Pride Plays

LARRY KRAMER (1935-2020) founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1981 with five friends; the organization remains one of the world’s largest providers of services to those with AIDS. In 1987, he founded ACT UP, the AIDS advocacy and protest organization, which has been responsible for the development and release of almost every life-saving treatment for HIV/AIDS. Kramer was the author of The Normal Heart, which was selected as one of the 100 Greatest Plays of the Twentieth Century

by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the longest running play in the history of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater. He was also the author of The Destiny of Me, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won an Obie and the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play. Both The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me are published by the Samuel French imprint of Concord Theatricals. Mr. Kramer’s screenplay adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, a film he also produced, was nominated for an Academy Award. His writing about AIDS is published in Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist and The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. His novel Faggots is one of the bestselling of all gay novels. He was a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and he was the first openly gay person and the first creative artist to be honored by an award from Common Cause. The American People, Kramer ‘s reimagining of American history, was begun 1975 and published in 2015. Kramer was the winner of a 2013 PEN Literary Award, receiving the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a Master American Dramatist. A graduate of Yale, Kramer lived in New York and Connecticut with his lover, architect/designer David Webster.

Sylvan Oswald (Playwright) writes plays and texts that explore queer and trans identity through metatheatricality and formal irreverence. Recent projects include the theatrical essay Trainers (Gate Theatre, London) and the performance text High Winds (Fusebox Festival, Austin and TBA, Portland). Plays include A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theatre, San Diego) Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago), Profanity (Undermain Theater, Dallas), and Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb, New York). Sylvan has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell, Sundance/Ucross, and Yaddo. He is an affiliated artist at Clubbed Thumb and an alum of New Dramatists. Pony has just been published by Northwestern University Press.

ARTURO LUÍZ SORIA (Playwright) is an Obie and Offie Award-winning actor and writer. His solo show Ni Mi Madre premiered at Rattlestick Theater and went on to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, earning multiple award nominations. He is developing The White Whale Journal and La Kasa Mita’echo through commissions from Rattlestick and Lucille Lortell’s Alcove program. Soria is adapting the novel Bodega Dreams for screen with Black Bar Mitzvah Productions and Votiv Films. Theatre: Broadway’s The Inheritance; Wet Brain, Hit the Wall. TV/Film: Insatiable, The Blacklist, East New York, Found; and the upcoming feature, Mermaid. A MacDowell Fellow and Hillman Grad Mentorship alum, he holds an MFA from Yale and a BFA from DePaul.

LADY DANE FIGUEROA EDIDI (Playwright). Dubbed the Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa, Lady Dane is a Black Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American Performance Artist, Author, Poet, Educator, Advocate, producer, a Helen Hayes Award winning Playwright (Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem), a 2021 Helen Merrill Award Winner, Film Maker, Advocate, Dramaturg, a 3x Helen Hayes Award nominated choreographer (2016, 2018, 2023), and a Princess Grace Honoria Award winner. She is the co-founder and Co-director of the Black Trans Prayer Book.She is the curator and associate producer of Long Wharf Theatre’s Black Trans Women At The Center: An Evening of Short Plays and is an artistic ensemble member of the company as well.

KJ MORAN VELZ (Playwright) is a Boston-born playwright, librettist, and educator now based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has been performed at Signature Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Imagination Stage, NextStop Theatre, Flying V, Adventure Theatre MTC, and Theater Alliance. MOTHER MARY will receive its world premiere this fall at Boston Playwrights’ Theater. She graduated from Georgetown University with degrees in Spanish and Theater and Performance Studies, and she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Drama Therapy at Lesley University. Much

of her work – both clinical and artistic – focuses on the intersections of language, religion, race, and ethnicity.

JASON TSENG (Playwright) is a queer, non-binary Chinese-American playwright, with roots in New York City and Washington D.C. Their plays have been presented, developed by various theater companies and festivals across the nation, including Flux Theatre Ensemble, Judson Arts, Mission to dit(Mars), Second Generation, Downtown Urban Arts Festival, LA Queer New Works

Festival, the BIPOC Playwrights Festival, New American Voices Playwrights Festival (Semi-Finalist), Southern Queer Playwrights Festival (Hon. Mention), Eugene O’Neil Playwrights Conference (Semi-Finalist), Pan Asian Repertory Theater and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (Selected Playwright). Tseng serves as a Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble. Their notable works include Rizing, Like Father, Same Same, Ghost Money, Fear & Wonder, and The Other Side.