Below is a list of plays that I would love to direct. If you are a producer who is also interested in one of these plays, we should talk!

41: A QUEER BALL (Working Title)

CONCEIVED BY RICHARD A. MOSQUEDA, TEXT BY JESÚS I. VALLES, DRAMATURGY BY KARINA GUTIÉRREZ

41: A QUEER BALL is an epic theatrical event based on an early 20th-century Mexican scandal, El Baile De Los 41. Mexico City, 1901: a clandestine ball is held at a private residence that is illegally raided by the police. As a result, 42 men are arrested after they are discovered dancing together, 19 of whom are dressed in women’s clothing, including numerous Mexican aristocrats.  A media frenzy ensued and homosexuality was openly discussed in the Mexican press for the first time. The piece will crack open the infamous historical queer event through an experimental blend of music, dance, drag cabaret, and spoken word.

A RIVER, ITS MOUTH

BY JESÚS I. VALLES

Struggling with severe depression, You return to your hometown in Texas, right by the river that raised You, right on the border with Mexico. It’s the summer of 2019 and the Rio Bravo keeps claiming migrants’ lives during their perilous crossings. However, the people in your hometown are much more interested in talking about "The Rio Grande mermaid,” a creature rumored to haunt the river, clawing its way out of the sand, out of the water, into the air, into your head, haunting the mouths of family, friends, and strangers. Something in the water calls to You. “Come,” the river says, “Come to me.”

A PICTURE OF TWO BOYS

BY NICK MALAKHOW

Markey and Pete are unlikely friends, the studious Markey with dreams of college and a life beyond the southeastern PA countryside, and the volatile Pete with drunkenly crafted fantasies about being the next Kurt Cobain. Brought together by their shared feelings of alienation in their mostly white and more than vaguely racist little town an hour and a half from Philly, the boys’ relationship fractures when Markey announces to Pete he’s hoping to graduate early and get out of the styx ASAP. We see these two boys first at that critical juncture, and then almost ten years later after they are reunited in the wake of a startling event that dredges up a connected trauma from their past.

BATHHOUSE.PPTX

BY JESÚS I. VALLES

This play is a group project for perverts. Somewhere between lecture, re-enactment, and cruising ground, an informative presentation on the history of cleanliness and bathing starts to burst at the seams with the ghosts of a bathhouse at the end of the world. A meditation on queer longing, grief, and all our queer worlds that will come to pass, that will come to be.

BRITISH HONDURAS FANTASY

BY ARIEL ZETINA

British Honduras Fantasy is the inspiring story of Frida, a young trans girl who journeys from Florida to Chicago in search of herself, and in doing so mirrors her own mother's journey from Belize to the United States. The play asks the questions: what parts of ourselves do we leave behind when we become who we need to be? What sacrifices do we make in following our happiness?

BRUISE & THORN

BY C. JULIAN JIMÉNEZ

Bruise and Thorn work at a busted up old laundromat in Jamaica, Queens. Bruise dreams of becoming a chef and Thorn of changing the face of Hip Hop with his unabashed Queerness. When finances become strained, they get caught up in illegal activities sending them on a magical ride to make their dreams come true and get the hell out of Jamaica. Bruise & Thorn is an authentic look at a Nuyorican street family, not through bloodline, but rather the social and economic indicators that naturally selects them to one another.

EMERGENCY CONTACT

BY NICK MALAKHOW

Shawn is pretty sure his one-night-stand with the troubled Derrick can't get any worse after Derrick passes out and then pukes on his own bedroom floor. Things get even more interesting, however, when the concerned Shawn reaches out to Derrick's so-called "Emergency Contact" in his cell phone and finds out that it is Derrick's ex-boyfriend, Manny, who still has a key, a nearby apartment, and is all too eager to come over and save the day.

JULIO AIN’T GOING DOWN LIKE THAT

BY C. JULIAN JIMÉNEZ

It is the morning after the brutal murder of Julio Rivera, a gay Puerto Rican man in Jackson Heights, Queens. The murder became the first gay hate crime tried in New York State during the 1990s. In JULIO AIN'T GOIN' DOWN LIKE THAT, the community reacts and is taken on a journey of self-discovery by a fabulously unapologetic queen personifying the beauty and brutality of Jackson Heights. The play is an examination of the political and societal environment of Jackson Heights. The play captures the fear and outrage of the LGBTQIA+ Community leading to the borough’s first public demonstrations against homophobia. Like many Queer stories, the play does not follow a traditional narrative, as LGBTQIA+ people are often forced to follow non-traditional lives due to laws and societal pressure. The play focuses on poetry, imagery, and Fabulism to take a hard look at how Queer bodies are seen as threats to the status quo; in this case, Julio Rivera, but also in the current political climate.

PINK MILK

BY ARIEL ZETINA

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Alan who dreamed in Technicolor. In this modern take on the life of renowned codebreaker Alan Turing, electrifying music and a surreal text take us to the heart of a genius who longed for connection in a world he couldn’t understand. The psychedelic and strange weave together to create a deeply human story of love, loss, creation, and destruction. Find the man behind the machines in this rich fantasy of poisoned apples, loving robots, and the father of the modern computer

RONALD REAGAN MURDERED MY MENTORS

BY C. JULIAN JIMÉNEZ

Lost, a 40-something Queer Latine man, struggles to navigate life in America after the AIDS epidemic obliterated an entire generation of Queer male role models. Lost seeks solace in an anonymous voice on the other end of a telephone. As the play bounces between 3 decades, he is tormented by dead Queer icons and their murderer, Ronald Reagan in a seedy gay bar of the afterlife.

SPREAD

BY JESÚS I. VALLES

Take some dry ramen and throw it in a plastic bag. Add Hot Cheetos, beef jerky bits, beans, Hot Fries, and hot water. Mayonnaise or mustard (if you like that shit). Let it sit. Enjoy. Anything can be lunch in 9th grade. Anything can be anything. Jeffrey, Andrew, Chris, and Jordan are 9th grade boys and they’re trying their absolute best, and the thing about 9th grade is nobody knows what they’re doing. Here they are, at lunch. Here they are, at home. Here they are, together, in 9th grade, hoping they’ll get through it.

THE GUILT MONGERS OR, LOS TRAFICANTES DE CULPA (FOR THOSE NOT WILLING TO SUBMIT TO THE ANGLICIZATION OF OUR PEOPLE)

BY C. JULIAN JIMÉNEZ

Bruno Santiago is estranged from his family. They never accepted his unapologetic Queerness. But when his mother is admitted to a Bronx hospice, he rushes to her bedside with his partner of 10 years… and their new 23-year-old Mexican boyfriend. His disapproving Boricua family is outraged by Bruno’s flaunting of an amoral three-way relationship. Bruno defends his relationship and confronts a half-uncle stirring up unsettled feelings from his past. Fights, tears, and heartbreak abound while a hospice nurse juggles to deal with the family drama and the matriarch’s spirit using her as a sounding board for life-long resentments.

THE HOUSE OF AUDACITY

BY ARIEL ZETINA

a retelling of Mother Courage reinterpreted as a trans drag family moving to a small town to make money traveling after their wig store is gentrified

WET BRAIN

JOHN J. CASWELL

Inspired by true events and hopeless imaginings, Wet Brain is a play about three distant siblings and their father’s possible repeat abductions by extraterrestrials during the height of his end-stage alcoholism. With recovery unlikely, organs failing, and Dad's death all but imminent, Ricky, Ron and Angelina look for a final closure many, many light years away.