Announcing: Fresh Ink Theatre’s 2025-2026 Season Plays, Playwrights, and New Artistic Leadership!

Now in our third year of an updated submissions cycle for playwriting residencies crafted with equity at the heart, Fresh Ink is thrilled to share our 2025-2026 season playwrights, plays, and finalists! This season holds up a mirror to our shadow selves, and asks the question: when things in the world get dark, do you push the darkness away, or confront it? This season answers that question in a multitude of genres and arenas, from Black horror, to an allegorical wrestling drama, to looking at the present, head-on, in a community-oriented way.

We’re offering three residencies this season: our Ink Spot Residency includes both a workshop exploration and a public staged reading; our Development Residency, which includes two workshops and a public staged reading; and our Inkubation Residency, which pairs a playwright with a dramaturg for one-on-one development work for an entire season. We may have a few more residencies up our sleeve to be announced at a later date - so stay tuned for continued exciting announcements!

But before we get to our titles, we want to share what comes next with all things behind the scenes at Fresh Ink - we are in the midst of a bittersweet transition as our founding Artistic Director Louise Hamill took her final bow after 14 amazing seasons. Louise, we love you so much, and we are so proud to carry the legacy of what you have built for the Boston new work community. As one of few fringe theatre companies in Boston that produces new plays, Fresh Ink is among the only accessible resources for New England based artists to take a stab at a messy first draft, practice their craft in iterative ways, and connect with an entire community of new work enthusiasts. Louise, your dedication over the past 14 years has allowed this community to thrive - THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts!

So, what comes next? We’re thrilled to continue the same great work we always have, with an administrative model centering collective leadership. What that looks like is this: Hannah Levinson will continue to advise the literary team members alongside taking on new artistic leadership duties, and our team is actively seeking new artistic and literary co-leaders to broaden Fresh Ink’s reach and perspective; and Emily Larson will continue as Managing Director with an eye towards artistic excellence to keep our ship running smoothly. Fresh Ink has blossomed under the Literary Directorship of Hannah for the past 3 seasons, and Emily has shone in her first season with Fresh Ink as Managing Director. We would also be remiss to not mention that we could not be where we are today without our fiercely competent, creative, hard-working team members who are equally important to the creation of our work! So thank you to our amazing staff: Erin Fitzpatrick, Jolie Frazer, Katelyn Paddock, Bella Pisani, Katy Poludniak, Andrea Sala, and Mare Silva, and a shoutout to our incoming staff members Mamie Covell, Erin Davis, and Chloe Levine!

And now, announcing next season! Join Fresh Ink as we confront internalized homophobia in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-style 1980s wrestling match fever dream, excise ourselves from the invisible load at a dinner party… with a knife…, and learn the incredible impact of the women intertwined in Roxbury’s civil rights history.

We are proud to be able to offer a home for our season playwrights to grow these worlds while celebrating the stories they have to tell. Learn more below and join us!

development Residency

Kayfabe By Madison Mondeaux
Staged Reading Late February 2026
Boston Center for the Arts

Eric, a closeted gay professional wrestler, finds freedom in performing as Viktor Cain, a villainous character built from homophobic stereotypes. When Eric begins a secret romance with the up-and-coming rookie Adrian Mercury, he begins to lose control of his persona. As the boundary between the ring and the real world blurs, Eric must confront the parts of himself he's learned to hate, or relinquish his life to Viktor Cain.

Madison Mondeaux (she/her) is a playwright, fiction writer, stage manager, and enjoyer of all things spooky. As a queer woman, she is especially interested in seeking out and creating art that amplifies and uplifts her community. She graduated cum laude from Knox College with a BA in Creative Writing, with additional college honors in Playwriting and Directing, in 2015. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College (class of ’26), where she was the 24-25 Rod Parker Playwriting Fellow. Her play Red Wolf premiered at Emerson in March 2025 as part of that fellowship, to rave reviews. Madison’s plays have enjoyed productions nationally, including at Knox College, B Street Theatre, The Pulp Stage, the New School for the Arts and Academics, and more. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in Catch, Quiver, Cellar Door, and Stork magazines. She has stage managed for Rutabaga Story Co. and Portal Productions in Portland, OR. Madison was born and raised in Lake Oswego, OR. She currently lives in Newton, MA. She aspires to live in a swamp under a log, cackling and asking riddles of passers-by.

ink Spot Residency

OUR FRIEND LYSSA! By Nia Weeks
Staged Reading Late February 2026
Boston Center for the Arts

Lyssa is hosting a holiday dinner. Lyssa invites five of her bestest friends. Lyssa hides a knife in her pocket -- Lyssa is not herself tonight.

Hailing from Philadelphia, Nia Weeks is a young creative devoted to honoring the legacy of Black American women through writing and performance. While studying theater at Harvard College, she appeared in more than eight stage productions and two short films— her talents earning the 2025 Jonathan Levy Award for Acting. Nia has since stepped behind the curtain to focus on writing for both stage and screen. Our Friend Lyssa!—her professional playwriting debut—began as an undergraduate thesis that received high departmental honors and cum laude distinction. In addition to her budding career as a playwright, Nia also works as a musician and producer.

Ink-ubation Residency

Roxbury’s Leading Women by Ava Tiye Kinsey and Collin Knight

Melnea Cass, Ruth Batson, and Elma Lewis, all Roxbury natives, chose to speak truth to power to bring the needed resources, opportunities, and change to the African American communities from the 1930s-the 1990s. These women, though giants within many Boston communities, have not had their efforts fully explored and celebrated as they should be. This play seeks to examine their lives, their work, and their relationships with one another.

Ava Tiye Kinsey is an arts administrator and writer from Dallas, Texas. She is the Associate Editor of Poetry for A Gathering Together Journal. Her work has been published in A Gathering Together Journal, Blackberry: A Magazine, Dutch Kills Press, and midnight & indigo. A portion of her master’s thesis was published in Judson Jeffries’ The Black Panther Party in a City Near You.  Ava was named the runner-up for Prism International’s 2024 Grouse Grind Lit Prize for Short Forms for her short story, "Memories of Freedom Whilst Suffocating in Cotton."

2025/2026 Finalists

Congratulations to our brilliant, thought-provoking, innovative season finalists! These artists inspired us with their adventurous and unique plots, nuanced characters, and well-crafted relationships. We hope you will put these artists on your radar, support their work, and engage with them as collaborators. Make sure to look up to see their stars on the rise!

• The Adaptions by Aran Glynn

• the chariot reversed by Julia Hertzberg and Erin Davis 

• Olympic Hopefuls by Hortense Gerardo

• out of the fire: a choreopoem by Annalise “River” Guidry

• The Racial Mountain by Kayla Sessoms