Meet the Playwrights: Mollie Gordon

Post published:March 10, 2026

In partnership with our friends at The CRY HAVOC Company, we are thrilled to announce that we've chosen our cohort of four playwrights for the inaugural cycle of our development series, Brave New Work. The series invites playwrights to create original works that will draw inspiration from Shakespeare's canon, but evolve into something wholly their own.

Meet the Playwrights
MOLLIE GORDON

Mollie Gordon (she/her) is a queer playwright and theatre-maker based in Newark, New Jersey. She is currently a member of the 2025-26 QueerSpeech Cohort with The Cult Collective. Her play If It Weren't for the Women, We'd Still Be Stuck in the Desert was a 2024 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference semifinalist, the 2024 winner of the Scribe Playwriting Competition, finalist for the 2026 MOXIE Lamoise New Works Festival, and long listed for the 2026 Distillery New Works Festival. Mollie's plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group, Athena Project, Personal Pizza Party, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Which of Shakespeare's plays have you chosen as the springboard for your play? What intrigues or excites you about building on that foundation?

I've chosen Measure for Measure as the springboard for my play. It's a play that feels very timely with its themes of political hypocrisy and whose voice society chooses to believe. Isabella is an incredibly captivating and memorable central character, yet she only has half as many lines as the Duke. Her fate is left really ambiguous at the end of Shakespeare's play, so I was interested to imagine a more hopeful future for her.

Which NYC neighborhoods make you feel the most at home?

I always feel really at home in the West Village - it's a great area to just walk around and I love the restaurants. I grew up in Cobble Hill, so I also love to visit my favorite places there, particularly the Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain!

What types of prompts or source material are you most drawn to as a playwright? How would you describe your artistic voice or point-of-view?

I'm drawn to prompts/source material that feel unresolved or open-ended. I think this is because my artistic voice can be very playful, and I like to use devices like magical realism to explore the unexplored. This is why I find comedy an indispensable tool as well, because an audience that laughs together is more likely to want to talk to each other. I love when theater can open a conversation rather than close it, so a piece as richly complicated as Measure for Measure feels like an exciting jumping-off point.

Meet the Playwrights: Maximillian Gill

Post published:March 4, 2026

Meet the Playwrights
MAXIMILLIAN GILL

Maximillian Gill’s work has been staged by a number of companies and festivals including the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival in Liverpool, Theatre West in Los Angeles, the Abingdon Theatre Company, Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, and the New York City Children’s Theater. His plays include Your Undecaying Flames (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference short list finalist), Stay Up and Keep Rolling (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist, Premiere Stages semi-finalist), Machines Eat People (Seven Devils Playwrights Conference semi-finalist), and Blank Slate (Bay Area Playwrights Festival semi-finalist). Much of his work can be read on New Play Exchange.

Which of Shakespeare's plays have you chosen as the springboard for your play? What intrigues or excites you about building on that foundation?
I chose Macbeth as my play. It's one of my favorites because it's the one best suited for an '80s goth rock soundtrack. I also enjoy the way it pretends it's telling a story from history, but by the time Shakespeare got his hands on it, it was so far from the original events that we get witches.

Which NYC neighborhoods make you feel the most at home?
Queens is my favorite borough maybe because it's under-rated? Take the 7 train and do a world food tour with restaurants in Sunnyside, Woodside, or Elmhurst.

What types of prompts or source material are you most drawn to as a playwright? How would you describe your artistic voice or point-of-view?
I tend to be a cynical optimist. My characters end up hopeful because they have to, but the journey there is usually tough. I like prompts that allow latitude in terms of tone because my work tends to not fall easily into either comedy or drama but freely draws from both.