Michael Urie Introduces Pride Plays 2025

When actor Michael Urie and colleagues Doug Nevin and Nick Mayo founded the Pride Plays festival of new queer theater six years ago, it was because they had noticed the catch-22 of the theatrical landscape. To get ahead, you need to have experience, but how do you get that experience if no one’s offering it to you?

“There was a moment,” Urie notes, “where I realized that I kept getting jobs that Jesse Tyler Ferguson couldn’t do, and he would take the jobs that I couldn’t do. We’re similar ages, we’ve both been on TV, we both do theater, and we’re funny. But we’re not actually that alike, and yet, we are circling each other all the time. There have to be people who can’t get into that conversation that should be. How are we supposed to give a queer artist an opportunity if you’re only looking for ones that are well-known?”

Thus, the first Pride Plays was born in 2019. The festival has weathered storms like Covid, shutdowns, cross-country moves (Urie resides partially in LA now due to filming commitments for his series Shrinking), and a general decrease in developmental opportunities for new writers. This year’s edition takes place on June 23 at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, and the readings are free.

While the festival’s programmers (a group that has been expanded to include Sam Gravitte, Sammy Lopez, and Ibi Owolabi) have managed to keep the free reading series small and mighty, Urie has noticed a crucial expansion. “Our reach is bigger,” he says. “There are more plays than ever for us to consider, and they’re getting better and better.”

Here, Urie discusses the four new works that make up this year’s Pride Plays, and tells us why they’re destined for greatness.

Cecilia Gentili’s Red Ink
Developed with and directed by Nic Cory
Presented in association with Breaking the Binary Theatre
Reading time: 1:00pm | Newman Mills Theater

“We usually do staged readings, and sometimes people get ambitious, which we love.

Cecilia Gentili’s Red Ink is going to be a little bit more produced than we usually are, because Breaking the Binary Theatre [and producers Elliot Page & PAGEBOY Productions, Sara Ramirez, Queer Arts Coalition, and Nic Cory] are taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This is basically a preview for that.

Nic Corey, who’s our old pal and directed the streamed version of Buyer and Cellar that we did during the pandemic, is directing. It’ll be fun for audience to see something that’s more fully realized. Certainly, we imagine hope that all these plays go on to get full productions somewhere [like this]. Maybe someday…”

Tremolo
By Regan Moro
Directed by Sivan Battat
Presented in association with Fault Line Theatre
Reading time: 2:30pm | Newman Mills Theater

“I love a Chekhov translation, and this is a big, queer Seagull that really hits home. There’s a found family aspect that’s so prevalent in the queer community, and you have a lesbian nesting on a lake. It’s got a bit of Love! Valour! Compassion!, a bit of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, and a bit of The Seagull.

There have been so many developmental opportunities for plays that went away in the last few years. There used to be more avenues for plays to get some time in a room. We’re partnering with Fault Line Theatre, who also happened to be doing a reading of it a week earlier. The person directing for Fault Line wasn’t available, so we’re giving a new director an opportunity to sort of take it to the next step. It’s nice to see that there are other companies that are game to partner and do it together.”

Pony
By Sylvan Oswald
Directed by Will Davis
Reading time: 8:00pm | Newman Mills Theater

“Many of the queer plays that are considered canon plays are kind of written by cis white guys. I was talking to Will Davis, who runs Rattlestick, about what we can do, and he pitched Pony.

Pony has been kicking around for a while. It’s exciting because it’s an early play by a trans writer. It’s been published, it’s been done, but it hasn’t reached as far as it should. Will was like, “We can make this one canon,” and my head exploded and I stopped in my tracks, and I thought “Yes, we totally can.”

The One Who Loves You So
By Arun Wellandawe-Prematilleke
Directed by Emma Went
Reading time: 8:00pm | Ground Floor Rehearsal Studio

“This is a really cool new play. It’s a very simple and beautiful play about forbidden love in Sri Lanka.

Obviously, our country is in such a strange place right now. But we enjoy so many liberties as queer people in this country. There are still so many places where it ranges from taboo to totally illegal. You risk death by being queer.

So, it’s important for us to keep pushing these narratives out there too.”