It’s a Boom Season for New Plays in Orange County

Joel Beers
10 minutes ago
6 min read

A wave of nearly 30 new plays hits Orange County, fueled by collaboration, diversity and a post-pandemic creative surge.

Rori Flynn and Kallie Pong in “The Messenger," which was written by Chance Theater's 2016 playwright-in-residence Jenny Connell Davis. The Chance's recently closed production was the play's West Coast premiere. Photo courtesy of Chance Theater/Doug Catiller

T.S. Eliot may have thrown some literary shade on the month of April, but it – and the two months around it – has been anything but cruel to new plays in Orange County.

From the beginning of March through the end of May, nearly 30 new plays will have received full productions or staged readings at Orange County theaters. These include full-length plays, one-acts and 10-minute plays written by local playwrights and those with national profiles, and produced by professional and smaller theaters, as well as partnerships between local companies, venues and playwright’s groups.

But whether Filipina cowgirls battling colonialism while whipping up killer adobo or caped vigilantes battling villains in the shadows of the Mission San Juan Capistrano, they are all part of one of the most prolific stretches of new plays in the county’s history.

And there appears to be no one reason why.

“New plays ebb and flow and it just seems to be time when they’re flowing,” says Eric Eberwein, director of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance (OCPA), which kicked off this flood of new plays in early March when it and Wayward Artist collaborated on an evening of eight 10-minute plays.

Sara Guerrero, the artistic director of the Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, which is partnering with Cal State Fullerton on a new play that opens May 1, has a possible theory.

“During the pandemic a lot of people had time on their hands and I know a lot of people were writing plays,” says Guerrero, who is primarily a director. “And we did so many (virtual) readings during the pandemic, and so when we came back out of it, it was easy to continue on carrying that.”

The biggest chunk of the new plays – 11 in total – is courtesy of the two O.C. theaters with the longest history of new play development: South Coast Repertory, which is hosting five staged readings and producing two full-length plays as part of its 28th annual Pacific Playwrights Festiva (read Paul Hodgins' story about this year's festival); and Chance Theater, which recently closed “The Messenger,” the West Coast premiere of a play written by its 2016 playwright in residence, Jenny Connell Davis. The Chance will also host the third of five new play readings this year in mid-May, “Saint Vegas,” one of two written by its current playwright in residence, Enid Graham.

Partnerships

One of the most interesting aspects of the new play deluge is how many are collaborative projects. Along with the OCPA/Wayward and Breath of Fire/Cal State Fullerton pairings, Chance opened its doors in March to the Irvine Theater Company (ITC) for a night of seven short plays all themed in some way around technological disconnection.

But most emblematic of local collaboration is a 75-minute play that will receive a heightened reading May 17 at the Brea Curtis Theatre: “Cowgirl Katarungan’s Recipe for Adobo.” It’s a theatrically inventive, genre-defying historical fantasia in rhyming verse that blends food, folklore and revolution into a sweeping meditation on memory, identity and resistance. Guided by the irreverent, verse-spinning narrator Cowgirl Katarungan — a poet, detective and keeper of cultural truth — the play unfolds through the preparation of adobo, with each ingredient unlocking stories of the Philippines under Spanish colonization and beyond.

The play, written by O.C. resident AJ Layague, began its development life at Larking House, a company devoted to new work that formed during COVID. The play was developed as part of the theater's playwrights intensive program in fall 2023. It then won the 2025 Erika Bennett New Play Competition sponsored by OCPA. And now Larking House will produce a “heightened reading” as part of the Curtis Theatre’s Embark Series, a platform meant to provide exposure, and help develop, new work by local writers.

“It’s a great piece with a bold and vibrant sense of humor, heart and history,” says Lizzie McCabe, artistic director of Larking House. “We’re deeply invested in its continued growth and development and are thrilled to be collaborating on it with Curtis Theatre.

The company of “Joy in Uncertainty: A Glory Chicken Adventure.” Photo courtesy of Sara Guerrero

DIVERSE GROUP

Along with the sheer number of new plays and the collaborative aspects, another noteworthy thing about this season of new plays is that the vast majority are written by historically underrepresented groups, including women and playwrights of color, including five of seven in the “Disconnected” partnership between ITC and the Chance, and all seven at this year’s PPF.

You can add the play opening May 1 at the Grand Central Theater to that list: “Joy in Uncertainty: A Glory Chicken Adventure.” It’s written by Sigrid Gilmer, a Black playwright whose website describes her work as “black comedies that are historically bent, totally perverse, joyfully irreverent and are concerned with issues of identity, pop culture and contemporary American society. This one is geared more for younger audiences, as it involves a plague of “itchy bugs,” that has forced a 28-day lockdown at school and compels a 9-year-old to call on a superhero called Glory Chicken to show ways to cope with stress and anxiety.

The play is part of the BIPOC Superhero Project, a nationwide initiative involving 22 separate plays that use superheroes to help explore issues that “our youth communities of color are encountering and struggling with,” according to its website.

But while the plays are designed to speak to younger theatergoers, Breath of Fire’s Guerrero, who is directing the play, hesitates to call it a theater-for-young-audiences play. She prefers the term “intergenerational theater,” as parents bring their kids to the theater and need to be entertained as well, and while some child actors might be part of it, the designers and other staff are adults, mainly recent graduates of Cal State Fullerton’s theater department, where Guerrero is part of the faculty.

From left: Louis Lotorto, Daniel A. Stevens and Richard Baird are three of the five actors who portray 20 characters in the world premiere production of "The Maltese Falcon," which closes this weekend at the Laguna Playhouse. Photo courtesy of Laguna Playhouse/Aaron Rumley

Some new is old

Not all the plays are new, as in something newly created (not that anything written isn’t indebted in some way to something else conjured along the way). Two adaptations of recognizable stories or literary figures are among the mix. The first plays through Sunday at the Laguna Playhouse: “The Maltese Falcon,” a new spin on the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett that inspired the 1941 film noir masterpiece starring Humphrey Bogart. Chosen by the playhouse’s former artistic director, David Ellenstein, the playhouse production, which closes Sunday, is a transfer of the world premiere which started at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach where it ran March 4 through April 5. The adaptation by Matthew Salazar-Thompson is a comedic send-up that includes five actors playing 20 roles.

The second twist on an old property is courtesy of the Maverick Theater: “The Return of Zorro,” an adaptation of the first appearance of one of the most iconic characters of the 20th century: the swashbuckling masked vigilante Zorro. Though Zorro has been featured in dozens of films and serials, he debuted in a 1919 pulp magazine in a five-part series written by Johnston McCulley, “The Curse of Capistrano.”

In that tale, Don Diego Vega, a seemingly idle aristocrat, returns to Alta California and finds the region oppressed by a corrupt regime, with the Mission San Juan Capistrano serving as a refuge for exploited civilians. The indignant Diego decides to defend the poor and Indigenous people by donning a mask, cape and sword and battling the military rulers.

Like most of the plays produced by the Maverick in its 20-year history, there’s an obvious cinematic tie-in, but unlike its annual chestnuts, such as “Night of the Living Dead,” “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” or a recent addition, “King Kong,” which lean into the ironic or campier elements of the original films or screenplays, director Brian Newell and adapter Andrew Piñon are playing it as straight as possible with this one.

“It’s cinematic in scope and there are some great characters, but while there’s humor specked throughout, it’s not a comedy or parody,” says Newell, who got the idea to bring Zorro to the stage after watching Piñon choreograph a fight during rehearsals for the play “Shakespeare in Love” last year.

“There’s a lot of local color and underscoring and combat, and it’s a good old-fashioned story of good versus evil with an iconic and cool California backdrop,” Newell says.