but with room for debate, REAL TALK / KIP TALK blurs the lines between art and life and challenges participants of all stripes and creeds to engage in real talk about our starry performance landscape.

EPISODE 3
Abrons Arts Center, April 2017
featuring
An interview with Diana Scholl of the ACLU
A panel on art, activism and community engagement with Amy Khoshbin, Sheetal Prajapati, George Emilio Sanchez, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, Lucy Sexton and Risa Shoup
A video interview with Natasha Sinha of LCT3
Music by Starr Busby
Design by Chris Bowser, Skylar Fox, David Pym and Eva von Schweinitz
Assistant Director & Stage Manager Alexander Paris
Special Performances by Frank Hentschker, Eldren Keys, Emilyn Kowaleski, Dave Malloy, Javan Nelson, Alexander Paris and Bailey Williams
Participant bios here.

EPISODE 4
JACK, October 2017
Barker Room Rep at LA’s Atwater Village Theatre, November 2017 featuring
Interviews with Nicky Paraiso of LaMama (JACK), and Michael John Garcés of Cornerstone Theater Company and Bruce A. Lemon Jr of Watts Village Theatre Company (LA)
Panels on local theater in Brooklyn, local theater in LA, and playwrights writing for TV with BJ Evans, Michael-David Gordon, and Modesto Flako Jimenez (Brooklyn theater); LaShea Delaney, Ken Greller and Sylvan Oswald (LA theater); Jeff Augustin, Christopher Oscar Peña, and Daria Polatin (TV Playwrights).
Music by Deepali Gupta (JACK) and Ian Merrigan & Marcy Kamler (LA)
Design by Chris Bowser, Skylar Fox, and David Pym

Watch previous episodes directed by Flako Modesto Jimenez and Nic Adams.

Photos by Aaron RadioSilence.

By McFeely Sam Goodman
Directed by Sarah Hughes

Columbia University
February 2015

With Laurena Allan, Eliza Bent, Agnes Borinsky, Lindsay Hockaday, Eleanor Hutchins, Lucy Kaminsky, Mike Mikos, Ming Peiffer, Stephanie Regina, Sam West and Sam Breslin Wright
Lighting Designer Alejandro Fajardo
Sound Designer Eva von Schweinitz
Costume Designer Julie Fields
Assistant Director & Stage Manager Diane Chen
Technical Assistance Garrett Rollins
Producer Rachel Karpf Reidy
Graphic Designer Amy Claborn

A woman appears on a TV show to talk about a recent UFO sighting. The show’s other guest is a boy whose experience at the craft services table will change his life forever. What follows is Special Cheese, a play about parents and children, space bunnies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mid-90s comedy filmography, and the nature of evil.

This workshop showing of Special Cheese was presented at Columbia University in February 2015. Previously, excerpts were presented at CATCH 64 at the Invisible Dog Art Center in November 2014 and at Hearth Gods at Jimmy’s No. 43 in July 2014, in which the role of the Woman was played by Kate Benson.

Photos by Kelly Stuart.

By Howard Fishman
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Music & Lyrics by Connie Converse

The Brick
March-April 2015

"...incredible, as was she; the show had me transfixed, joyful, and grateful. It reminded me, yet again, of what art is for." 
                –The New Yorker

Hear a discussion of Sarah’s work on A Star Has Burnt My Eye in The Quickening podcast (00:27:30).

With Howard Fishman, Charlotte Mundy, Liam Robinson and Jean Rohe
Assistant Director Kate Downey
Dramaturg James Harrison Monaco
Stage & Production Manager Nic Adams
Sound & Video Designer Eva von Schweinitz
Set & Costume Designer Christopher Hellman
Co-Lighting Designers Megan Lang and Megan Dallas Estes
Producers Kate Downey, Caroline Gart and Pamela Reichen

An obscure musician living in Greenwich Village just before the start of the folk music revival, Connie Converse recorded hours of music and wrote letters that transcend time, then abruptly disappeared in 1974. She left goodbye notes that aren't quite suicide notes, and nobody ever found any trace of her. A Star Has Burnt My Eye combines live music composed by Connie Converse, original text by Howard Fishman, and found materials – Connie’s personal letters and journals, previously unheard recordings of her songs, and firsthand recollections from those that knew her – in an exploration of failure, genius, and the connection we make through art.

This workshop premiere of A Star Has Burnt My Eye was presented at The Brick in March-April 2015, following a previous development period in July 2014 at Vox Theater's VoxFest at Dartmouth College. A version of the show was also performed as a documentary concert tribute at The Public Theater's Joe’s Pub in July 2011, featuring Howard Fishman, Russell Farhang, Anastasia Barzee, Charlotte Mundy, Susan Oetgen, Jean Rohe, and Rob Adkins, with subsequent performances programmed at Abrons Arts Center, The Rattlestick Theater, and again at Joe’s Pub.

Photos by Marina McClure and Chris Heilman.