LA Writer’s Workshop Reading Series

Center Theatre Group
LA Writers’ Workshop Reading Series
Buy tickets
Price
$17.25
Genre
Theater
DATE
AUG 30, SEP 27
IN-PERSON
SUN, 3:30 PM & 7:30 PM

About

The LA Writers’ Workshop Play Reading Series presents  brand-new play readings from local playwrights—Bernardo Cubría, Keiko Green, Christina Pumariega, and Erika Sheffer—at REDCAT. This culminates a year-long commission and workshop process with Center Theatre Group (CTG). 

Since 2005, CTG has invited a cohort of local playwrights to spend a year researching and writing new works with feedback from the artistic staff and their fellow writers. The program is designed to foster important voices, inspire playwrights to create their best work, encourage bold writing, and build relationships among local playwrights, CTG, and the Los Angeles theatre community. CTG’s growing list of LA Writers’ Workshop alumni is currently comprised of more than 100 playwrights.

Through this and other programs, CTG fosters and develops a broad range of new theatrical work from artists within the diverse communities of Los Angeles, across the nation, and abroad. The company has a long history of providing artists with both financial and artistic support via resources, readings, and workshops throughout the year. 

 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 30: 

Lauren Sanchez  by Bernardo Cubría
As billionaire bride-to-be Lauren Sánchez prepares for her lavish wedding in Venice, Italy, a very different Lauren Sánchez in Venice, California watches her father detained by ICE, igniting protests across the city. As their worlds collide, the spectacle grows increasingly surreal, with appearances from Usher, Eva Longoria, Jeff Bezos, and a literal slime monster named Stephen Miller. In this biting satire about privilege, coincidence, and responsibility, two women who share a name must reckon with the wildly unequal lives they lead, and whether integrity can exist in a world run by billionaire dweebs with a micropenis.


House of Misfortune by Keiko Green
A couple invites a group of friends over for a dinner party, when they discover a creepy, taped off crawl space hidden in their new home.

 

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27:

Reagan Ranch by Christina Pumariega
In the hills of the Westside, an aging Hollywood actor rebuilds his life after a brutal divorce. An ambitious B-movie actress politics for her dream mate. Meanwhile California conservatives hunt the perfect candidate to claw back to power. On Reagan Ranch, one modest foreman bears witness to it all—growth and decimation, lies and the truth—one performance at a time.


In This House  by Erika Sheffer
A modern American family attempts to afford a modern American life by moving in with their divorced parents. In This House is a multi-generational story of love, sex, money, and the perils of belonging to a tribe.

about the artists

Bernardo Cubría (Playwright). His play The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine Vote received a NNPN rolling world premiere and has had 8 productions around the country. Crabs in a Bucket won the 2024 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing. His play The Play You Want premiered at L.A.’s Road Theatre in 2022, garnering Cubría both a Stage Raw Award and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for Playwriting. In 2019, Cubría was nominated for the Ovation, Stage Raw and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Best Playwright awards for his play The Giant Void In My Soul. He is a chair for the 2025-2026 Dramatist Guild national playwrights fellows.


Keiko Green (Playwright, she/her) is a playwright, TV writer, and performer based in Los Angeles. Plays include: You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! (South Coast Rep; Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Company One), Empty Ride (Old Globe), Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play (Old Globe; SF Playhouse; Porkfilled Productions), Hells Canyon (Theater Mu; WET), The Bed Trick (Seattle Shakespeare Co; Artists Repertory Theatre), Sharon (Cygnet Theatre), and Hometown Boy (Actors Express; Seattle Public Theater). Her plays have been developed at the Kennedy Center, the National New Play Network, Playwrights Realm, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Seven Devils, and twice by the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Awards/Honors: LA Critics Circle (Ted Schmitt Award), Susan Blackburn Prize Finalist, Kilroys List, San Diego Critics Circle Award (Outstanding New Play), Gregory Award (Outstanding New Play). She holds commissions from Atlantic Theatre Company, Signature Theatre (DC), Seattle Rep/South Coast Rep. Current/Past Affiliations: Old Globe Resident Artist, Geffen Writers Group, Chance Resident Playwright, Theater Mu’s Mu Tang Clan, Seattle Rep Resident Writers Group, ACT Core Company Member. TV: AppleTV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Hulu’s Interior Chinatown. BFA: NYU Drama - Experimental Theatre Wing, MFA: UCSD Playwriting. IG: @keikothegreen


Christina Pumariega (Playwright) acts and writes. Often simultaneously. Her Edgerton Award-winning, Pulitzer-nominated play ¡VOS! was developed at Ojai, premiered at Two River Theater, and plays next at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. She holds commissions with MTC/Sloan and the Denver Center. TV writing includes Disney+ and NBC. Acting on and Off-Broadway and onscreen, Pumariega has cross-examined Coach Taylor, made out with the Fly, and set a Cuban pharmacy ablaze in a corset. MFA Acting, NYU.


Erika Sheffer (Playwright). Plays include Vladimir (Manhattan Theatre Club), Russian Transport (The New Group, Steppenwolf), The Fundamentals (Steppenwolf). Commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Steppenwolf, Geffen Playhouse. Alumna of Ars Nova Playgroup, SPACE on Ryder Farm. Awards include the Vineyard Theatre’s Paula Vogel Prize, TCG’s Edgerton Grant. Television: The Beast In Me (Netflix), Little America (Apple TV), multiple development rooms, and a new show for Apple TV premiering in 2027.