It’s the top half of the thirteenth inning of a minor league baseball game with cheerleaders, a mascot, and t-shirt canons where the audience experiences three outs from the perspectives of the dugout, the bleachers and the press box. This Rashomon-style play explores the meaning of the American Dream and the subtle impact of the United States on Caribbean lives through the immigrant players that dominate America’s favorite pastime.

Jean Carlo Yunén is a director originally from the Dominican Republic. He’s currently attracted to stories where humanity and ideology are in conflict, where humor acts as a tool for healing. He’s directed and developed work with theaters such as TheaterSquared, San Diego Rep, Repertorio Español, Keen Company & the Latino Theater Company and worked as an associate/assistant director with Atlantic Theater Company, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, OSF, Cincinnati Playhouse, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He’s a SDCF Observer (on the Sweeney Todd Broadway Revival), Van Lier Fellow, Williamstown Boris Sagal Fellow, Drama League Director’s Project Alumn and an inaugural artist-in-residence for the XR2C2 in Cannes, France. He holds an MFA in directing from UCLA and BA in film from the University of Notre Dame.

Iraisa Ann Reilly is a writer, actor, educator, and baseball fan who is half-Cuban, half-Irish and whole New Jersey. Her plays reflect the communities and spiritual realities that she calls home. Her work has been developed and recognized by Teatro del Sol, the Yale Drama Series, La Jolla Playhouse, Two River Theatre, Lucille Lortel Theatre, Arkansas New Play Festival, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Theatre Exile, The New Harmony Project, Texas A&M University, Michigan State, and Latinx Playwrights Circle. She is under commission with Arden Theatre Company and ArtHouse Productions. MFA in Dramatic Writing, NYU. BA in Theatre from the University of Notre Dame. iraisaannreilly.com

An Allahbot gives you the black and white correct answer to all of your moral, ethical, and personal dilemmas. This project explores what the world would look like if all of us had one.

Zahra Budhwani (she/he/they) is a director based in Brooklyn, NY. Select directing credits include Ender’s Gay (Sanguine Theatre Company), Wasted (The Tank), Diwali Play (Prime Produce) and untitled sex show (Fresh Lime Soda Productions). Assistant directing credits at Rising Sun Performance Company, SheNYC Theatre Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company, Permafrost Theatre Collective, and Dixon Place. Zahra was a member of the inaugural Mercury Store Directing Lab and a director for the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals 2023, and is a current Associate Artist at Sanguine Theatre Company. They teach and make theatre with students all over NYC with the New Victory Theatre, Opening Act, CO/LAB Theatre Group, The Moth, and Broadway Bound Kids.  BFA, NYU/Playwrights Horizons.

Salwa Meghjee is a playwright from Florida. Her plays include U-Haul Mesbians (2023 O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference Semi-Finalist), Ender’s Gay (2024 Fault Line Theater’s Irons in the Fire Finalist, 2024 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist), The Conference of the Birds (Mudlark Theater), and, written with her twin sister Samah, The Mysterious Mystery of the Lost Letters (Brooklyn Publishers). She co-founded the feminist theatre company The Golden and served as its Artistic Director for three years. She is a Core Apprentice at Playwrights’ Center and an alum of 24 Hour Plays: Nationals. BA, UC Berkeley; MFA, Northwestern University. salwameghjee.com

Our project is inspired by the dense social tapestry of the American Renaissance Faire and its potential for both joyful stupidity and trenchant political commentary on our contemporary social order.

Iris McCloughan is a director, performance maker, and writer in New York. Their original performance work has been seen in New York at The Poetry Project, Ars Nova, The Chocolate Factory, PAGEANT, JACK, Danspace Project, CATCH, and The New Ohio. Recent direction includes Alex Tatarsky’s Sad Boys in Harpy Land (Playwrights Horizons) and Joan Jonas and Eiko Otake’s collaborative performance Drawing in Circles    WHY? (Castelli Gallery / Danspace Project). They have collaborated with numerous other artists, including Joan Jonas, Eiko Otake, Alex Tatarsky, Juliana May, Mike Lala, Alex Lin, Angie Pittman, and Pig Iron Theater Company.

Called “a hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones) and “outrageous and profane” (NYTimes), Alex Tatarsky makes performances in the uncomfortable in-between zone of comedy, poetry, dance-theater, and deluded rant–sometimes with songs. Their original solo performances Americana Psychobabble, Untitled Freakout, Dirt Trip, Sad Boys in Harpy Land, and MATERIAL have been presented by venues including Abrons Arts Center, The Kitchen, La Mama, MoMA PS1, Playwrights Horizons, The Whitney Museum, and many bars and basements. As curatorial fellow at the Poetry Project, they organized a series on the poetics of rot. Research interests include bootlegs, hellscapes, and compost. @tartar.biz

Chloe and Hope’s project follows three siblings as they venture into outer space on a hijacked subway train in pursuit of their late mother’s memory. As they transit through images of her life, the project asks what can be considered true about someone’s personhood, and what remains unknowable?

Jisoo Hope Yoon is a writer, translator, and theater-maker from Seoul. She is excited about language, lay conversations about physics, and stories about women making their lives their own. Hope’s fiction has appeared in Columbia Journal, and her translations on Netflix and Apple TV+. She is currently at work on her first novel, which received a Chappell-Lougee grant in 2022.

Chloe Chow is a pluralistic Asian American performance and multimedia artist. She seeks to generate immersive performance art that’s powered by memory and challenges the definition of theater through site specificity, digital media, and deconstruction of space. Chloe served as the Artistic Director of the Asian American Theater Project, a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and is the recipient of the 2023 Louis Sudler Award for the Creative and Performing Arts. She is consistently inspired by stories of the diaspora, folklore and ritual, food heritage, and her grandmother.

Current Co-Chairs:

William Burke and Jackie Sibblies Drury

Thanks to the following friends for supporting the Writer Director Lab: Lawrence Sutton & Rick Titone and The Jerome Foundation.