2024 Relentless Award Honorable Mentions
Color Boy
by Esperanza Rosales Balcarcel
Miguel is halfway through his first year teaching at a charter school in Los Angeles when he begins dreaming about his long-ago color guard days. The more Miguel rejects the wounded boy in his dreams, the more his present life begins to unravel. Fusing the art of color guard, dance, and poetry, Color Boy is a queer choreo-drama about the power found in healing our younger selves in adulthood.
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Contentious Woman
by Celeste Jennings
Contentious Woman is a work song. It’s full of dreams, of anticipating the workday to end, and soft off-days that still require work. Set in 1919 as well as present-day, 5 courageous Black women, who work as stemmers at a tobacco factory, navigate love and question what they want in life, and what ‘success’ means. Through poetry, song, dialogue, and choreography, they endure their laborious lives and make complex, yet necessary decisions.
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The Creature
by Alexa Derman
Soon, a biomedically-engineered creature is grown in the body of a graduate student – and then soon becomes later. A speculative play about care, reproduction, bodies, and every wild thing.
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The Dog Walker
by Dan Giles
After his friend’s suicide, a dog walker goes looking for comfort and finds himself entangled in an older couple’s marriage. As their intimacy increases, new hungers disturb old wounds. The Dog Walker is a love story, a coming-of-age story, and a ghost story about three generations of gay men.
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​Falls
by Colm Summers
When a young father is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he does everything to protect his relationship with his son. As his condition deteriorates and their roles are reversed, his every expectation of fatherhood falls away. Will he lose himself or - worse - his son, in the process? Fall is a play about fatherhood, care and forgiveness. Set in rural Ireland, Fall features no tremors, no trauma, and a lot of Dad jokes - this is not-your-mother’s Parkinson’s play. Told in a series of falls, it examines how we get hurt, and sometimes, how we can catch one another before we get hurt.
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The Fate of the Online Cow
by kanishk pandey
The Cow spends her life in front of a camera, playing video games for an active chat, earning money for her owners, Mud and Hue. Up until this point, her life has been simple but fulfilled. However, when a game of Minecraft leads her to consider her own predicament, she must come to terms with the oppressive conditions she exists under and the act of earned revolution.
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FUTURE WIFE
by Reid Tang
A romantic tragedy about goats and the economy. On a production line, which is also the entire world, a woman and a goat meet and fall in love, despite the blood. Despite the knives. In the distant past, and the far future, choruses of pirates and goats convene to discuss important questions about their societies: Is this the best economy we could invent? Who invented it? Who must die to keep the economy running, and how can we make those deaths as invisible and exciting as possible?
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Grief World
by Hannah Kenah
A dark-comedy deep-dive into misogyny that derides the notion of healing — especially via equestrian therapy.
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Hockey Wives
by Tanya O’Debra​
The real action in the last game of the 1995-96 North Quincy High School Hockey season isn’t on the ice with the players—it’s in the stands with their girlfriends. Wendy is a new transfer from Catholic school and thinks she’s amongst friends, but she quickly learns that everyone is in the attack zone. Kerry, the self-appointed leader, thinks Wendy's a stuck-up poser. How far will Wendy go to be accepted by this clique? How far will Kerry go to stop her? Teenage girls can be brutal.
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ICONS
y Xavier Clark
When an established icon of a writer selects a younger Pulitzer prize winning author to interview him for a milestone newspaper article, lines between interviewer and interviewee get blurred as the interview spirals into a nauseating loop of chaos. ICONS grapples with the meaning of legacy, loving and letting go while still in the pursuit of peace, perfection and (im)mortality.
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Image May Contain
by Yu-Li Alice Shen
An unlikely trio of former foster siblings wrestle with questions of identity, race, family, and existential dread as they travel to Taiwan to perform Buddhist funeral rites for one of their birth fathers.
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i never asked for a gofundme
by Jayne Deely
Millie is back home in Mobile, AL for a prestigious fellowship she couldn’t pass up. Her east coast born and raised Puerto Rican partner, Avery, is recovering from gender affirming top surgery. When quasi-aunt to Millie and righteous woman of God Teresa overhears Millie talking to the pharmacist at CVS, she assumes Avery has breast cancer and puts events in motion that turn everyone’s lives upside down: cue the casseroles, care packages, and checkbooks – a gofundme to SAVE AVERY! "I never asked for a gofundme" is a new queer comedy about gender, family, and religion that asks what it means to be worthy of care.
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In the Basement
by Bailey Williams
Dingus is disgusting. Her sister Teenie is perfect. Her boyfriend is Jard and Jard is Christian and Jard is also Dad. Mom is Dad too, if that clarifies things. Anyway, Dad and Mom talked and decided the basement is now an office. Don’t go into the basement. Seriously. Final warning.
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Kara & Emma & Barbara & Miranda
by Ariel Stess
A play that intertwines the lives of four women from different generations and social strata in New Mexico. Kara wakes up to find her husband and children missing. Twenty-year-old Emma runs away with a married man. Barbara’s ex-lover breaks into her home in the middle of the night. And the pipes in Miranda’s house burst.
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The Life You Gave Me
by Novid Parsi
A son tries to save his mother. She has other ideas. So do two mysterious strangers who watch the play—and ask the son to tell the story again and again until he gets it right, whatever right might be.
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lisa, a fantasia
by Gina Femia
lisa is writing a play while also going to work, working on her relationship and working through her trauma, and also trying to write a play in a world that wants to own her trauma and also, she needs to call her mom back. lisa; a fantasia is a swirling, metatheatrical autobiographical fantasia that explores how we live our lives through the trauma of life, and how we create our art in an industry that wants to own our narratives.
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lonely people on the internet
by Claire Griesing
An Amish teenager, a nonverbal speedrunner, a divorced agoraphobe, and a part-time cam model daylighting as an online therapist enter a chat room. A play about communication, connection, delusion, and destruction.
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Mere Waters
by Jillian Blevins
Gynecologist Gisella Perl arrives at a concentration camp and is assigned to work as the camp doctor. She has no tools, no antiseptic, no water. She is promised by a young female guard that if she behaves, sending all “interesting cases” (particularly pregnant women) to Dr. M, she will be reunited with her daughter Gabby, from whom she was separated when they left the Sighet ghetto. Guided by two bickering biblical prophetesses, Gisella treats prisoners who have fallen pregnant. Some have been assaulted, some have traded sex for life-saving goods, others just wanted to feel something aside from pain. When she realizes the scope of evil being perpetrated in the hospital, she undertakes a spiritual mission to ensure the safety and survival of the women in her care by performing secret, life-saving abortions.
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Mikvah Girls
by Emmy Weissman
Mikvah Girls is the story of two orthodox Jewish women who are supposed to be performing a monthly cleansing ritual at a mikvah. Instead, they actually use this time to hold meetings of their two-person Bruce Springsteen fan club. Together they grapple with the effects their religion has on their sexuality, desires, hopes, and dreams, all while obsessing over the Boss and dreaming of a better world they could build together.
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NOVIOS
by Arturo Luíz Soria
A motley crew of cooks hurl insults, grab ass, and compete to be most macho en el calor of a gringo’s failing kitchen, all under the thumb of Chef Gallo. When a flamboyant new dishwasher sparks an affair with Luiz, Gallo’s ward, the cooks’ banter turns dangerous. Gallo must wrangle the men to keep the restaurant open while wrestling with her own demons that threaten to push Luiz away forever. This unapologetically queer romp lays bare the deeply rooted racism, gender inequality, classism, and power dynamics at the center of toxic, male dominated kitchen spaces, while spotlighting queer characters of color who seldom get represented in positions of power.
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Now 2
by Hayley Stahl
Characters converge, diverge, and converse in a series of slice-of-life NYC vignettes.
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powpowpowpowpowpowpowpowBANG
by Utkarsh Rajawat
A gun-slinging western, Papa Roach, and sissy porn collide in a two-person duel that leaps through genres and your computer screen to determine the root of all evil.
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Pretty Shahid
by Abbas Salem
The Kazem family immigrated to the Chicago from Iraq and are attempting to assimilate and live and then 9/11 happens. This romantic comedy uses classic film tropes to examine identity and which knots we choose to untie to become our ideal American. This is a play about self discovery.
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PRICK
by Serena Berman
When Vicky joins an online community dedicated to rape fantasy, she learns terms like CNC (“consensual non-consent”) and PRICK (“personal risk informed consensual kink”). But unresolved issues from her past make the line between fantasy and reality harder to keep straight.
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Progression
by Christopher Adams
As a PhD student dives deeper and deeper into the history of Queer literature for his thesis, he begins an affair with his advisor that will uproot both their lives.
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To Red Tendons
by Peter Kim George
We still don’t know how to talk about what happened in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, and it’s a problem. A group of semi-professional young actors come together briefly to re-enact a 'primal scene' from the Los Angeles unrest in 1992 using elements of group psychotherapy. Why don't liberals acknowledge American empire? How do the unseens of empire structure what is visible? We’re just trying to live. To Red Tendons deals with seething anger turned inward, and a desire for reconciliation.
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RIGHT TO BEAR
by Ryan Vincent Anderson
RIGHT TO BEAR follows Claire, a Yosemite National Park Ranger who is up for a promotion. But when she is tasked to put down the problem bear, L-13, who recently killed a park goer, she is faced with a moral dilemma after finding out what prompted the bear’s savage act. Only she didn’t expect to hear it directly from the bear, who can speak only to her. While her determined partner hunts after them and the day draws nearer to an end, the unlikely pair must lean on each other in order to reach salvation, before the clear moon rises. But who is really saving who?
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The Second Body
by Lyndsey Bourne
Pearl - a rigid and lonely taxidermist haunted by her past and the animals that surround her, is forced to confront the everyday problem of living in a body when her new model, Alice, refuses to simply play the muse. Using the emotional and physical process of making an art object, The Second Body explores extinction, feminine ecology and queer erotics to question implicit embodiment in a disembodied time.
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SINGULARITY
by Sara Cooper
A rhythmic drama fever nightmare about postpartum depression and motherhood.
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The Sporting Life
by Marjorie Muller
16-year-old Dot still hasn’t gotten her period. Lucky for her, there’s a Witch in the woods who can get it started. However, in exchange, Dot must offer her the life of a man who has wronged her. And who better to offer than a math teacher? When Dot gets her elusive first period and becomes witness to the Witch’s murder, they become bonded in literal blood, sending Dot down a path of self-understanding, bitterness, and perhaps a little bit of violence too (as a treat). The Sporting Life is a "coming of rage" story brutally snapped open to expose the, sometimes literal, entrails of growing up girl.
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Tesseract
by Scott Sickles
During a far-right extremist coup, a 9-year-old trans boy goes missing during an airlift. His mothers enlist every resource at their disposal, but their son could be anywhere on the planet and has left no trace.
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UNTITLED (blood, marble)
by Kate McMorran
Tally’s husband is a famous sculptor. All his statues have her face. When she’s left alone with the block of marble he’ll carve into his next creation, things get weird as she tells her story - and her secrets - to the block. Struggling with an eating disorder, Tally starts to relate to the block as something that must be reduced, shaped and sculpted into an ideal woman.
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WELL WELL WELL
by Brant Russell
Erik & Erika have been intertwined since young adulthood. Now 40, they must confront their dependencies, addictions, and each other.
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Yamaguchi Store
by Shanti Reinhardt
Yamaguchi Store is a play written entirely in Pidgin and set in Kaua’i. The play seamlessly braids together a family’s mo’olelo spanning 3 time periods: 1909, 1924 and 1973, as they try to ‘kala the hala’ that has been plaguing the family as it is passed down from generation to generation. Filled with quick-witted local humor that lovingly cuts to the bone, the play floats on an ocean of generational trauma and pain. Yamaguchi Store is as epic as it is intimate.
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If you're interested in reading or producing these plays, email relentlessinfo@bfany.org.
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