The beloved late-night play competition needs your help!

After 15+ years of being a staple of indie theater, SERIALS is looking to grow bigger and better than ever before! Supporting hundreds of artists over its tenure, SERIALS strives to offer as much support as possible to develop theater that's weird, wild, and totally unique.

THE PRODUCTION

SERIALS is a raucous night of serialized plays featuring some of NYC’s hottest rising playwrights, directors, and actors. Teams are given 5 hours to rehearse original short episodic plays, then present them in front of an audience (you) which vote for their favorites to return with a new installment. 5 shows go in, 3 shows come out! It's a low-budget, late-night cult favorite extravaganza for everyone involved!

WHY IT MATTERS

SERIALS fills an important role in the NYC theater community. Each performance weekend, we bring together 30+ actors, writers, and directors, giving them the unique opportunity to cut their teeth on brand-spankin'-new work. We connect NYC's best up-and-coming theater makers, giving them space to take risks, swing big, work side-by-side on the development of new plays, and keep their artistic souls fed.

THE IMPACT

Think of SERIALS as a gym for theatre artists. Each discipline is given a tight deadline to make decisions; with only 5 hours of rehearsal and 30 minutes of tech time. All members of the team have to collaborate with one another and make quick decisions to make the best show possible! This rigorous process prepares any theatre maker for whatever future projects they work on.

With so many artists coming together on a bi-monthly basis, lasting relationships form. Our community supports one another, attending each other's shows and engaging each other for outside projects. When attending an indie theater event in NYC, you’re never more than one degree away from someone who’s done SERIALS.

THE ASK

We are looking to raise $20,000 by June 2026!

We’ve historically produced a lot for very little, giving us the freedom to stay scrappy and run this program on a skeleton crew. However, the reality is that we need to do better by our artists, increasing their pay foremost, while increasing the quality of the program as well.

We hope that by raising $20,000 we can accomplish three goals:

Increase all artist stipends by 30% - Times are tough, and our artists work hard. We want to make a sizable increase in how we say thank you, but with over 30+ artists every weekend, that adds up fast. A majority of our goal is oriented towards making this happen, and all funds raised will be prioritized to meet this goal before any others.

Bring in additional organizational support - Every member of the SERIALS producorial and admin team run this show in between their full time jobs and other commitments. We want to bring on additional support that can help this team of theatrical moonlighters continue to grow this program.

Upgrade to a professional quality livestream setup - We get it, sometimes a 9:30 start time just can't be accommodated by your couch and sweats. We want our livestreamers to get as close to an in person experience as we can muster, plus capture better quality footage for our artists to use in their materials.

Support indie theatre artists and new works!