CROSSWAYS FINDS THE COMMON HUMAN THREAD

Multiracial multiethnic voices yearning to be heard and seen

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CROSSWAYS THEATRE aims to develop playwrights who reflect the diversity of our community. CROSSWAYS' programs and plays will be accessible to a wide range of audience members from teens to seniors.  CROSSWAYS is committed to discovering playwrights who recount and reflect diverse experiences: whether comic, farcical or realistic, covering epic struggles, women’s liberation, on-the-job, veteran, trauma survival or facing the challenges of life.

EMPOWERMENT OF UNHEARD VOICES

Be the first to discover new talent

Crossways is a community theater with a vision, to open the community’s awareness of the diversity of New York. Crossways will be an intersection where people of different backgrounds, religions and races meet.

READINGS

Where communities mingle

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In 2021, Crossways presented the Women's Festival and plays by Kitty Chen, Kae Fujisawa, Lionelle Hamanaka, Ann Mary Mullane and Stella Pulo featuring actresses Stella Pulo, Kitty Chen, Kae Fujisawa, Zoe Anastassiou, Beth Griffith.

October 24, 2021 Crossways will have its first Park reading, at Richard Tucker Park on 66th Street and Broadway, of Covid Crime, a Stop Anti Asian Hate play with speakers from the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, Shirley Ng, and Welcome to Chinatown, Jackie Wang. Audiences members will be invited to sign a peace crane that will be hung in a traffic intersection in Chinatown.

In November 2021, Crossways will have a Festival "Imagining the Future" with six plays by Nathaniel Blake Johnson,  Lionelle Hamanaka, Lyonel Laverde Hanson, Ann Mary Mullane, Howard Pflanzer, and Kathleen Potts, after winning a grant from the PUFFIN FOUNDATION.

2020 offerings included a Fall Festival with Covid 10,366 (introducing Director Dianna Martin) and The Spitter by Lionelle Hamanaka, monologue from Quarters, Halves and a Whole by Nathaniel Blake Johnson, Viral Effect by Ann Mary Mullane, and Amicus Fidelis by Howard Pflanzer. The Women's Festival (just before the  pandemic struck) featured Sherry Bokser's Payback, Tita Aandares, John McFerren Story, Ann Mary Mullane For the Birds, and scenes from The New Place by Hamanaka as well as Filial Piety directed by Nicholas Leung.

In 2019, readings included Lyonel Laverde Hansen's Charles XII, the Carplay Series II, Howard Pflanzer's The Listener, The Biddy Contract by Ann Mary Mullane and scenes from Bina Sharif's new play, The Rise Up by Lionelle Hamanaka.

In 2018  Crossways staged readings included: Lyonel Laverde Hansen's Kill the Beast, Howard Pflanzer's GPS Play, Escape, Breakdown, Killer Car, Kathleen Potts' Miss Nowhere Diner and The Organizer by Lionelle Hamanaka. 

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FESTIVALS

Where communities celebrate

On March 25 and 26, 2022, Crossways Theatre will present its Fifth Annual Women's Festivals, featuring plays by women playwrights at Bernie Wohl Theater, part of Goddard Riverside Community Center. One play will be "Sheroes" a play with music depicting the struggles of nurses at a hospital outside NYC, through the pandemic as of fall, 2021. The composer is Dom Minasi, a famous songwriter who has composed the scores for Off Broadway shows and 500 children's songs, who has composed beautiful songs expressing the feelings and predicaments of front line nurses' attempts to care for patients. Four other plays will be selected from the Dramatists Guild newsletter opportunities listing. 

      In 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Crossways had staged readings during Women's Month at the Bernie Wohl Theater in Goddard Riverside Community Center, Dramatists Guild loft on 41st Street and online during the pandemic. These Women's Festival included the following authors: Tita Aandares, John McFerren's Story, Sherry Bokser, Payback, Kitty Chen, Rowing to America, Kae Fujisawa, Sketches of Happiness,  Ann Mary Mullane, The Biddy Contract, Kathleen Potts,  Shakespeare's Ghost Writer was a . . . Woman?!, Stella Pulo, Respect for Nature, Christina Wilson's Breast Confessions, Kathy Wilson's Out of the Rabbit Hole, Lionelle Hamanaka, Scenes from The Rise Up, Covid on a Bridge.   

FAMILIES, SENIORS, STUDENTS, VETERANS, TRAUMA VICTIMS

Find a welcome gathering place to talk

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Due to Professor Kathleen Potts' and Jennifer Tuttle's work with immigrant students, an important montage of scenes enacting the plight of students from immigrant families was presented.  In Declared Dead, written and directed by Howard Pflanzer, a man's identity has been stolen; Elizabeth Jennings, a play about an African American schoolteacher who desegregated the NYC streetcar system in 1854. Scenes from A New Place, a play about Military Sexual Trauma, was given a staged reading as well. A reading of What Your Name Is? by Nathaniel Johnson, an urban youth romantic comedy was received well. The Theme of Dislocations in society was the 2019 dramatic umbrella of Crossways.

REGULAR READINGS OF EXCITING DRAMAS

See performance dates section

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SOME PLAYWRIGHTS FROM CROSSWAYS

Keep in touch with Crossways Theatre and let us know how you feel after coming to a staged reading or benefit.

HOWARD PFLANZER

Playwright

KATHLEEN POTTS

Playwright

LYONEL (L. R.) LAVERDE-HANSEN

Playwright

Playwright

Director

NATHANIEL BLAKE JOHNSON

Playwright

JENNIFER TUTTLE

Director

BRENDAN ROTHMAN-HICKS

Actor

BETH GRIFFITH

Actress

KAREN LEE

Actress

GEOFFREY LEE

Actor/Musician

ELLIOTT CEASER

Actor

SELEAR DUKE

Actress

ETERNANDA FUDGE

Actress

CHRISTINE PENNEY

Actress/writer

WILLIAM KOZY

Actor

KIMBERLY FLORES

Actress

LUIS BRANDON TORRES

Actor