2025 MICHIGAN PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL
September 11-14, 2025

“I Am A Sword” by Joseph Zettelmaier

Sept. 11 @ 8pm

Martine Lowe was an Olympic fencer until a brutal assault put her into a coma. Her recovery has been long and difficult, but she's managed to regain most of what she's lost. In hopes of returning to the competitive fencing world, she's begun training with Declan Teague, a man famous for his prestigious students and his unusual teaching methods. Martine moves in and out of reality as she faces the truth of what's happened to her and what it means to be a sword. Directed by Josie Herman.

“Matrescence” by Jennifer Lane

Sept. 12 @ 8pm

Margot is an unmarried, pregnant, queer woman in her thirties, and she has to tell her ultraconservative Republican parents that she's having a baby. Using the structure of pregnancy, childbirth, and the fourth trimester, Matrescence is a story of motherhood in the modern era.

“Look at Me Now” by Jill Halpern

Sept. 13 @ 3pm

In this dramatic exploration of James Baldwin's quote "I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also much more than that— so are we all..." a yin-meets-yang lesbian couple, an orphaned Black teen, and a third-generation White supremacist on Death Row are all dutifully playing their assigned roles— or trying— when a brush with death calls each to break free from the prison of fixed identity, from habitual ways of seeing and being seen, and find the grace in becoming.

“Blue Star Highway” by Andrew Morton

Sept. 13 @ 8pm

Blue Star Highway is an exploration of love, secrecy, and the impact of choices across generations. In 1994, William, a closeted high school teacher, meets Ben in the lakeside town of Saugatuck, Michigan and begins to imagine a different kind of life. Thirty years later, William’s children and grandchild arrive in Saugatuck for a funeral and discover the life their father lived after he left them. As past and present collide, they are forced to confront the past and redefine the meaning of family.

“These My Queens” by Sarah Elisabeth Brown

Sept. 14 @ 2pm

A 90s baby dyke performance artist falls in love with a budding drag queen and questions her sexuality.