6 playwrights debut queer-themed short plays at benefit hosted by Murray Hill & Yuhua Hamasaki.
Monday, June 30, 2025 at Judson Memorial Church
Voyage Theater Company presents the 2nd annual SAY GAY PLAYS on June 30 at 7PM, hosted by Murray Hill (Somebody Somewhere) and Yuhua Hamasaki (RuPaul's Drag Race) at Judson Memorial Church. The goal of SAY GAY PLAYS is two-fold: to raise awareness for LGBTQ+ equality and offer financial support to potentially hundreds of not-for-profit organizations across the country.
SAY GAY PLAYS will feature staged readings of 6 LGBTQ+ themed short plays by: Kamilah Bush, Vichet Chum, SMJ, Haruna Lee, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, and Brian Quirk. Following the benefit reading, these plays (as well last year’s plays by Fernanda Coppel, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, Ty Defoe, Marquis D. Gibson, Nina Ki, Derick Edgren Otero, Harrison David Rivers, J. Harvey Stone, Lucy Thurber and Doug Wright) will be made available royalty-free to not-for-profit theaters, colleges and universities, and community organizations across the nation for use to present their own fundraising events on behalf of LGBTQ+ organizations in their communities.
SAY GAY PLAYS will be presented on Monday, June 30 at 7pm at Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012) to benefit Judson Commons. Tickets are $35 general admission or $60 for VIP seating in the front rows at www.SayGayPlays.org.
SAY GAY PLAYS was conceived by Voyage Theater Company in association with Tectonic Theater Project, Quick Silver Theater Company and Provincetown Theater in response to the 2022 passage of the Parental Rights in Education bill in Florida, commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In 2023, more than 520 state bills attacking LGBTQ+ rights were introduced, with more than 75 becoming law. The Human Rights Campaign officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time in history. And it’s getting worse. According to the ACLU, in 2024 alone, more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in 35 state legislatures around the country. SAY GAY PLAYS is about sharing queer stories of courage, triumph, and joy to counter the harmful narratives used as justification for the passage of these discriminatory bills. The project’s website, SayGayPlays.org, serve as a hub for applicants and participants, while tracking the project’s impact nationwide.
Since the kickoff event in May 2024, SAY GAY PLAYS have been presented at theaters, colleges and universities from Birmingham to Binghamton, Provincetown to Missoula. In September 2025, SAY GAY PLAYS will be presented in Chicago in partnership with Silk Road Cultural Center, About Face Theatre Company, and Northeastern Illinois University; these organizations have also commissioned additional Chicago-based playwrights for the event, and these works will also be added to the portfolio of plays available royalty-free.
The 2025 SAY GAY PLAYS premiering at Judson this June are:
Words the Wind Carried Me
by Kamilah Bush
Late in the summer of 1953, a soldier comes home from the Korean War to face the woman she left behind to see the world.
Untitled World Premiere
by Vichet Chum
morning routine
by SMJ
Quinn's Friday morning routine is simple: wake up, walk the dog, try to shower, try to avoid an existential crisis about their gender presentation, and then go to work. A magical play about a person, their beard, and their razor.
Let’s Sit Down
by Haruna Lee
Age gaps are normal in queer love, right? Like Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor? You wanna meet my mom?
B R I C K
by Azure D. Osborne-Lee
In a not-so-distant dystopian future, freedom fighters search for a symbol to unite their cause.
Trust Faith and Confidence
by Brian Quirk
Who is this mysterious older gentleman? And why is he trying to connect with this 16 year old boy? Can a chance encounter change the course of a life?
Casting for SAY GAY PLAYS will be announced shortly.
The Advisory Committee for SAY GAY PLAYS is Rev. Micah Bucey (Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church), Gary Garrison (Managing Director of Provincetown Theater), Dean Gray (Board Member of Merryall Center), Tyrone Mitchell Henderson (Artistic Director of Quick Silver Theater Company), Moisés Kaufman (Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project), Jamil Khoury & Malik Gilani (Co-Artistic Directors of Silk Road Rising), Stephanie Klapper (Stephanie Klapper Casting), Joseph Megel (Professor at UNC–Chapel Hill), Michael Ngo (President of Voyage Theater Company), Lisa Rothe (Senior Lecturer at Binghamton University and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia University), and Kathleen Salazar (Artistic Associate at Voyage Theater Company).
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Kamilah Bush (she/her) is a playwright, dramaturg, and educator originally from North Carolina. She holds a B.F.A. in theater education from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was a NC Teaching Fellow. She currently holds the position of Literary Manager at Portland Center Stage. Kamilah has spent several seasons at celebrated regional theaters across the country, including Triad Stage in Greensboro, NC, Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, FL, and Two River Theater in Red Bank, NJ. She was a Playwright in Residence at Williamstown Theater Festival in 2024 and was featured as part of their Fridays @ 3 Reading Series in 2023.
Vichet Chum (he/him) is a New York based writer from Dallas, Texas. His plays have been workshopped/produced at Steppenwolf Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Alley Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova, Page 73 Productions, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Cleveland Play House, the Magic Theater, UCROSS Foundation, Fault Line Theatre, Crowded Outlet, Second Generation Productions, Weston Playhouse, Cleveland Public Theatre, South Carolina New Play Festival and New Harmony Project. He received the 2023 Lucille Bulger Service Award, 2018 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting with New Dramatists, the 2021 Laurents/Hatcher Award, a 2021 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award for the world premiere of his play Bald Sisters which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in 2022, and a special state citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives for his play KNYUM at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in 2018. He is currently a Roundabout Theatre Company Underground Resident, New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, Sun Valley Writers’ Conference Fellow, New Harmony Project board member, and Obie Award and Tony Award-winning AAPAC (The Asian American Performers Action Coalition) steering committee member. Past notable writers' groups include: the Resident Working Farm Group at Space on Ryder Farm, the Interstate 73 Writer's Group at Page 73 and the Ars Nova Play Group. He is currently working on commissions for Audible, Steppenwolf Theatre, People’s Light, and Seattle Children's Theatre. Vichet's debut YA novel Kween was released in 2023 with Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. He is a proud graduate of the University of Evansville (BFA) and Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company (MFA) and is represented by WME and CURATE Management. vichetchum.com
SMJ (they/them) is an NYC-based, mixed-Latiné, and Trans non-binary playwright, musical theater writer, educator, & theatermaker originally from Mount Vernon, OH. They were a 2022 - 2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow. They are the Co-Artistic Director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, NH with fellow theatermaker, Jess Honovich. They create work that is unapologetically queer and designed to highlight & challenge collaborators. Informed by their uneasy upbringing in the middle of Ohio, their plays warn about our world's funny yet terrifying truths. Their work has been seen in various forms throughout the US including Ars Nova, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, New York Stage and Film, Lincoln Center, National Queer Theater, Latinx Playwrights Circle, The Orchard Project, Latiné Musical Theatre Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Otterbein University, Wright State University, Art House Productions, University of Texas-El Paso, The Road Theatre Company, The Workshop Theater, The 24 Hour Plays, The Center at West Park, The Flea Theater, Northern Sky Theater, Open Jar Studios, Andy’s Summer Playhouse, American Theater Group, Live Arts, CRY AVOC, The Tank, The Uptown Collective and DR2 Theatre. SMJ also writes for the serial podcast, University Radio. SMJ has been a semifinalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference (four times), the 2022-2023 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting/Fellowship at New Dramatists, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, and The Civilians R & D Group (two times) as well as a Finalist for the 2024-2025 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting/Fellowship at New Dramatists, 2024 June Bingham New Playwright Commission, 2023 Parity Development Award, Write Out Loud Contest, 5th Avenue Theater's First Draft Commission, and the Doric Wilson Playwright Award. SMJ is a graduate of Otterbein University and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. They’re a member of the Dramatists Guild and Ring of Keys.
Haruna Lee’s (they/them) recent works include Suicide Forest, hailed by the New York Times as "Vivid, haunted, heart-stingingly tender and explicitly personal...A wild ride of a production" (NYT Critic’s Pick). It was directed by Aya Ogawa and is an investigation of how Japanese suicide has symbolically permeated the playwright's transcultural and social identities, and received a world premiere at The Bushwick Starr in 2019, with an Off-Broadway remount in 2020 with Ma-Yi Theater Company, making The Kilroys List that year. plural (love), a collaboration between Lee and Jen Goma, is an auto-theoretical performance installation that flirts with the boundaries of desire, power, and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. It has been developed by New Georges (2016-2017),the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2017-2019) and WP Pipeline Festival (2021-2022) where Lee and Goma created a short film of the same title. Lee is a recipient of a Susan Smith Blackburn Special Commendation for 49 Days (2025), Hermitage Fellowship (2024), Steinberg Playwright Award (2021), an Obie Award in Playwriting for the Conception and Writing of Suicide Forest (2019), for which they received grants from The MAP Fund (2018), the National Endowment for the Arts (2019), and the New York State Council of the Arts (2019). Lee has been recognized with The Bret Adams & Paul Reisch Foundation Ollie New Play Award (2021), FCA Grants to Artists Award (2021), Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship at Stanford University (2020-2021), a MacDowell Fellowship, including the Keith Haring Fellowship (2020/2021), the Lotos Foundation Prize for Theater Directing (2017), and a New Dramatists Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship (2010). They are a current member of New Dramatists (2023-2030), and the co-founder and lead facilitator of the Women-Trans-Femme-Non Binary (WTFNB) Asian Diasporic Performance Makers Potluck. They currently serve as the co-chair of the American Theatre Wing’s Obie Awards (2023-2025) and served as a judge from 2021-2023. They have been a member of the 2020-2022 WP Theater Lab, the 2019 artEquity National Facilitator Training cohort, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Public’s Devised Theater Working Group, P73 Interstate 73 Writer’s Group, and has held residencies and commissions with Ars Nova Maker’s Lab, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist-in-Residence, Dixon Place Mondo Cane! Commission & Residency, and the Bushwick Starr Propeller Project Series. They have also received development opportunities with Drop Forge and Tool, Space on Ryder Farm, Little Theater, Prelude Festival, York College, Food For Thought/Danspace, Target Margin Lab Series, and Asian American Writer’s Workshop. Their writing has been published by Broadway Licensing in a commission of scenes and monologues by TNB2S+ artists titled Bliss, Yale’s Theater Magazine (2023), by Table Work Press in the anthology Plays For Our Younger Selves (2020), 53rd State Press including Suicide Forest (2019) and in Occasional No. 2 (2018). For TV, Lee has written for Apple TV+’s Pachinko and HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant and has developed multiple projects for television, podcast and film. They teach at Yale in the MFA Playwriting Program and were the co-director of the Brooklyn College MFA Playwriting Program alongside Dennis A. Allen II (2021-2023). They’ve also taught playwriting and performance at Hunter College, NYU Experimental Theater Wing, Stanford, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, PACE University, York College, and Abrons Arts Center. They hold an MFA from Brooklyn College for Playwriting where they studied with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney. BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Experimental Theater Wing.
Azure D. Osborne-Lee (he/they) is a multi-award-winning Black queer & trans theatre maker from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Azure holds an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice (2011) from Royal Central School of Speech & Drama as well as an MA in Women’s & Gender Studies (2008) and a BA in English & Spanish from The University of Texas at Austin (2005). He teaches at The New School. Still Standing Artist-in-Residence @StonehengeNYC, recipient of Waterwell New Works Lab’s 2021 Commission, Kilroys List 2020 playwright, recipient of Parity Productions’ 2018 Annual Commission, Winner of Downtown Urban Arts Festival’s 2018 Best Play Award, and the 2015 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Contest. Azure’s full-length play “Crooked Parts” was published in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays and was produced as part of the 2024 Obsidian Theatre Festival in Detroit, MI. His full-length play “Mirrors” received its world premiere, produced by Parity Productions, at Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop in spring 2020. Unfortunately, this production closed early due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Mirrors” has been published by NoPassport Press. Azure’s play “Red Rainbow,” a semi-finalist for the 2022 National Playwrights Conference, received a production at Mt. Holyoke College in March – April 2022 and received a production at Tufts University in March 2023. Azure is the founder of Roots and River Productions and was a member of the inaugural Trans Theater Lab cohort. Azure’s work has been produced and/or developed by Trans Lab @ The Public and WP, Parity Productions, PRIDE Plays, The Tank, The Flea, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BAM, JACK, Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Fire This Time Festival, Horse Trade Theater Group, The Castillo Theatre, New Ohio Theatre, National Black Theatre, Freedom Train Productions, Downtown Urban Arts Festival, Lambda Literary Foundation, The Helix Queer Performance Network, and regionally. Finalist for New York Independent Theatre Awards’ 2024 Everett Quinn Award and 2023 Artistic Achievement Award, 2023 Terrence McNally New Works Incubator, Theatre Viscera’s Queer Playwright’s 2022 Contest, VanguardRep’s 2019 Summer Production, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s 2018 Artist in Residence, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, and Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab; Semi-finalist for the 2021 Doric Wilson Award, 2019 Burman New Play Award, Ars Nova’s Play Group and New York Theatre Workshop’s Emerging Artists Fellowship. Azure made his screenwriting debut in 2020 with his short film “Sundown Support,” which was commissioned for #WhileWeBreathe: a Night of Creative Protest, produced by Prodigal Son Entertainment. Azure’s full-length plays include: “Mirrors,” “Crooked Parts,” “The Beasts of Warren,” “The Crocus Eaters,” “Glass,” and “Red Rainbow.” Member: Dramatists Guild.
Brian Quirk’s (he/him) plays include MARROW, text from which was part of (IM)PULSE, Spectrum Dance produced in Association with Seattle Repertory Theater, directed by Donald Byrd; WARREN (or) Those People, produced at Boise Contemporary Theater and nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize; MAPPLETHORPE/The Opening, produced at The Provincetown Playhouse, San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theater Center, San Diego’s Sixth@Penn, and The Bahama’s Popop Studios, directed by John Stix. Developmental work and readings include: Playpenn, Seven Devils, Primary Stages, The Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theater, Hudson Stage, The Actors Studio, Thingamajig Playwrights Festival, The Caldwell Theater, Dixon Place, id theater, The Axial Theater, and Emerging Artists. Quirk is Weissberger nominated and the recipient of The Robert Chelsey award given to an emerging gay/lesbian playwright, the Erik A Takulan memorial endowed fellowship from Djerassi Resident Artists Program, a Leon Levy Foundation Grant, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant both from the MacDowell Colony, an Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant and The Jane Geuting Camp Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A three-time MacDowell Colony Fellow, with residencies at The Ucross Foundation and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Quirk received his BFA from New York University and is proud member of id theater’s “id-IOTS at play” writing group. He is also a Dramatist Guild member, and an alum of the Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit and Project Y Playwrights group
Voyage Theater Company (VTC) presents new and unheralded plays and playwrights from around the world, creating opportunities for collaboration between theater-makers of diverse cultures. Their inaugural production, part of La MaMa’s 50th anniversary season, was the world premiere of Obama 44 by Mario Fratti in 2012, followed by Aleksei Arbuzov’s My Poor Marat, performed in both Russian and English. VTC produced the world premiere of Intermission by Daniel Libman in 2014 at Theatre Row, the same year they launched the Parts Unknown Play Reading Series — free and open to the public — featuring new plays from around the world and new play translations. Additional productions include the New York premieres of Sun by Adrienne Kennedy and Unveiled by Rohina Malik; August Strindberg's The Pelican; Unveiled at the South African National Arts Festival and Johannesburg 969 Festival; The Mecca Tales by Rohina Malik; Tentacles by Tessa Flannery, as part of the 2018 Frigid NY Festival; the critically acclaimed Hope Hypothesis by Cat Miller; and, most recently, Don't Look Back by Adam Kraar. Artistic Director: Wayne Maugans; Executive Director: Charles C. Bales.
Judson Commons. Friends of Judson is a secular 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 2019. The organization was created to provide support—including fundraising, strategic advising, and outreach—to the secular arts and justice initiatives that are affiliated with and often housed within Judson Memorial Church. In 2021, we embraced the name Judson Commons to better reflect what we do and how we do it. We welcome a wide range of folks into our space so that they may create together, inspire each other and collectively envision a new liberatory path forward. While much of the activity takes place in our historic building in Greenwich Village, all of the co-creations and people who are in relationship here have ripple effects throughout the city, the country, and the world. Our community engagement programming uplifts the intersections of art and social justice through residencies, programming, partnerships, and space-sharing. Through our efforts, we hope to provide this commons as a home for the vital collaborations that sustain social justice movements, and a safe and uncensored environment for artists, activists, and audiences. Judson Memorial Church occupies a 117-year-old historic building on Washington Square South. Its community engagement programming uplifts the intersections of art and social justice through residencies, programming, partnerships, and space-sharing. Through our efforts, we hope to provide this commons as a home for the vital collaborations that sustain social justice movements, and a safe and uncensored environment for artists, activists, and audiences. In addition to Sunday worship and Sunday School, its current programs include work with the New Sanctuary Movement for immigrant rights and a "community ministers" program that trains future clergy on how to involve congregations in social-change activities. Judson also continues its long history of hosting post-modern arts, peace action, women's reproductive rights, and gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender events. Judson has a long tradition of being open to all, regardless of faith. When individuals officially join Judson, they affiliate with both our parent denominations - United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches.