Megan Chan Meinero (she/her) is a playwright and screenwriter from New York. Her plays have been produced/developed with The New Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre, American University, Less than Rent and many others. She is a proud alum of EST/Youngblood and 2nd Stage Theater’s Lark Playwrights Workshop - where she developed The Punishment Show under the mentorship of Rajiv Joseph, David Henry Hwang and May Adrales. On the screen side, most recently, Megan served as an executive story editor on season 20 of Grey’s Anatomy. Prior to that, she worked on two seasons of Jason Katims’ Dear Edward for Apple TV+. She has developed original features with MRC/A-Major and original television projects with Amazon/Temple Hill/Purple Pebble and Emmy Rossum’s Composition 8. MFA: Northwestern University. 

Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (she/her) is a trans Guatemalan playwright, born in Guatemala and raised in Norwalk, CT. Her works are spiritual, hyper theatrical narratives that give Queer + Trans BIPOC voices a space to interrogate core wounds and offer them a path towards healing.

Esperanza’s plays have been supported by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Roundabout Theater, the Stanford Department of Theater and Performance Studies, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Tank, the Kennedy Center, the Breaking the Binary Theater, HERE Arts Center, Syracuse Stage, and New York Theater Workshop. She is the recipient of the Paul Green Award from the National Theater Conference, the Kennedy Center’s Latinx Playwriting Award, the Clauder Prize from Portland Stage (Connecticut State Winner) and has also received finalist recognitions & other distinctions from the Leah Ryan Prize, the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the O’Neill Theatre Conference, the Relentless Award, amongst others. She holds a BA in English from Princeton University, and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, where she now teaches on the core playwriting faculty. 

The Punishment Show
By Megan Chan Meinero
Directed by Cristina Angeles

August 21st at 7pm
INTAR Theatre

Frustrated with the state of the world, Max decides to dip a toe into vigilantism but, when he’s faced with an opportunity to punish a perpetrator, he becomes the tortured one. Desperate to make a difference, Max turns to a support group for vigilantes which he hopes will help him to accomplish his goals. Instead, he realizes the group’s mission is to help vigilantes manage their addiction versus taking matters into their own hands. Will Max continue down his dark path towards justice, or will he learn to trust in people and in systems? This is THE PUNISHMENT SHOW. 

Lux & Rex
by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
Directed by Jacob Basri

August 22nd at 7pm
INTAR Theatre

Lux is a trans woman. Rex is a gay man. Lux & Rex are strangers meeting at a small little dive bar. Lux has been stood up. Rex is her bartender. They fall in love at first sight...until they remember their shared past. As the world around them begins to change at a terrifying pace, Lux & Rex go back and forth in time to see if they can rediscover their old love in their new bodies on a transformed Earth.  Who are we to each other once the pillars of our time have fallen and all that's left are our old souls?