Judith Champion New Work Series

The Judith Champion New Work Series features public readings of exciting new plays from a dynamic group of visionary playwrights. Through the Series, playwrights are invited to develop a play early in its generative process with a team of professional collaborators and The Public Theater’s New Work Development staff.

The inaugural 2024 Judith Champion New Work Series featured plays by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, James Ijames, and Else Went.

Admission to the Judith Champion New Work Series is free, and seating is first-come, first-served.

The Judith Champion New Work Series is made possible through generous support from the Judith Champion New Work Development Fund and Mel Litoff. Judith Champion was a fierce arts advocate, who left a legacy of support for new voices in the American Theater.

Stay tuned for the next Judith Champion New Work Series reading later in 2025.

The Writers

Shayok Misha Chowdhury

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is the Obie and Whiting Award-winning writer and director of Public Obscenities, recently named one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The bilingual play was a New York Times Critic's Pick and named Best Theater of 2023 by the New Yorker. It premiered at Soho Rep and went on to encore runs at Woolly Mammoth and Theatre for a New Audience. Misha is also the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, The Mark O’Donnell Prize, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations, a Jonathan Larson Grant, and the Relentless Award for his musical How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia. A two-time Sundance Fellow, he is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of short films rooted in queer South Asian imagination. Misha was a collaborator on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. A Kundiman, Fulbright, and NYSCA/NYFA fellow, his poems have been published The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Hunger Mountain, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is currently collaborating with his physicist mother on Rheology, a concert-memoir, which will premiere in 2025 at The Bushwick Starr, as a co-production with HERE Arts Center and Ma-Yi Theater Company. MFA: Columbia

James Ijames

James Ijames is a playwright and educator. Ijames is the recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer in Drama for Fat Ham, a Pew Fellow for Playwriting, the Terrance McNally New Play Award for White, the Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize for ...Miz Martha, a Whiting Award, a Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise, and a 2020 and 2022 Steinberg Prize. The 2023 Broadway production of Fat Ham received 5 Tony nominations including Best Play. Ijames is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University.

Else Went

Else Went (she/herself) is the current Tow Foundation Resident Playwright at The Public Theater. Her work has been developed through writing labs and groups at The Public Theatre (EWG), Ars Nova (Play Group), WP (Lab), Playwrights Realm (Fellowship), Trans Theatre Lab, and Bechdel Project (FifE Fellow). Recipient of new work commissions and internal development from MTC Sloan Foundation (An Oxford Man), Breaking the Binary Festival (I Am The Most Beautiful Bird), Weston Playhouse, Parity Productions, and Period Piece. She has been in residence with MacDowell, The Mercury Store, Stillwright, and Barn Arts Collective. Further collaborative support from NYTW, Mercury Store, South Coast Repertory, The Tank, The Brick, and ISC. Two-time O’Neill Conference semi-finalist (Initiative; The Hard Work). Finalist for Princess Grace Award (Degenerates), 2023 Jerome Hill Artist (Jerome Foundation), Shakes, New Contemps (Whate’er), and the Carlo Anoni Prize (An Oxford Man). Co-founder of The Renovationists, an artistic collective dedicated to queering the canon.