Roger Q. Mason’s play Bill will receive a developmental reading at Open Jar Studios July 27 at 7 PM. PlayPenn is staging the reading as part of their 2026 New Play Development Conference.
Danilo Gambini will direct the reading of the sequel to Mason’s critically acclaimed play Lavender Men. The work dissects Constitutional history to determine who was intentionally excluded from the founding vision of “We, the People.” The play is led by the character Taffeta, a Black, queer femme who refuses to be this country’s janitor once again. As she honors a system that feasted on her people’s rights, the three “Founding Muthafuckaz” try to enlist her to build them a new nation for free, but a stranger named Bill forces her to confront whether the country she’s inherited is worth fighting for, or if it deserves to be rebuilt at all.
The cast will include Charlie Thurston (Liberation) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Paine, Nick Jonczak (Dopplebanger) as Founding Mothafucka Thomas Jefferson, David Ingram (New Voices Festival) as Founding Mothafucka Ben Franklin, Anthony Martinez-Briggs (The America Play) as Bill, and Roger Q. Mason (Lavender Men) as Taffeta with dramaturgy by Amrita Ramanan (The Waterfall). Additional casting will be announced later this month.
For tickets and more information, visit here.