In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot

A quietly revolutionary ensemble portrait of queer aging and family, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot’s cast includes Barsha (f/k/a Debra Barsha; composer: Radiant Baby, Sophie, Songs from an Unmade Bed) as Horowitz, Sandra Caldwell (Broadway: Buddy the Buddy Holly Story, Sophisticated Ladies; Off-Broadway: Charm) as El, Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Playwrights: Men on Boats; Broadway: The Skin of Our Teeth, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play) as Jen, Ianne Fields Stewart (TV: Dash & Lily, The Bold Type, Pose) as Sara, Deirdre Lovejoy (Broadway: Lucky Guy, The Gathering; TV: The Wire) as Ani, Tulis McCall (Off-Broadway: What Everywoman Knows, How We Love/F*ck; Regional: Running with Scissors) as Ash, and Pooya Mohseni (TV: Law & Order: SVU, Madam Secretary; Regional: White Snake) as Maribel. The creative team includes Emmie Finckel (scenic design), Mel Ng (costume design), Cha See (lighting design), Sinan Refik Zafar (sound design), Gigi Buffington (voice and text and dialect coach), Zeina Salame (dramaturg), and Alex Might (intimacy coordinator). Ryan Gohsman is the production stage manager, and Holly Adam is the assistant stage manager.In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is presented in association with Breaking the Binary Theatre, whose third annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival Playwrights Horizons will host, October 21 - 27, 2024, in its Peter Jay Sharp Theater.In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot follows a band of queer warehouse workers as they travel in their vans from job to job, escaping the encroaching coastline, and searching for signs of the people they’ve lost along the way. The play celebrates warmth and care in an unlikely tribute to the resilience of queer community. Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield said, “If there’s a common thread among plays in our new season, it’s that each of these works is driven by its characters’ search for some connection with other humans in a time that feels isolated and callous. Sarah’s play imagines a not-so-far-fetched future in which capitalist values have bloated to Orwellian proportions, and climate disaster is a daily threat. And yet, what Sarah finds there is a hard-won hope, focusing on this ensemble of warehouse workers: a pack who travel together and look out for one another. In this way, they assert their human-ness in defiance of an inhumane world, a rebellion that’s sweet and decidedly queer.”

Mantell explains, “So many of our important revolutionary movements have been sparked and sustained by people I rarely see at the center of our stories. Because plays are both art and a hiring document, I also wrote this play to increase the number of roles available to women, trans, and nonbinary actors in the second half of their careers when so many artists are just reaching the peak of their abilities. The plays we write create jobs, and if we’re lucky, those plays create a lot of jobs. Our industry is made up of the people we’ve bothered to imagine and shuts out the people we haven’t. I began this play in a moment when I was having a hard time picturing a real future for myself—and I realized part of the reason is that we’ve pushed out a lot of the people who are aging ahead of me. It means a lot to me to write for this intergenerational company of extraordinary actors, many of whom are older than me."

Says Battat, “A lot of the people who are forced to live as itinerant workers are doing so because they don't have other choices, because our country has fundamentally failed them. One thing in your life can go wrong and suddenly you’re stuck in a cycle, doing manual labor into your 70s. These characters have had no path out of class struggle. One of the most important things about the play is how this community has formed as a result of that—that no one, structurally speaking, is looking out for us, so we’ll do it for each other.”

Mantell adds “Women, trans, and nonbinary artists deserve to be center stage. The canon has always held white male actors from cradle to grave and we deserve those kinds of futures too. I have been reliably informed that this was one of the most extensive casting processes in Playwrights Horizons history and I believe it. Come see what our extraordinary company of artists has made. Similarly, I haven’t seen a lot of playwrights who the field perceives as female get a career break over the age of 40. It’s something I have honestly been scared about—and I don’t know if I would have had the chance to put a play like this into the theater world in this big way if I was perceived as closer to the age of my characters.”

Battat has conceived the production to highlight the physical nature of characters’ labor—with actors themselves moving elements of the world they inhabit. For the play’s design, she worked with Mantell and scenic designer Emmie Finckel to find the meeting point between utopia and dystopia. Battat says, “This play is in so many ways set in the edge where utopia and dystopia meet. For instance, we’ve gone through around 15 different versions even of the expanse of sky behind them — asking whether they’re in the most dystopian wasteland or against the most gorgeous mountains of Wyoming. We asked, as Sarah did when writing, what is the place where the worst version of this future meets something sublime and beautiful?”

Brimming with compassion, invention, and comedy, the season’s limitlessly profound works center humans approaching darkness with a drive to find each other within it. Other works this season include Gabriel Kahane’s Magnificent Bird/Book of Travelers (September 24–October 6), Francesca D’Uva’s This Is My Favorite Song (Fall 2024), Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities (Winter 2025), Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water (Spring 2025), and a co-production TBA with Soho Rep.

About Sarah Mantell
Sarah Mantell (they/them) is the recipient of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot. Their other plays include The Good Guys, Tiny, Fight Call, and Everything That Never Happened (coming to Baltimore Center Stage this winter) They have worked with Boston Court Pasadena, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Playwrights Realm, Second Stage, Breaking the Binary Festival, The Folger, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Sarah has been awarded residencies with MacDowell, Yaddo, Wildacres, Hedgebrook, Fresh Ground Pepper, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, as well as a Toulmin grant, an Edgerton Foundation grant, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship. MFA Yale School of Drama.About Sivan Battat
Sivan Battat (she/they) is a theater director & cultural organizer. Recent credits include: Problems Between Sisters by Julia May Jonas (Studio Theatre, World Premiere), Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi (Yale Repertory Theatre), Layalina by Martin Yousif Zebari (Goodman Theatre, World Premiere), Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery (Studio Theatre), Backstroke Boys by Xavier Clark (Fault Line Theatre, Workshop Production), Brass Knuckles by Yussef El Guindi (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Coexistence My Ass by Noam Shuster (Edinburgh Fringe, World Premiere), Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress (AD, Broadway). Sivan has developed work with companies including Roundabout, New York Theatre Workshop, the Atlantic, Breaking the Binary, Ars Nova, Berkeley Rep, Joe’s Pub, New Georges, New York Stage & Film, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Long Wharf, MCC, Mercury Store and more. Sivan is also the Director of New Work Development at Noor Theatre Company, a NYC based company dedicated to supporting the work of artists of Middle Eastern and North African descent. Fellowships include: Roundabout Directing Fellow, Drama League Directing Fellow, TCG Rising Leaders of Color.About the Cast
Barsha (f/k/a Debra Barsha) (Horowitz) (she/they). Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Associate Conductor: Jersey Boys, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, Company Pianist: Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Select Off-Broadway: Composer and Co-Lyricist of Radiant Baby (Public Theatre, dir. George C. Wolfe), Actor: Swingtime Canteen (Blue Angel), NY Animals (Bedlam). One-Person Shows: Go To Your Womb and A Womb With a View (Cherry Lane). Awards: Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Award. Next up: Last Call at Dottie’s: A Dyke Cabaret w/ Jo Lampert (dir. Sivan Battat)
 
Sandra Caldwell (El) (she/her), from Washington DC, has garnered acclaim in theater, film, TV, and music, including the one-woman shows The Guide to Being Fabulous, In My Own Lane, and Acoustically Yours. She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for her lead role as Phyllis in the Duke Ellington revue Sophisticated Ladies. Caldwell made her Broadway debut in the original company of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Credits include Annie Get Your Gun, directed by Donna Feore; Coming Through Slaughter, directed by Richard Rose; Anything That Move, and written by Ann-Marie MacDonald. She portrayed Darlene Andrews, an outspoken trans advocate based on Miss Gloria Allen, in the groundbreaking production of Charm for MCC Theater. Other theater credits include Beehive, Leader of the Pack, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and, with Play On Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors. 
 
Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Jen) (she/her). Playwrights Horizons: Men on Boats. Broadway: The Skin of Our Teeth, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play and Well. Off-Broadway: Where We Stand (also author. Lucille Lortel, Drama League, AUDELCO, Broadway Black award nominee), In the Footprint (The Civilians), and Shipwrecked! An Entertainment (Primary Stages). Film: The Life List, The Book of Henry, The English Teacher, and The Wrestler. TV:  New Amsterdam, Happy, Rubicon, Mercy, all Law and Orders, High Maintenance, The Night Of, Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, A Gifted Man, and The Sopranos.

Ianne Fields Stewart (Sara) (they/them) is a multi-hyphenate creative working at the intersection of art, activism, and pleasure. Their work spans across many fields, including theater, film, dance, creative writing, arts administration, and social justice. They are dedicated to creating art, facilitating spaces, and influencing organizational practices that allow Black queer and trans people to radically luxuriate in their own joy. To put it simply, she wants to make their people feel good. Ianne has performed at Lincoln Center with Sydnie L. Moseley Dances and as a company member with MOD Arts Dance Collective (2023-24 season). Ianne made their regional writing debut as the book writer for A Complicated Woman at Goodspeed Musicals in Spring 2024. Ianne has worked in productions at Joe’s Pub, Dixon Place, La Mama, and many more. Other film/TV: Dash & Lily (Roberta), The Bold Type (Chloe Blair), and Pose (Pretty Bartender). 2022 League of Professional Theatre Women honoree.
 
Deirdre Lovejoy (Ani). Playwrights Horizons: The Water Children. Broadway: Lucky Guy (George C. Wolfe, with Tom Hanks), Six Degrees of Separation (Original Production), The Gathering, Getting and Spending. Off Broadway: How I Learned to Drive (Lil Bit, Original Production). Macbeth (Old Globe/Lady M), POTUS  (Geffen Playhouse/Bernie, Berkeley Rep/Harriet).TV: Rhonda Pearlman on The Wire, Cynthia Panabaker on The Blacklist, Films include Step Up, Steven Speiberg’s The Post.  BFA University of Evansville, MFA NYU.

Tulis McCall (Ash) (she/her). Playwrights Horizons debut. Past credits include How We Love/F*ck at Cherry Lane Theatre.  Three one woman shows: What Everywoman Knows, national tour and The Public Theater, Running With Scissors (both L.A. Times Critic’s Choice), and All In The Timing. Cabaret: Tulis Talks and Sings, directed by Austin Pendleton. Hosted Monologues and Madness 2003 to 2020. Editor of The Front Row Center, a theater review site. Podcast of Monday Musings can be found at www.tulismccall.com.

Pooya Mohseni (Maribel) Playwrights Horizons debut. Theater credits include English (The Old Globe), The Sex Party (Menier Chocolate Factory - London), English (Atlantic), Chonburi Hotel & The Butterfly Club (Williamstown Theater Festival), White Snake (Baltimore Center Stage), She/He/Me (National Queer Theater), Our Town (Pride Plays), Galatea (WP Theater), The Good Muslim (EST). Film: See You Then, Terrifier, Always Azizam. TV: The Walking Dead: Dead Cty, Law & Order: SVU, Big Dogs, Falling Water, Madam Secretary. Maggie Flanigan Studio.About the Creative Team

Emmie Finckel (Scenic Designer) (they/them). Playwrights debut. Off-Broadway: Comedy of Errors (Public Theater: Mobile Unit), 53% Of (2^nd Stage), The Watering Hole (Signature Theatre), In the Penal Colony (NYTW Next Door), Medea: Re-Versed (Red Bull). Regional: Becoming A Man (A.R.T.), As You Like It (La Jolla Playhouse), Problems Between Sisters (Studio Theater), The Hot Wing King (Hartford Stage), Sanctuary City (TheaterWorks Hartford), the ripple, the wave, that carried me home (Yale Repertory Theater). MFA: Yale.

Mel Ng (Costume Designer) (she/her) is a queer femme artist and costume designer, born in Hong Kong and raised in Singapore, who came to the theater as a site for community-driven change. She loves stories and projects that center queer themes, diverse bodies, music, and adventurous movement, and her work honors the needs and desires of the body, empowering and affirming her collaborators through clothing. Playwrights Horizons debut. Credits include Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel By (The Public Theater, dir Tara Ahmadinejad) and Ethan Luk’s Flight of a Legless Bird (Princeton University, dir Ethan Luk). Proud member of IATSE Local USA 829, Wingspace Theatrical Design. Formerly on theatre design faculty at NYU-Playwrights Horizons Theater School. BA, University of Chicago, MFA University of California-San Diego.

Cha See (Lighting Designer) (she/her) is an Obie Award-winning lighting designer from Manila, Philippines. Playwrights Horizons: Wet Brain (with MCC; Obie Special Citations, Lortel nomination for Outstanding Lighting Design), What to Send Up When It Goes Down (with BAM, also at A.R.T. and the Public Theater). Other highlights include Oh Mary! (Lyceum Theatre); Babbitt (La Jolla Playhouse); JORDANS (Public Theater); Is It Thursday Yet? (La Jolla, PAC NYC); You Will Get Sick (Roundabout), On That Day in Amsterdam (Drama Desk and Lortel Nominations for Outstanding Lighting Design), The Seagull/Woodstock, NY, and one in two (The New Group); Sorry for Your Loss, The Fever, and Lucy (Audible Theater); soft (MCC). MFA NYU Tisch.

Sinan Refik Zafar (Sound Designer) (he/him). Playwrights Horizons: What to Send Up When It Goes Down, With You Were Here. Additional credits include What the Constitution Means to Me (Broadway, National Tour, NYTW); English (Broadway); What to Send Up When It Goes Down (National Tour); English (Obie Award) and Shhh (Atlantic Theater Company); Letters from Max (Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations, Signature Theatre); Which Way to the Stage, All the Natalie Portmans (MCC Theater); Lunar Eclipse, To My Girls (Second Stage); The Vagrant Trilogy, Cullud Wattah (The Public Theater); Montag (Soho Rep). M.F.A., Yale School of Drama.

Gigi Buffington (Voice and Text and Dialect Coach) (she/her). Playwrights Horizons: Nora, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Corsicana, Downstate, Catch As Catch Can, Stereophonic Broadway: Romeo & Juliet, Stereophonic, The Outsiders, JOB, Prayer For The French Republic, Grey House, Between Riverside & Crazy, Cost Of Living, Slave Play (Remount), The Minutes, Pass Over, Clyde’s, Linda Vista, Straight White Men. Select Off-Broadway: Jonah, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, King James, On Sugarland; Eight Seasons Steppenwolf; 1 Season Royal Shakespeare Company; Arts Professor, Tisch Drama, NYU.

Zeina Salame (Dramaturg) (she/her). Playwrights Horizons debut. Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theatre Conference dramaturgy: JuCoby Johnson’s 5, Deepak Kumar’s House of India, Alex Lin’s Chinese Republicans, LaDarrion Williams’ Hurt People, Gavin Creel’s Walk on Through, Christopher Anselmo and Jared Corak’s Fountain, abs wilson and Veronica Mansour’s LIGHTHOUSE. Select Regional and NYC directing assistantships, performance, literary consulting, dramaturgy: Artists Repertory, Guthrie, Woolly Mammoth, Noor Theatre. Assistant Professor, University of Vermont (PhD, MS, MA).

Alex Might (Intimacy Coordinator) Alex Might (Intimacy Coordinator). Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: POTUS. Select Off-Broadway and Regional: How to Defend Yourself (NYTW), RENT (Paper Mill Playhouse), The Wolves (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Fight Call (Breaking the Binary), backstroke boys (Fault Line), TWITCH (Williamstown), The Scarlet Letter (Two River).Stage Management
 
Ryan Gohsman (Production Stage Manager) (he/him). Playwrights Horizons: Staff Meal, The Light Years, Antlia Pneumatica, Detroit, Maple and Vine, ‘10-11 season Fellow. Broadway: Here Lies Love (also Public Theater; consultant for National Theater, London). Select Off-Broadway/NYC: Little Shop of Horrors (current revival); Mary Jane, Hundred Days (NYTW); Pretty Filthy (Civilians); anatomy theater, Thumbprint (PROTOTYPE); Signature.  Select Regional: A View from the Bridge (Long Wharf); Aquanetta (Bard SummerScape); Barrington Stage; Westport.  International: London’s Royal Opera; Edinburgh International Festival; Holland Festival.
 
Holly Adam (Assistant Stage Manager) (she/her). Playwrights Horizons: Stereophonic, Teeth. Broadway: Stereophonic. Regional: La bohème, Vanessa, Ruinous Gods (Spoleto Festival USA). University of Michigan. Funding Credits

In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot was commissioned by Playwrights Horizons with the support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot has received generous support from the Venturous Theater Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation.

Playwrights Horizons is also supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. In addition, Playwrights Horizons receives major support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, the J. L. Greene Arts Access Fund in The New York Community Trust, The Shubert Foundation, and the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.About Playwrights Horizons
 
Playwrights Horizons is a writer's theater committed to the advancement of bold and visionary contemporary playwrights, through the development and production of daring new work and the education of future theatermakers. In a city rich with cultural offerings, Playwrights Horizons' 53-year-old mission is unique among theaters of its size; the organization has distinguished itself by a steadfast commitment to centering the voice of the playwright. It’s a mission that is always timely, and one that’s necessary in the ongoing evolution of theater in this country. By expanding the U.S. theater canon with a wider range of voices, Playwrights Horizons aims to be a home for the exploration of playwriting and an anti-racist center of curiosity, dialogue, and artistic risk.Playwrights Horizons offers a season of productions annually on their two stages. Each production is a world, U.S., or New York premiere. Additionally, writers are supported in every stage of their growth through the New Works Lab, a commissions program (supporting several of today’s most imaginative playwrights each year), and Almanac (a literary magazine about the theatrical art form). Much like Playwrights Horizons’ work, their audience is risk-taking and adventurous; and the organization is committed to strengthening their engagement and feeding their curiosity through all of its programming, onsite and online.Ultimately, Playwrights Horizons believes that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time, offering essential contributions to civic discourse and illuminating life’s paradoxes. And they believe in the singularity of each writer’s voice, valuing the broad, eclectic spectrum and diversity of U.S. writers. About Breaking the Binary Theatre
 
Breaking the Binary Theatre is a new work development and community building hub wherein transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+*) artists come together to reclaim our artistic license and liberty through a number of initiatives and programs, including the annual all-TNB2S+ Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival each October. Founded and led by George Strus (they/them), since Breaking the Binary Theatre’s launch in July 2022, the organization has paid out over $500,000 to over 400 TNB2S+ artists. For more information, please visit www.btb-nyc.com or @BreakingTheBinaryTheatre on Instagram.Press Contact:
Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates: 917.572.2593, blake@blakezidell.com.