PLAYWRIGHTS AND PLAYS ANNOUNCED FOR OPC 2025 SUMMER CONFERENCE AND NEW WORKS FESTIVAL
Award-winning Playwrights receive a two-week workshop to develop their new plays, culminating in a public performance at OPC’s New Works Festival, July 31 - August 3. Previous OPC-developed plays continue to move to Broadway.
Ojai, CA — Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC) today announced the playwrights selected for its 28th annual Summer Conference and New Works Festival to be held July 31 - August 3 in Ojai, CA.
Playwrights and their plays to be presented in the Festival include award-winning playwrights: Lisa D’Amour, Heléne; Marvin González De León, Madre de Dios; JuCoby Johnson, The Red Man; Deepak Kumar, Stories in Mother Tongues; and Regan Moro, burn for You.
Prior to sharing their new plays in public readings at the Festival, the playwrights participate in the Conference, a one-week workshop to develop their new work with directors, dramaturges, and OPC artistic staff. They are then joined by professional actors, stage managers, and production teams who help bring each playwright’s vision to life for Festival audiences.
OPC’s Writers-in-Residence also receive new play development support at the Conference, and participate in the Festival as part of the artist community. 2025 Writers-in-Residence will include celebrated playwrights Vivian J.O. Barnes, Shayan Lotfi, and Jennifer Maisel.
“To share meals, stories, laughter, and tears with other playwrights, each of us so different, each with our own processes and purpose, was such a tremendous gift,” said OPC 2024 Playwright Lee Cataluna. “I will be thinking about my time in Ojai and all the things I learned for a very long time.”
2025 marks Jeremy B. Cohen’s third year as OPC’s Producing Artistic Director. “In the nearly impossible task of narrowing 1000 writers to just 8, the Staff, the Selection Committee and I have chosen plays by some of the most exciting playwrights in the country,” Cohen said. “From award-winning dramatists whose work has been seen by thousands of audiences around the country to brilliant playwrights who are just receiving their first production, this year's cohort is writing some of the most exciting, deeply funny and provocative plays I've read in years. I can't wait to share these never before heard stories with our audience and community.”
In addition to the five new plays, the Festival will include an evening celebrating new work by artists across the OPC community, including the 2025 Writers-in-Residence and students in the Youth Workshop and Intern programs. The weekend will also include a conversation with the playwrights, led by Cohen.
Festival passes are available now and range from $80 - $400; all passes include preferred seating and meal options. Single tickets will be general admission and donation-based (pay-what-you-can), and available two weeks prior to the Festival. More information: ojaiplays.org/2025-new-works-festival.
Playwright photos available here: 2025 Playwright Headshots folder
ABOUT OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE
Ojai Playwrights Conference’s mission is to build a body of extraordinary new plays that reflect this vibrant and ever-changing world. OPC supports playwrights with unique resources and a nurturing environment to develop new stories for the American theater. Now in its 28th year, the summer Conference and New Works Festival is OPC’s primary new play development program. In 2023, OPC implemented open submissions for playwrights across the country and added “pay what you can'' tickets to increase access for artists and audiences. Intern and Youth Workshop programs provide opportunities for students to participate in the Conference and Festival and create and share their own work alongside professional artists. In 2024, Ojai Playwrights Conference launched a partnership program with theaters in and around Southern California to develop new work, deepening OPC’s commitment to playwrights by connecting them directly with institutions and shortening a play’s journey from page to stage. This March, OPC held its first ever Spring Gathering - which is an invitation to local playwrights, actors, directors, other theater-artists and community members in Ojai to connect with Ojai Playwrights Conference staff at various local events over the course of several days, to meet, share their work and open pathways of collaboration and connection.
Numerous plays developed at OPC have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in theaters across the country, and many have been nominated for and won prestigious awards. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ OPC-developed play Dog Day Afternoon just announced its 2026 Broadway production, and the play John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower is currently enjoying its Broadway premiere, and was the most Tony-Award nominated play this year.
Both Fun Home by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori and Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz were Pulitzer Finalists. Fun Home won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed and Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherf**ker with the Hat were each nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Learn more at www.ojaiplays.org.
PLAYWRIGHTS & PLAYS IN THE NEW WORKS FESTIVAL
Lisa D’Amour
Heléne | Friday, August 1, 7:30 p.m. | Two years after the murder of her daughter, Heléne is called to take a road trip by her daughter's ghost. As she drives from her home near Baton Rouge, LA to Brooklyn, New York, Heléne arcs through the many siloed communities of America seeking answers, renewal, and new ground. As her ghost daughter pushes her deeper into our fraught American hellscape, Heléne renews her own sense of agency and her fierce determination to LOVE.
BIO: Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and interdisciplinary collaborator from New Orleans, Louisiana. She grew up in a world of ritual, activism, group spectacle and care, all of which continue to thrive in her work. Lisa's plays have produced by theaters across the country, including MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons (NYC), Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.), Catastrophic Theater (Houston) and ArtSpot Productions (New Orleans). Lisa’s company PearlDamour makes interdisciplinary, often site-specific works, most recently premiering Ocean Filibuster, a genre-crashing human-ocean showdown (American Repertory Theater + touring). Lisa’s play Detroit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and she’s received two OBIE Awards. She has received the Alpert Award for the Arts, the Steinberg Playwright Award and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. She is currently the Distinguished Professor of Playwriting at the University of Houston.
Marvin González De León
Madre de Dios | Sunday, August 3, 3:00 p.m. | Following years of estrangement, Moisés returns to his mother’s home in the Southern Nevada desert for his sister’s wake. Set against an apocalyptic landscape where supernatural forces loom, old grudges boil to the surface, and secrets are revealed as this family drama catapults into a mythic tale of Biblical proportion.
BIO: Marvin González De León writes plays that incorporate a myriad of genres—from sci fi to horror—anchored in the traditions of Latin American literature. His work has been produced and developed at Arizona State University, Texas State University, Teatro del Pueblo, Repertorio Español, Round House Theatre, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Page 73, The Playwrights Realm, the Playwrights’ Center, The O’Neill, Berkeley Rep, and The New Group. He has received various writing fellowships including the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship; as well as the Jerome Fellowship, the McKnight Fellowship, Core Writer, and the Many Voices Fellowship with the Playwrights’ Center. He was a member of the 2020 I73 Writers Group at Page 73. His plays have been nominated for The Smith Prize, The Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, The Ollie Award, and the Venturous Fellowship. He received his MFA in Dramatic Writing in 2017 at Arizona State University.
JuCoby Johnson
The Red Man | Sunday, August 3, 11:00 a.m. | Have you ever been so lonely you could just…? Jacqueline has. That is until her estranged twin brother, Jackie, turns up one night at her shack in the Florida swamp. But Jackie’s brought home more than Jacqueline bargained for. Something is following him—and now it’s after her, too. The Red Man is a Southern Gothic thriller and love story that asks how far we’ll go to escape our past.
BIO: JuCoby Johnson (he/him) is a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter originally from Jacksonville, FL. JuCoby is a second-year playwright in the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. He has been seen onstage at The Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Theater Mu, Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, and more. His plays include How It's Gon Be (Echo Theater, 2023), ...but you could've held my hand (CATCO, 2022; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022), 5 (Jungle Theater, 2023; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022; Seven Devils Finalist), Heritage (International Black Theater Festival, 2024); The Red Man (2025 Pacific Playwrights Festival, 2025 O'Neill NPC Finalist, 2025 Seven Devils Finalist); and Revelations (Playing On Air, 2021). His television credits include The Runarounds (Amazon). He is the recipient of McKnight and Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships and a member of the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program.
Deepak Kumar
Stories in Mother Tongues | Saturday, August 2, 3:00 p.m. | Paati, a 79-year-old grandmother, is waiting to die. Her only joy comes from a one-woman play she runs every night. But when her family is corrupted by demons that threaten to destroy the play, Paati must team up with an unlikely ally: her existentially tortured grandson, Giri. Will Paati and Giri defeat the demons? Or will the show just… end? A metatheatrical action adventure about tradition, expectations, and learning to speak in your mother tongue.
BIO: Deepak Kumar (he/him) is a playwright, lyricist, composer and professor of Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. He writes about the questions that keep him up at night, whether they be about Asianness, technology, youth, board games, or soul-eating demons. His shows have been developed and produced all over, with some highlights including The Old Globe and The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. He is a MacDowell Colony fellow and is currently on commission from Audible and Arena Stage.
Regan Moro
burn for You | Saturday, August 2, 7:30 p.m. | A blistering August in upstate New York. No rain in 3 months. And the little daughter of Lila, a young worship leader at a charismatic church, doesn’t wake up one morning. Lila’s estranged sister Franny, a lesbian who fled the church seven years prior, returns home for the first time for what she thinks is a funeral; only to find that her sister and the church she left behind are determined to pray for the toddler’s resurrection—no matter how long it takes. A play about incongruous faith, sisters, and what happens when we pray for something dead to come back.
BIO: Regan Moro is a playwright and actor from the North Country of upstate New York. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan, was an apprentice in the Professional Training Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and is an incoming fellow in the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at The Juilliard School. Her play "burn for You" recently received an industry reading directed by Tony Award winner Danya Taymor, was a Finalist for the 2024 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and received developmental reading at the 2024 Great Plains Theatre Conference. Her play "Tremolo" is a 2025 Irons in the Fire project for Fault Line Theatre, was a Finalist for the 2025 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, and a semifinalist for the 2025 Terrence McNally New Works Incubator. Regan is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Vitality Playwrights Commission from the Appalachian Center for the Arts, and a residency from Millay Arts. She’s the middle of three sisters, and the funny gay aunt to four little boys.
OPC 2025 WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE
Vivian J.O. Barnes
Vivian is a writer from Virginia. Her short plays have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Steppenwolf Theatre. She has developed plays at MCC, Geffen Playhouse, The Playwrights Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Clubbed Thumb, Montana Repertory Theatre, and Ojai Playwrights Conference. She’s staffed on television series at Amazon, Apple TV, and Peacock.
Shayan Lotfi
Shayan Lotfi (he/him) was the Tow Playwright-in-Residence at the Atlantic Theater, where his play What Became of Us premiered. He is the recipient of the Horton Foote Award from the Dramatists Guild, a Citation of Excellence from the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation, two MacDowell Fellowships and is currently under commission from the Atlantic Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, and South Coast Repertory. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and an alum of The Working Farm Writers’ Group at SPACE on Ryder Farm and Page 73’s I-73 Writers Group.
Jennifer Maisel
The daughter of an adhesives manufacturer and a teacher, Jennifer Maisel (she/her) grew up in a picture-perfect Long Island suburb where she once found a dead man in her driveway. Her plays include EIGHT NIGHTS, OUT OF ORBIT, YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 2020, THERE OR HERE and @thespeedofJake; they have been produced off-Broadway, nationally and internationally, and honored and developed by the Asolo Theatre, Sundance Theatre Lab, Kennedy Center, and the Ovation, Woodward/Newman, and PEN West Literary Awards. PROVENANCE was named the winner of the 2025 Jewish Plays Project. Jennifer also writes for film and tv; her movie, Lost Boy, starred Virginia Madsen and Sosie Bacon and she adapted two Jane Green novels for television. The screenplay adaptation of her off-Broadway play, THE LAST SEDER, won Showtime’s Tony Cox Screenwriting Award, meriting her a month’s stay in a haunted farmhouse at the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony, and is now in pre-production with Rosalind Productions.
EVENT SUMMARY & CALENDAR LISTING
The OPC 2025 New Works Festival will take place July 31 - August 3 in Ojai, CA. This celebration of new plays for the American theater will include five performances of brand new work and special events celebrating artists in the OPC community. Prior to the Festival, the playwrights spend two weeks developing their plays with artistic teams and preparing them for public audiences at the Festival.
Playwrights participating in this year’s Festival include Lisa D’Amour, Marvin González De León, JuCoby Johnson, Deepak Kumar, and Regan Moro. Writers-in-Residence Vivian J.O. Barnes, Shayan Lotfi, and Jennifer Maisel will also develop plays at the Conference and participate in Festival events.
SCHEDULE
Thurs, July 31 7:30 p.m. - IN CELEBRATION: An evening highlighting new work from across the OPC artist community, including the Youth Workshop and Intern programs, led by Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen.
Fri, August 1
7:30 p.m. - Heléne by Lisa D’Amour
Sat, August 2
1:30 p.m. - IN CONVERSATION: a discussion with the playwrights led by
OPC Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen
3:00 p.m. - Stories in Mother Tongues by Deepak Kumar
7:30 p.m. - burn for You by Regan Moro
Sun, August 3
11:00 a.m. - The Red Man by JuCoby Johnson
3:00 p.m. - Madre de Dios by Marvin González De León
LOCATION
Milligan Center for the Performing Arts, The Thacher School, 5025 Thacher Road, Ojai, CA
TICKETS
Festival passes are available now and range from $80 - $400; all passes include preferred seating and meal options. Single tickets will be general admission and donation-based (pay what you can), and available two weeks prior to the Festival. More information at ojaiplays.org/2025-new-works-festival.
PLAYWRIGHT PHOTOS: 2025 Playwright Headshots folder
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