THE OVEN

Summer 2023 Inaugural Writer’s Kitchen

The Oven is 3P’s writers’ kitchen, where six early-career writers meet weekly to generate a short (30 minute or less) new script over an 8-week collaborative process, which culminates in a public reading series in mid-July. Our inaugural cohort was facilitated by 3P co-founder Lee Melillo (and sous chef Alexandra Haddad), and sought to be a deeply collaborative, anti-hierarchical, and supportive community for writers of various disciplines and backgrounds to work, play, and connect with one another.

Our Summer 2023 cohort included Iz Gonzalez, Mollie Gordon, Alexandra Haddad, Lee Melillo, Marcus Scott, and Peter Vazquez. Oven-cooked pieces were presented at TheaterLab on July 12 and July 19 to sold-out crowds.

Check out the biographies of our cohort and photos from the readings below!

MAGICAL GIRLS DESERVE BREAKS TOO

by Iz Gonzalez
directed by Alexandra Haddad

The day has been saved, but that doesn't mean Team Heartsnatch Heartcatch is done fighting. After ghosting one another for several years, the girlies reconvene in an unsuspecting Barnes & Noble's Starbucks to debate getting back together after rumors about their former leader begin to spread. "Yellowjackets" meets "Sailor Moon" in this dramedy reflecting on appropriate apologies and undiscussed pockets of grief. When our minds know to let go, when does the rest of the body catch up? Can healing be wrong?

Featuring: Shuga Ohashi (Jasmine), Saman Peyman (Diana), Francesca Pinilla (Luna), Celeste Samson (Willow), and Giordana Simurdiak (Stage Directions).

untitled fanfiction play :).pdf

by Mollie Gordon
directed by Lee Melillo

Max is 17 years old and loves to write fanfiction. Their absolute favorite character from the book series they write about, Isabel, is their dream prom date, and their imagined perfect love. All of a sudden, Isabel is knocking on Max’s door – but not just one Isabel. Both the character as Max has envisioned her, and the character as the author originally imagined, have come barging into Max’s life in this sweet, comedic, and very queer riff on the teen rom-com tropes.

Featuring: Kali Clougherty (Isabel 1), Ryann Lynn Murphy (Iris), Francesca Pinilla (Isabel 2), Celeste Samson (Max), Giordana Simurdiak (Elizabeth/Mom), Christian Caro (Stage Directions).

HELEN IN HER HOMELAND

by Alexandra Haddad
directed by Kana Seiki

A meditation on the power and pain of beauty. Helen and Paris met, fled, started, and ended a war. A modern poetic and mythological retelling of what the face that launched a thousand ships might have seen, and said, in Troy.

Featuring: Melissa Bautista (Helen), Nora Canaday (The Girl), Spenser Valentine (Paris), and Leah Getz (Stage Directions)

THE FAIRY RING

by Lee Melillo
directed by Ethan Peña Mock

After losing out on the internship of a lifetime, Rowan realizes that “pulling herself up by the bootstraps” in a late-stage capitalist society might not be possible. Her Plan B? Shirk society altogether and get herself kidnapped by fairies, because that makes about as much sense as anything else at this point. A curious fae gets wind of her plans and attempts to uncover why literally anyone would ever want to do that. An exploration of the relationship between classism, elitism, and mental health through an urban fantasy lens.

Featuring: Leah Getz (Rowan), Aaron Dorelien (Donn), Christian Caro (Fairy/Shoemaker), and Ethan Peña Mock (Stage Directions)

THE REDSHIRTS

by Marcus Scott
directed by Anna Mayo & Cora Therber

The Redshirts follows three low-ranking security personnel with a bone to pick. Sick-and-tired of being sick-and-tired of the frequent bloodshed from the ultra-violent invasions that occur on their coveted starship and the overlords that commandeer it, the trio decide to stage a mutiny and spark a rebellion unlike anything anyone has ever seen. There's just a catch-22: There may be a lot more cannon fodder and sacrificial lambs when the battle is over.

Featuring: Aaron Dorelien (Erasto), Devin Lee (Ryōsuke), Megan Lomax (Zanele), Spenser Valentine (The Manager), and Melissa Bautista (Stage Directions).

THE WONDERFUL MISADVENTURES OF STEVE WILLY

by Peter Vazquez
directed by Ethan Peña Mock

Steve Willy presents himself as a happy-go-lucky man who smokes copious amounts of marijuana. He rarely has to buy his own weed, because people just love smoking with him so much. However, underneath his stoned exterior, trauma and paranoia linger. He’s running from something. But as much as his story meanders, Steve is a good hang. His life is a balancing act, and as much he loves to get high, what goes up must come down…

Featuring: Max Carlson (Steve Willy), Kali Clougherty (Alethia/Voices), Saman Peyman (Lee), Dylan Perez (Randy), Francesca Pinilla (Sofia), Christian Caro (Stage Directions).

  • Iz Gonzalez is a queer, latine playwright who recently graduated from Fordham University. They’re interested in exploring mental illness, mythos, trauma recovery and gender theory through their writing. Recent works include And This Is Where We and Night & Daedalus, which they both wrote and produced. Development Credits: The Dracula Files (Dramaturg), Constructed Realities (Devised), The Science Project (Science Sam). They were a member of the LAByrinth Theater Company’s Intensive Ensemble and had their play Waiting produced online by The Masked Collective.

  • Lee Melillo is a writer, director, and producer who will not shut up about living in Sunnyside, Queens. Recent writing credits include: a workshop of her play, The Broken Brain Breakup Game, produced by Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective, and Mommy at the Chain Theatre Festival. Upcoming: staged reading of her play Love Interest at the Tank. Her work explores particularities of the human condition and the identities and idiosyncrasies that inform how we interact with the world at large. Lee’s projects often explore themes of mental illness and neurodiversity; gender and sexuality; and financial, educational, and generational privilege. Lee is a co-founder of Personal Pizza Party, an NYC-based production company. leemelillo.com | IG: @leemelillo

  • Mollie Gordon is a playwright based in Brooklyn, NY. Her plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group, Athena Project, and Sarah Lawrence College. Mollie was a 2022 recipient of the David Lindsay-Abaire Award for Excellence in Playwriting, and a finalist for the 2023 New Perspectives Women’s Work Short Play LAB. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence in May ‘22 with a BA in Theatre and Writing. She loves to write queer utopias, combining elements of magical realism with an emphasis on expanding multifaceted queer representation for the theatre. Website: molliecgordon.com

  • Marcus Scott is a dramatist & journalist. Selected works: Tumbleweed (finalist: 2017 BAPF & the 2017 Festival of New American Plays at Austin Playhouse; semifinalist: 2022 O’Neill NPC, 2022 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2017 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), Sibling Rivalries (finalist: 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference & 2021 ATHE-KCACTF Judith Royer Excellence In Playwriting Award; semi-finalist: 2022 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2021 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award; long-listed: 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award), There Goes The Neighborhood (finalist: 2023 Blue Ink Playwriting Award) & Cherry Bomb (recipient: 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In- Residence). Heartbeat Opera commissioned Scott to adapt Beethoven’s “Fidelio” (Co-writer; The Met Museum; NYT Critic’s Pick).

  • Alex Haddad works frequently with playwrights, directing premieres of new plays, including Diana Metzger’s Beach Week, Phanésia Pharel’s Black Women are the moon, Harris Solomon’s Bard Overboard, and Lee Melillo’s The Broken Brain Breakup Game. She centers those who are not wholly represented, including women, the queer community, and people of the Global Majority, making theatre that feels epic, mythic, and intimate. She was McCarter’s Artistic Assistant/BOLD Fellow from 2021-2023, during which she was the first intimacy professional to choreograph at McCarter. She graduated from Barnard with a major in theatre (directing), and a minor in English (classics). alexandradarcyhaddad.com

  • My name is Peter Vazquez, and I am a rising senior at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center. I am a film & television major, and an independent filmmaker with an ambition to become a writer/director of feature-length films seen in theaters. Since I moved to NYC, I have been writing screenplays and directing short films. Cinema is my passion, but I am a storyteller at heart. Through my work, I often explore themes of addiction, sexuality, and mental illness. If my work were to help at least one person feel less alone, then I will feel successful.