2026 Summer Series

Thursday, August 27, 2026
4pm & 8pm
Q&A to follow each reading

Featuring
New Plays by Julia Izumi and Megan Tabaque

We are downtown this summer!
The New Vic / Ensemble Theatre Company
33 W. Victoria Street
Santa Barbara

photo of empty chairs, waiting to be filled by student actors

THE BANANA FACTORY
by Julia Izumi
directed by Kate Bergstrom

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THE RINK AT THE END OF THE WORLD
by Megan Tabaque
directed by Risa Brainin

featuring guest artists Mitchell Thomas and Annie Torsiglieri

 
When an entire country club of athletes get taken out by a rogue bout of measles, a motley crew of mall-rink figure skaters find themselves on a flight to Croatia to compete in the World Synchronized Figure Skating Championships as first-alternates. As they train, complain, destroy, and rebuild each other on their quest to achieve the impossible, something even darker looms on the edges of the global stage: a nuclear arms race.

The Playwrights...

headshot of Julia IzumiJulia Izumi’s works include Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater), Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt… (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company/New Georges), miku, and the gods. (ArtsWest), Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (Rorschach Theatre, Helen Hayes Award Nomination), and others. Her work has been developed at MTC, Clubbed Thumb, Berkeley Rep, Portland Center Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and more. Honors include the Kerry English Award and KCACTF’s Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award. Former Civilians R&D Group and Clubbed Thumb ECWG Member. Current New Dramatists Resident. Current commissions: True Love Productions, MTC/Sloan, Seattle Rep. MFA: Brown University. 

Megan Tabaque headshot

Megan Tabaque (she/her) is a playwright, director, and educator who grew up in the suburbs of Florida's Gulf Coast. She writes to create new mythologies using pop cultural tropes as accessible entry points. Her play Britney Approximately (an adaptation of Medea remixed with Britney Spears conservatorship) played to sold-out audiences in Atlanta as part of Theater Emory's 2023 season. Only Reason (co-written with Tony-nominated playwright, Kimberly Bellflower) was nominated for Best New Play by Austin's Critic Circle. Among her other plays: Cycle Play, Batman Returns Returns, Edward Normal Hands, and The Summer Sauron Turned Pretty. Also The Melvin Invention, Antigone's Last Birthday, Phaeton's Driving Test, and Brain Freeze (co-written with Drew Paryzer).

Awards include the Michener Fellowship, Kundiman Fiction Fellowship, Emory Playwriting Fellowship, 4 Seasons Residency, and Sewanee Writers' Conference Scholar. She has been a finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference and Seattle Public Theater Emerald Prize and a Semifinalist for the New Dramatist Residency, Princess Grace Award, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and Playwrights' Realm Scratchpad Series.

Megan has an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX and has taught creative writing at Benington College, Emory University, UT Austin, and at non-profit programs for youth across the U.S. She currently resides in Los Angeles, where she works as an Assistant Professor of Playwriting, Screenwriting, and Acting at UC Riverside.