Theatre Performances
- Baby Shower Katie
- Refuse It: A Black Woman’s Guide to 21st Century Rage
- Motherloss
- One Acts: Dirty Martini + Nerve Endings
- Season Announcement 2025-26
One Acts: Dirty Martini + Nerve Endings
Arthur Wagner Theatre | May 9-17
Dirty Martini
Written by Katie Đỗ | Directed by Shyama Nithiananda
About the Show
Kara and Poppy were best friends - until they weren't. After a mysterious falling out, they reunite and try to rebuild their friendship, but unfinished business keeps getting in the way. What really happened with She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named? And what other secrets are they keeping from one another? DIRTY MARTINI looks at what happens when the people closest to you are not who you think they are and what it really means to be a good friend.
Content Warning
Mature Themes, Strong Language, and Descriptions of Sexual Assault.
Creative Team
Director: Shyama Nithiananda
Playwright: Katie Đỗ
Scenic Designer: Abigail Miranda
Costume Designer: Alexis Ordonez
Lighting Designer: Melody Vilitchai
Sound Designer: Chloe Lias
Playwright: Katie Đỗ
Scenic Designer: Abigail Miranda
Costume Designer: Alexis Ordonez
Lighting Designer: Melody Vilitchai
Sound Designer: Chloe Lias
Stage Management Team
Production Stage Manager: Tess Twomey
Assistant Stage Manager: Meera David
Assistant Stage Manager: Natalie Kenyon
Production Assistant: Evelyn Errico-Huttler
Production Assistant: Kathrine Galitsky
About the Playwright
Katie Đỗ is a Vietnamese-American woman with a mouth from New Jersey. She’s a proud alum of the Sống Collective's Việt Writers Lab and the Public’s Emerging Writers Group. Do is also the inaugural recipient of Merrimack Repertory Theatre’s Sokhary Chau Playwriting Fellowship.
Her play love you long time (already) was in Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Repertory, Atlantic Theater Company's MixFest, and is featured on the 2023 Kilroy’s Web. Her play who hurt you? was developed at the Sống Collective, The Public Theater, and Orlando Shakes.
She also wrote on the Netflix show Partner Track and is currently in development with MACRO.
About the Director
Shyama Nithiananda is a Sri Lankan - American director from Texas and a first-year MFA student. While based in Dallas, Shyama worked as a director, actor, playwright, and taught theatre to high school seniors. She is interested in examining community intersections in her work and how converging communities inform our sense of responsibility to each other. She holds a BFA in Theatre Studies from Southern Methodist University.
Dallas / Fort Worth directing credits include Lizzie (Theatre Three) and Guards at the Taj (Stage West Theatre).
Nerve Endings
Written by Quentin Nguyen-duy | Directed by Kieran Beccia
About the Show
Ansel and Izzy are at a wedding neither of them wants to be at. They’re also stuck in a time loop neither can get out of. Over the course of an evening – or maybe an eternity – they must revisit their situationship, a complicated history, and a lifetime of regrets and unspoken feelings before it's too late. NERVE ENDINGS looks at the cyclical nature of relationships and what it takes to mend a severed connection.
Content Warning
This production includes:
- Flashing lights
- Strong language
- Depictions of alcoholism and mental illness
- Discussions of abortion, addiction/substance abuse, self-harm, and suicide
Director's Note
I think we all have relationships in our lives that we have not fully recovered from and we carry that baggage with us. Nerve Endings questions whether we can truly move forward without unpacking the past.
We meet Izzy and Ansel at a point where they are both deeply disappointed with the way their lives have gone. They feel static, inert, and unable to move beyond their current stagnation. But their chance meeting, after six years of not speaking, offers the possibility of shaking them out of their malaise, if they can only genuinely confront the ways that they hurt each other in the past.
This play makes me think about the opportunity for forgiveness, and when we choose to offer that opportunity: both to others and to ourselves. Thank you for joining us on this journey!
The Cast
Izzy: Mai Lan Nguyen
Ansel: Ricardo Lozano
Understudies
U/S Izzy: Simone Franchino
U/S Ansel: Tyler Martinez
Creative Team
Director: Kieran Beccia
Playwright: Quentin Nguyen-duy
Scenic Designer: Abigail Miranda
Costume Designer: Alexis Ordonez
Lighting Designer: Melody Vilitchai
Sound Designer: Ash Floyd
Assistant Director: Simone Franchino
Playwright: Quentin Nguyen-duy
Scenic Designer: Abigail Miranda
Costume Designer: Alexis Ordonez
Lighting Designer: Melody Vilitchai
Sound Designer: Ash Floyd
Assistant Director: Simone Franchino
Stage Management Team
Production Stage Manager: Tess Twomey
Assistant Stage Manager: Meera David
Assistant Stage Manager: Natalie Kenyon
Production Assistant: Evelyn Errico-Huttler
Production Assistant: Kathrine Galitsky
About the Playwright
Quentin Nguyen-duy is a mixed Việt-American playwright, actor, and screenwriter who was brought up in a series of flyover states in the mid/pacific northwest.
He is an alum of the Sống Collective's Việt Writers Lab, Company One’s PlayLab Circuit, and the recipient of Chisa Hutchinson’s Signpost Fellowship where he was formally mentored by chris peña.
His play Amputees was first produced as part of the BU Fringe Festival, and read in the Asian-American Playwright Collective’s ArtsEmerson and Cape Cod festivals in 2019, as well as in 2021 by Sanguine Theatre NYC. Quentin also wrote for Boston Lyric Opera’s digital opera series “desert in,” which was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Noteworthy Project.
In high school he studied theatre at Interlochen Arts Academy before attending Oberlin, then Boston University where he graduated with a BFA in Theatre Arts under the mentorship of Kirsten Greenidge and Kristin Leahey.
About the Director
Kieran Beccia is a California-based director and dramaturg. Their directing work has been produced at The Forum Collective, Cutting Ball Theater, Quantum Dragon Theater, FaultLine Theater, Fuse Theater, Dragon Theater, Utopia Theater Project, and more. A TITAN Award winner and two-time CA$H Grant recipient, Kieran is also a company member at the Oakland Theater Project, a former artistic director of the U.C. Santa Cruz poor theatre performance lab, Barnstorm, and a founding member of The Forum Collective.
Kieran has worked in Literary Management for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Parity Productions, and The Forum Collective. A fierce champion of new plays and living writers, Kieran is drawn to plays that poke at the seams of our social fabric to expose contradictions and challenge entrenched bias.
Kieran is also a Casting Director and owner of the Casting Collective, an organization dedicated to promoting local Bay Area actors and changing the demographics on Bay Area stages.