THE PLAYS
haters gonna hate
A contemporary adaptation of Molière's The Misanthrope that takes place in a modern high school basement and follows the foul mouthed high schoolers that inhabit it. Cel puts her classmates through a set of trials that slowly get worse as she tries to decide which one she will bring to prom. A play that takes on sexuality, gender identity, and what people are willing to do because of anger, pain, clout, and anything else.
A Writer’s Room
A play about five late-night comedy writers being brought into an office building for a callback. Their technology is taken away, they are locked in a room, and told to write a comedy monologue. Slowly they see the differences in their perspectives and this locked-up, gray room becoming the scene of a verbal slaughterhouse and rising tension.
White Walls
White Walls is a liminal space horror/drama that follows three people who have “no-clipped” into an alternate reality where they are surrounded by white walls, halls and floors. These three strangers are slowly forgeIng their past lives and are forced to recon with their own mortality, as try to find an escape and write anything they can remember on the walls around them. This weird slow burn of a play investigates death, mourning, forgeIng and dealing with loss in real time.
Thank You For Shopping!
When Maeve’s father passes away and she inherits the family grocery store, her future feels uncertain, especially when her ex-best friend Harper comes back to town. Amidst the aisles of food, employees, family, and friends, a series of vignettes introduces us to the community as they navigate love, loss, forgiveness, and the highs and lows of life during one of the most simple and consistent parts of it: grocery shopping. Thank You for Shopping is a play about the importance of searching for what you want in life—and appreciating what you already have along the way. Co-written with co-host of Play to Z and frequent theatrical collaborator, Erika Kuhn.
Community Garden
Uptown, Chicago, newbie Ralph doesn’t quite know what to expect during his first volunteer shift at Uptown City Gardens. It’s certainly not the vibrant, bustling community that passes through the green space, checking on their plants, composting their food scraps, meeting up with friends, and—surprisingly often—falling in love. After a few hours, Ralph begins to understand seasoned volunteer Donald’s claim that the garden is magic. In a series of heartfelt and humorous vignettes, Community Garden digs into the ways taking care of the environment helps people take care of each other.
Cabin Chronicles
Josh, OC, and Will are alone in an empty cabin. At night. In the woods. The perfect setting for a scary story competition! The three boys try to out-scare each other with tales of zombies, lab accidents, and teenage slashers to distract each other from the pain of high school. A horror comedy about the fear of standing out and the friends you make when you decide you don’t care about fitting in.
More of Justin’s Plays!
If you want to read more of Justin’s stuff, check out his New Play Exchange! Multiple short plays are available like Don Pedro Fucks, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that explores sexuality though the lens of the matchmaking prince, Gene’s, a short play about a guy in a bar and a bartender trying to help him leave, or ur dad crying in a black suit, a play that explores mourning though a Lebanese-American father and son at the patriarch of the families funeral. New plays are posted on his NPX all the time! Check it out!