ICYMI: Here’s the 2025 Lineup

How human beings find meaning, fulfillment, community and connection form the collective dynamic of this year’s Pacific Playwrights Festival. The nationally renowned showcase for new play development returns May 2-4. It includes five staged readings and full productions of two past PPF readings—You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! by Keiko Green and The Staircase by Noa Gardner.

“This group of plays, while disparate in its stories and styles, feels like a collective reminder of how important it is to come together and pay witness to humanity,” said Andy Knight, PPF Co-Director and Director of The Lab@SCR. “Each play offers its own unique look at the intricacies of human relationships. In these stories, families fall apart, and families come back together again; loved ones hold on too tightly while learning to let go; and lost souls find solace in unexpected people and places. Life is fragile, but living is for the tenacious. In a way, this Pacific Playwrights Festival looks at how complicated it is to keep on living—and how deeply we need each other to do it.”

Here are the five staged readings:

rachel, nevada
by jose sebastian alberdi (@milk_jello)
directed by Laura Dupper
Friday, May 2, at 1 p.m., Segerstrom StageAbout this play: A play about skeptics, believers and souls in grief, searching for close encounters.

The Red Man
by JuCoby Johnson (@jucobyjohnson)
directed by H. Adam Harris
Friday, May 2, at 3:30 p.m., Segerstrom StageAbout this play: He’s the shadow that’s been chasing you since you were born—and now, he’s right behind you. Do you finally stop running?

Eat Me
by Talene Monahon (@talenemonahon)
directed by Josiah Davis
Friday, May 2, at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 3, at 8 p.m., Sunday, May 4, at 2:30 p.m., Nicholas StudioAbout this play: When you’ve finally consumed what you’re hungry for…you might just be transformed.

Ten Grand
by Kate Cortesi (@katecortesi)
directed by Rebecca Wear
an SCR Commission
Saturday, May 3, at 10:30 a.m., Segerstrom StageAbout this play: When an unexpected item turns up in the donation bin at a Boston Goodwill, ordinary workplace drama takes on decidedly higher stakes.

Trip Around the Sun
by Jake Brasch (@jakebrasch)
directed by Shelley Butler
Sunday, May 4, at 10:30 a.m., Segerstrom StageAbout this play: Retirees Phil and Suze have fallen into a comfortable rut, wastin’ away in Margaritaville. But tonight, Phil has decided to mix things up—for good.

Discounted subscriptions to see all five readings can be purchased for $90. Individual tickets for readings are $23 each.