Visit our Health & Safety page to read current policies for all audiences attending live public performances. READ MORE
All tickets for 2023 Boiler Room Series readings are free, but online reservations are strongly encouraged. Please reserve your tickets below. If you’d like to Pay What You Can for your ticket, you may specify your donation amount as part of the checkout process. Continue scrolling to find more information about this season’s featured works.
* Workshop and public reading held at The Keegan Theatre, located at 1742 Church Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. For info about planning your visit, visit the Plan Your Visit page.
^ Workshop and public reading held at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, located at 1901 Fort Place SE, Washington, DC 20020. For info about the museum and planning your visit, visit the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum website.
Keegan’s Boiler Room Series (BRS) is inviting audiences to experience theater development in action through a series of events involving new plays somewhere on the path from “playwright’s first spark” to “mainstage production.” 2023 events include half-day workshops of new pieces by playwrights from across the country, each culminating in live, public table readings with audience talkbacks immediately afterward. These workshops and readings afford our featured writers valuable artist and audience insight, fueling their work as they continue to develop these promising pieces for the stage. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BOILER ROOM SERIES
directed by Momo Nakamura
stage managed by Amina Dunn
featuring Beverlix Jean-Baptiste, Cheryl Campo, Wilmer Juarez, Jennifer Osborn, Josh Sticklin, and Sophia Colón Roosevelt
Mina and River travel to Fairbanks, Alaska, where they are producing the second season of Clime. Ahnah is a world-renowned indigenous glass artist and art therapist who has spent decades in residence at a glass center in Fairbanks, Alaska, one of the most polluted cities in the U.S. As her lungs begin to weaken from her life spent breathing heavily polluted air, she comes to terms with her waning breath and her life spent as the only art therapist in Fairbanks. With no one to take over the studio, she plans to sell her studio to a group of artists who want to create the world’s first carbon-neutral glass studio. Breathing her last productive breaths, she reflects on all those who will be left behind.
Workshop and public reading held at The Keegan Theatre.
directed by Josh Sticklin
stage managed by Kristen Davis
featuring Beverlix Jean-Baptiste, Sophia Colón Roosevelt, Sally Flores, Momo Nakamura, Karina Hilleard, James Finley, Rocheny Princien, and Josh Sticklin
Mina and River travel to Mt. Desert Island, Maine, where they are producing the third season of Clime. Akari is a master gardener and the director of gardens on a grand estate on Mt. Desert Island in coastal Maine. The estate’s board has voted to replace the long-time caretaker with a younger, more climate-focused director, who has plans to strip and recreate the formal European and Japanese gardens with wild, native habitats, using a more climate resilient approach. This leaves Akari grasping for meaning as her world-renowned and award-winning life’s work fades away. While there, Tuca visits River and shares that she is very sick, and that she and Udo are selling the farm to the land trust. River leaves Clime to return home to Sangre de Cristo with Tuca.
Workshop and public reading held at The Keegan Theatre.
directed by Paige Washington
stage managed by Philippos Sourvinos
featuring Bayron Celis, Bianca Lipford, Judy Lewis, Axandre Oge, Sam Lunay, Beverlix Jean-Baptiste, Sophia Colón Roosevelt, and Seth Rosenke
Mina travels to Apex, North Carolina, where she is producing the fourth and last season of Clime. She’s joined by River, who lost their grandmother, Tuca, and Finley, who is producing a renowned former president and climate leader’s third climate documentary. Eden is the controlled burn crew leader with the North Carolina forestry service, working to strengthen local habitats with controlled burns. With new restrictions on burning due to climate change, Eden is forced to stay and fight for the job and native Southeastern habitats she loves, or leave her profession mid-stream to return home and take over her family’s struggling pine tree farm. With increasing restrictions on controlled burning in the state due to climate change, and declining interest in pine trees for utility poles and pine hay, Eden finds her heritage, livelihood, and connection with North Carolina’s forests suddenly at risk.
Workshop and public reading held at The Keegan Theatre.
directed by Momo Nakamura
stage managed by Philippos Sourvinos
featuring Bianca Lipford, Nick DePinto, Maryanne Henderson, and Vishwas
MB Hollis has an optics problem. Her readers believe she’s a man who hates women based on the novels she’s been writing for the last fifteen years. Enter Gretta: A strong woman character to turn her next novel upside down – and with it, Margaret’s entire life. While the worlds of fiction and reality intertwine, Margaret begins to wonder who is in control of her narrative.
Workshop and public reading held at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.
directed by Paige Washington
stage managed by Philippos Sourvinos
featuring Mary Yee and Jolene Mafnas
A grandmother, Popo, invites her granddaughter, Jenny, to her apartment to make dumplings for the Lunar New Year. As they prepare, the two catch up and Jenny learns about the changes within Chinatown, and Popo learns about the changes happening with Jenny’s life. As pressures mount, Jenny learns that Popo is being evicted from her apartment.
Workshop and public reading held at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.
directed by Oscar Ceville
stage managed by Jillian Riti
featuring Shannon Rodgers, Keith Burkland, Byron Escobar, Melissa Robinson, and Kellan Oelkers
It’s August 17, 1997 and Nick, a 17-year-old gay boy, is sitting in an all-night diner outside Indianapolis, Indiana waiting for the possible appearance of his musical idol Barry Manilow who is performing down the street. As he waits with his best friend, Courtney, the two ponder the changing world around them, their troubling relationships with their parents, and their possible futures. When an unexpected classmate also arrives at the diner, Nick is faced with the possibility of a different kind of story. WAITING FOR MANILOW questions queer narratives and our connection to icons. It explores that pivotal time between teen and adulthood that is both exciting and terrifying – especially for a generation in the midst of the rise of the internet.
Workshop and public reading held at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.
directed by Josh Sticklin
stage managed by Kristen Davis
featuring Abel Haddish, Bowen Fox, Tatenda Rameau, Nina Brewton, Stan Shulman, and Ariana Caldwell
What happens when marketing associate Blaine and Twitch streamer Evette wake up to find… they’re black!?! In the same vein of “Black Like Me” and “Watermelon Man,” THE OREOS explores race in the modern world through laughs, awkward encounters, and our pride as a “woke” society. Blaine and Evette navigate their new skin and new place in life, learning what it means to be who they are. Evette comes to terms with her new life as a now “Black” streamer and realizes that she should not take racial relations so lightly, while Blaine doubles down on beliefs that he is part of the solution, not the problem.
Workshop and public reading held at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.