9/5: Playwrights' Platform: Program 1

Photos courtesy of the artists

Saturday, September 5
1:00 PM
Arrive around 12:00 PM to participate in a pre-performance fire-lighting ceremony.
$25 General Admission, $15 Student Admission
Meadow Stage (outdoors)

Playwrights’ Platform is a newly created live anthology, responsive to the needs of boundary-bending playwrights and focused on the stories central to their writing. Audiences are invited into the hearts and minds of these award-winning theater artists to explore each turn of phrase and unique worldview.

Vickie Ramirez, Ty Defoe, and Jeanette Harrison—Democracy Cycle commission awardees (PAC NYC)—embody Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace through a journey that offers insight and lessons into unity, justice, and consensus-based decision-making with Six Nations: One Fire. In partnership with Bard Center for Indigenous Studies.

Rachel Jendrzejewski once described her writing process as pushing words around on the page just as her artist parents had pushed paint on their canvases, and a way “to pay attention to the world” around her. Rachel died of breast cancer in July 2025. Rachel’s longtime friends and collaborators, choreographer Terry Hempfling and actor Lauren Lewis, read as the two moon characters from encyclopedia, her play published ten years ago by Spout Press. Directed by Marcela Michelle.

Rose Jarboe in Mx. Rogers' Neighborhood: You Can Never Go Down The Drain channels the beloved, critically acclaimed, PBS-hosted, forever wholesome Fred Rogers, all the while visiting iconic neighborhood moments anew and asking some earnest questions about irony through some gentle audience participation.

About the Playwrights

Rachel Jendrzejewski (1982–2025) was an interdisciplinary artist and writer who frequently collaborated with choreographers, musicians, and multimedia artists to explore wide-ranging performative vocabularies. Her work was developed and/or presented by Walker Art Center, Padua Playwrights, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Tricklock Company, Joe’s Pub, The Wild Project, RISD, MASS MoCA, and ICA/Boston, among others. Published texts include MERONYMY (53rd State Press), In Which _______ and Others Discover the End, a collaboration with SuperGroup (Plays Inverse), and encyclopedia (Spout Press). Jendrzejewski was a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye in Minneapolis.

As an Indigiqueer citizen of the Oneida and Anishinaabe Nations, Ty Defoe is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner whose work thrives in the fluid spaces between forms: art, climate justice, and cultural activism, challenging settler colonial binaries. Guided by a global commitment to story, he has been honored with the Jonathan Larson Award and the Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, and supported through fellowships with the Sundance Institute, MacDowell, Kennedy Center’s Next 50, and Pop Culture Collaborative’s Becoming America initiative. As co-founder of Indigenous Direction, Defoe has led landmark projects that bridge Native and non-Native communities through the arts, reaching audiences ranging from Marquette University’s First Native American Film Festival to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Jeanette Harrison is a multi-hyphenate director and writer working in theater, film, and television. She believes in combating invisibility and harmful representations by telling contemporary, complex Native stories written by Native authors. After serving as the co-founder and artistic director of AlterTheater for 17 years, Harrison joined Artists Repertory Theater, one of two LORT theaters in Portland, as their third Artistic Director. She is currently the co-director of the Arts Learning Project for Native Youth (ALP4NY), and creative director of Native Performing Arts Network, which began as Native Theater Project, under the umbrella of Bag&Baggage Productions.

Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora) is a founding member of Chukalokoli and Amerinda Theater. Her work has been developed and/or produced at Native Voices at the Autry, AlterTheater, and The Public Theater. Honors: Resident, New Dramatists through 2027; Winner, 2020 Smith Prize for Political Theater (NNPN); The Kilroys, Honorary Mention 2019 for Pure Native and 2014 for Standoff At Hwy#37; Semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2019; Semi-finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference 2018; Alumna, Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group (2009). Other productions include: Glenburn 12 WP - Summer Shorts at 59E59, Smoke - Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group at Pershing Square Signature Center. Published: Monologues for Actors of Color: Women, Monologues for Actors of Color: Men, and Contemporary Plays by Women of Color Edition 2: (Routledge Press). Member: Dramatists Guild, PEN America. Consultant: Outer Range for Amazon TV.

Rose Jarboe is a director, producer, writer, performer, visual artist, and the founding artistic director of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. For the past 15 years, she has created and performed work for Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, Wilma Theater, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation, FringeArts, and Opera Philadelphia. Jarboe was named best drag performer by Philadelphia Magazine, is a 2022 Transformation Grant awardee (Leeway Foundation) and a 2025 Pew Fellow. She has toured and directed original work to Seattle (Seattle Symphony), New Zealand (Performance Arcade), Australia (Malthouse Theater), Lincoln Center’s American Songbook Series (PBS), and Works & Process. She has written and directed original cabarets for opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo and is the drag doula of Stephanie Blythe. Commissions include Rose: You Are Who You Eat (Works and Process), touring to FringeArts, La MaMa, and Wooly Mammoth, and The Rose Garden at The Fabric Workshop & Museum and On the Boards. More at www.beardedladiescabaret.com, and @johnjarbeaux and @roseeatme.

About Tickets

• One performance ticket is $25. ($15. for students). Performance tickets do no include evening concerts.

• Ticket Combo Packages:
  -       A two-performance ticket bundle is $40. ($25. for students)
  -       A three-performance ticket bundle is $50. ($30. for students) *only available 8/29*
  -       Add an evening concert ticket to your bundle and receive a $10 discount. This all-day pass maximizes discounts!

• Individual evening concert tickets bought before August 1 receive a $10 discount. Use code EARLYBIRD10 by July 31.