INCUBATE NYC
It’s 90 minutes until curtain for the non-union, Latine, bilingual, production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, playing at a regional theater in Oklahoma when Melinda receives a call. The State has banned abortion and her upcoming appointment – canceled. With the performance approaching, the cast and crew band together (with some magical guidance!) to navigate a post-Roe America. Filled with tears, laughter and jokes that are just too soon,O.K! uncovers revelations about the company’s pasts, personal lives, and biases, and their relationship with a society desperate to discount their humanity.
meet the playwrights
CHRISTIN EVE CATO /// THE BRONX
Christin Eve Cato is a playwright, dramaturg, and performing artist from the Bronx. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Indiana University and completed her BA in Political Science and Philosophy at Fordham University. Cato is also a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. She is affiliated with NYC theater companies, WP Theatre (Playwrights Lab); Pregones/PRTT (ensemble member & former Resident Dramaturg), INTAR Theatre (UNIT 52 ensemble member), and the Latinx Playwrights Circle. Cato's artistic style is expressed through Caribbean culture and the Afro-Latinx diaspora, honoring her Puerto Rican and Jamaican roots. Recent off-broadway productions include SANCOCHO at the WP Theatre.
Recent productions include, The Diamond (People's Theatre Project); Sancocho (Visión Latino Theatre Company/Midwest Premiere); American Made (Samuel French OOB Festival/ NYC); and an audio play journey, The Mayor of Hell's Kitchen Presents: A Time Traveling Journey Through NYC's Wild West (The Parsnip Ship & Playwrights Horizons/ NYC).
JESSE JAE HOON /// QUEENS
I’m a playwright, actor, and organizer – based in Queens, born in Korea, and raised in Chicago & Berlin. My work combines raucous comedy with a deeply felt sense of urgency to investigate power relationships, class & labor dynamics, generational politics, the necessity of uniting against an exploitative system, and our responsibility towards a broader community. From a young age, we were fed the “American Dream” through stories about the hero’s journey and the exceptional individual, before war, wage theft, a pandemic, and climate catastrophe shattered that illusion. I want to make work that rejects the idea that anybody is coming to save us, that the smartest, strongest, and wealthiest of us will navigate the system to lead us all to utopia, and instead shows the endless possibilities that lie in our collective power – while throwing in as many pop culture references and low-brow jokes as I can, which is my right as An American™. My work presents our ruggedly individualistic society in its hilarious, horrifying, epic “glory” and offers an alternative: each other.
I’m an organizer with NYC Democratic Socialists of America and Equity Next. I received an MFA in Playwriting from CUNY Hunter College in 2022 and a BFA in Drama from NYU Tisch in 2015. I’ve taught undergraduate playwriting at Hunter College.
ABOUT INCUBATE NYC
Presented this year in Queens & The Bronx, INCUBATE NYC develops and presents workshop performances from writers who reside/have roots to NYC's outer boroughs. This program is generously supported by NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
APPLY TO INCUBATE NYC
Each season, Egg & Spoon selects, develops, and produces workshops in QUEENS and THE BRONX- in search of plays by playwrights of color based in either borough.
Accepted plays will receive resources for a loose workshop production in late spring.
WHO CAN APPLY?
This submission process is open to all Black Writers, Indigenous Writers, and Writers of Color. These writers can be at any stage in their career, and should be based in Queens or The Bronx.
The INCUBATE NYC workshops are intended for full-length plays that have not had a fully-realized production. Workshop curated to the playwright’s needs.
New Work Starts Here
INCUBATE NYC 2024 SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED
PREVIOUS INCUBATE NYC PLAYWRIGHTS
Borna Barzin /// Brooklyn, 2023
Lily Gonzales /// Queens, 2023
Juan Ramirez Jr. /// The Bronx, 2023