PLAYxPLAY was a free, staged-reading series that highlighted a singular emerging playwright by presenting an evening of that artist’s works as directed by a rotating group of directors and a company of collaborating actors. The series offered an audience the rare opportunity to see a wide range of a single writer's voice in one evening, while simultaneously allowing a writer to experience a variety of interpretations of their work by an array of artists.
The series was originally conceived and founded by directors Nik Aliye, Jake Beckhard, and Lauren Zeftel in 2015 and featured work of T. Adamson, Sam Corbin, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, and Matthew Minnicino.
2018 resurrected PLAYxPLAY under the leadership of Jake Beckhard, Bryn Herdrich, and Lauren Zeftel who acted as co-producers as well as rotating resident directors alongside guest directors. The featured playwrights were Serena Berman, Megan Chan Meinero, Ren Dara Santiago, Jahna Ferron-Smith, Nazareth Hassan, Lily Houghton, Tom Nieboer, Celine Song, Lizzie Stern, Jona Tarlin, and Emily Zemba.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City canceled the planned PLAYxPLAY programming for spring 2020 and the series came to a close. In the end, PLAYxPLAY facilitated collaborations between 15 playwrights, 23 directors, and over 200 actors in free events for the public.