2025 Festival

Four Plays ~ Two Days

poster for Amplify Festival

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The Plays...

The Crossing Party
by Leo Cabranes-Grant
directed by Sara Rademacher

Two American families --one anglo, one mexican-- intersect their histories in Los Angeles through the friendship of their children. Their evident class and ethnic differences are complicated by the fact that the political environment of the United States has become less welcoming to migrants.  Building on the topic of crossings, the play fluidly mixes times and spaces: This is a world in which boundaries are challenged so often that demarcations between memory and actuality are almost totally collapsed. Confronting borders is an everyday labor for these characters, some of which are dead, while others are still living or moving in-between. Like a public mural, the play intentionally juxtaposes and overlaps cultures, desires, and orientations.
 

that drive thru monterey
by matthew paul olmos
directed by Rose Portillo

Inspired by the life of my mother. The story of a Mexican-American woman in 1971 Los Angeles as she experiences a first, nerdy love. Throughout the courtship, she experiences mysterious premonitions of what lies ahead in her life and how the ever’present machismo will ultimately bring her heartbreak as it gets passed down from fathers to sons; generation to generation.
 

Masters of Fine Arts
by A. Rey Pamatmat
directed by Katherine Chou

A spy apologizes, and a young man tries to name his fears, as two friends see the future, and some aliens smell ALL the smells. Hidden within a play with no story, is the story of five MFA candidates arguing about whether plays need to have stories… by telling each other stories.

 

The Rink at the End of the World
by Megan Tabaque
directed by Risa Brainin

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 darker looms on the edges of the global stage: a nuclear arms race.

 

The Playwrights...

Leo Cabranes-Grant headshotLeo Cabranes-Grant After finishing his Ph. D. in Golden Age Spanish Drama (Harvard University, 1996), Leo Cabranes-Grant has pursued a career that combines scholarly and artistic endeavors. His book Lope de Vega and the Uses of Repetition (Madrid, 2004) analyzes the diverse strategies deployed by Lope de Vega in order to create a literary practice in which tragicomedy became the model for national and personal self-fashionings. Cabranes-Grant has published articles in Celestinesca, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Profession (PMLA), Theatre Research International, and Theatre Journal. Recently, his article “From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico” (Theatre Journal, 63, 2011) received both the ATHE Award for Outstanding Article and the Honorable Mention for the Oscar Brockett Essay Price from ASTR (both in 2012). His collection of plays Chat Room and Other Latino Plays (Floricanto Press, 2007) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His play The Art of Painting won the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture Award (2005) and his play The Ides of March won the Asunción Award from the company Pregones in New York (2011). Cabranes-Grant was also Associate Editor (2008-2010) and Editor (2010-2012) of the prestigious journal Theatre Survey, published by Cambridge University Press and the American Society for Theatre Research. At the moment Cabranes-Grant is finalizing his next project, titled Networks of Performance, in which he studies intercultural transformations in Colonial Mexico from 1566 to 1690. Two more projects are also in the making: Re-Possessed Islands: The Poetics of Caribbean Drama (an exploration of contemporary performative trends on that region) and The Carnival of Philosophy (a visitation of the theatrical tropes utilized by S. Kierkegaard and G. Deleuze).

headshot of matthew paul oleosmatthew paul olmos is a Mexican-American playwright who focuses on the creation of space for marginalized, underrepresented communities and gives them poetics and theatricality. While his work is always personal, it is aimed at reaching across socio’political boundaries, showing the ridiculous of how separate we are, and illuminating hope for future generations.

He is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient, inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Fellow, Echo Theater Company Resident Playwright, lifetime Ensemble Studio Theatre member and Sloan Commission recipient, Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and two-time Venturous Playwright Fellowship nominee. Previous Actors’ Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival Commission, Arizona Theatre Company’s National Latine Playwriting Awardee, Baryshnikov Arts Center Resident Artist, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Resident Artist, Center Theatre Group LA Playwright, Drama League nominee, Geffen Playhouse Writers Room, Ingram New Works at Nashville Repertory, two-time INTAR H.P.R.L., a proud Kilroys nominator, New York Theatre Workshop Fellow, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Black Swan Lab, two-time Ojai Playwrights Conference, inaugural Primary Stages Creative Development Grantee and Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, Princess Grace Awardee in Playwriting, Repertorio Español Miranda Family Nuestra Voces Playwriting Awardee.
 
He spent two years as a Mabou Mines/SUITE Resident Artist being mentored by Ruth Maleczech, was chosen/mentored by Taylor Mac for Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project, and was La MaMa e.t.c.'s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Awardee as selected by Sam Shepard.
 
He recently world’premiered his newest play in Steppenwolf’s 23’24 season. His work has been presented nationally and internationally, taught in university, and is published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French and NoPassport Press. He was introduced to playwriting during his undergrad at UC Santa Barbara. 
 

headshot of Rey Pamatmat

A. Rey Pamatmat’s plays include Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Actors Theatre of Louisville), after all the terrible things I do (Milwaukee Rep), House Rules (Ma-Yi), Thunder Above, Deeps Below (Second Generation), A Spare Me (Waterwell), and DEVIANT. His most recent work includes True / Story, based on a true story, Masters of Fine Arts, and Safe, Three Queer Plays, which follows the seismic changes in Queer America through a gay man of color’s life. Rey’s plays have been translated into Spanish and Russian, performed in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Russia, and published by Concord Theatricals, Playscripts, Cambria Press, and Vintage. Television work includes The Wilds and N0S4A2. Rey was a founding member and former co-director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, and was a PoNY, Hodder, and Princess Grace Fellow.

headshot of Megan TabaqueMegan Tabaque is Filipina-Canadian writer, actor, and arts educator. Her work has been developed, commissioned, and produced by the Alliance Theater, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Tofte Lake Center, the Workshop Theater, Paper Chairs, and Theatrical Outfit among others. She is a James A. Michener Fellow, Kundiman Fiction Fellow, Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar, Seattle Public Theater Emerald Prize finalist, Playwrights’ Realm Scratchpad Series semi-finalist, was the 2021 - 2023 Emory Playwriting Fellow, and is the 2024 - 2025 Four Seasons Resident Playwright. She’s also written for the immersive weirdos at Meow Wolf, assisted award winning TV writer Sheila Callaghan, and taught creative writing at Bennington College, Emory University, and UT Austin. Megan earned her MFA in Playwriting and Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. She currently resides in Los Angeles, where she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Playwriting at the University of California Riverside.

 

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