Sarah Mantell is the recipient of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot. Their other plays include Everything That Never Happened, The Good Guys, Tiny, and Fight Call. They have worked with Playwrights Horizons, 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.
Sivan Battat (she/they) is a theatre 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. sivanbattat.com
“Everyone’s looking for someone. I was looking for you.”
In the not-so-distant future, a group of warehouse workers travel from job to job, running from the encroaching coastlines and searching for missing loved ones. Both tender and rebellious, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is a revolutionary new play about finding family and unexpected love in a volatile world.
In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot runs approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
Barsha
Sandra Caldwell
Donnetta Lavinia Grays
Deirdre Lovejoy
Tulis McCall
Pooya Mohseni
Ianne Fields Stewart
Adinah Alexander (Understudy)
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.
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.
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.
Adinah Alexander (Understudy) Playwrights Horizons debut. Broadway: Parade (Harold Prince Original Production) Wicked (OBC) Wedding
Singer (OBC) Urban Cowboy, Kinky Boots (OBC). Off Broadway: Adding Machine (David Cromer) Norma Rae (Erica Schmidt) (Love,
Janis, Two Rooms. Recent: World Premiere of Salvage (Opera House Arts). TV/Film: Bull, FBI, Law and Order,(Original and Organized Crime) White House Plumbers, The Deuce, Nurse Jackie. Deathless. Upcoming: Denim and Diamonds Starring Hugh Jackman.
“A compelling dystopian and highly theatricalized world inhabited by complex and vivid characters who rarely have stage time. The political critique and elements of the play deftly intertwine to ignite and propel the action and the imagination.”
— Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2023
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.
Emmie Finckel
Scenic DesignerMel Ng
Costume DesignerCha See
Lighting DesignerSinan Refik Zafar
Sound DesignerGigi Buffington
Vocal and Text and Dialect CoachZeina Salame
DramaturgMatt Carlin
PropsAlex Might
Intimacy CoordinatorRyan Gohsman
Production Stage ManagerHolly Adam
Assistant Stage ManagerEmmie Finckel (Scenic Designer) (they/them). Playwrights debut. Off-Broadway: Comedy of Errors (Public Theater: Mobile Unit), 53% Of (2nd 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 (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, Wish 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).
Matt Carlin (Props). Playwrights: Magnificent Bird / Book of Travelers, Staff Meal, Teeth, Stereophonic, Wet Brain, Regretfully, So the Birds Are, The Trees, Catch as Catch Can, Downstate, Wish You Were Here. Select Off-Broadway credits include Buena Vista Social Club, A Simulacrum (Atlantic), The Comeuppance (Signature), american (tele)visions (NYTW) and Lessons in Survival: 1971 (Vineyard). Matt also works as a props artisan and his work has been seen on Broadway in Back to the Future: The Musical and The Thanksgiving Play. He received his B.F.A. from Pace University.
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).
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.
Produced in association with
Breaking the Binary Theatre
