The Nine Finalists of the 2025 Fresh Fruit Festival Celebrate Compassion and Connection

On its website, NYC’s Fresh Fruit Festival encourages creators to “Let Your Dream Be Bigger Than Your Fears.” And in early spring 2025, 24 playwrights did just that, bringing their 10-minute pieces to Play Development Week as presented by All Out Arts, which culminated in the performances of the nine finalists on March 30 at Theater for the New City.

If the plays had a connecting theme among them, then “connection” is actually it. Funny and true-to-life awkward encounters and awkward conversations abounded—most leading to honesty, intimacy, understanding, and bonding,

The audience’s choice for first place was Scott Sickles’ A Carefully Planned Spontaneity, the first piece showcased in the finals. A hilarious but also very sweet (and sexy) piece, it featured two older male actors, Wallace and Charlie, practicing for an extensively choreographed love scene. They nervously down many shots, and one dons an “intimacy protector” – an athletic supporter over his pants. (A couch cushion is also strategically placed.) After much hysterical stalling they go for it, filming the scene on a phone. They realize they are much more comfortable with each other than anticipated, and look forward to further, as they put it, “collaboration”. CK Allen and Chad Anthony Miller starred. And shined, with Direction by Jon Okabayash, and Intimacy Direction by Pradanya Subramanyan.

Second place went to Dana Leslie Goldstein’s Comfort and Joy, where an interfaith female couple humorously debated the pluses and minuses of Christmas and Hannukah, which had fallen on the same day that year and brought with it the usual familial complications. It featured great chemistry between actors Julia Crowley and Sarah Guilbault, and was directed by Eva Burgess.

The judges’ choice was Portugal, by Virgo, a witty but intense piece about a couple struggling to make plans while acknowledging their already incredibly hectic travel schedule, and coming to a troubling conclusion about their relationship. The actors spoke at an impressive breakneck pace that cleverly parallelled their characters’ way-too-busy lives.

Most of the plays were intimate two-handers, with just two pieces adding a third character: The Squirrel Watchers, by Katie Kirk; and Hot, by Noah T. Parnes. Squirrel Watchers was a poignant slice-of-young-life piece set in a park, featuring three very different women: the recently dumped Alex, the recently ghosted Brook, and the never-been-kissed Chloe—the only one who’s really there for the squirrels. Hot brought us a very different and very funny story set in a sauna, featuring an older gay man walking in on two young ones, and wondering why the only thing “hot” in evidence is the temperature.

The Unexpected Fetish by John Plausse is a timely, very amusing piece where a newlywed is shocked by his husband’s appalling source of pleasure: Tucker Carlson, a man who even Fox News had lost its desire for. Timothy Bryant’s On Delivery provided one of the funniest and most moving pieces of the festival. A retired West Hollywood couple in their mid-60s were seen awaiting a robot with their food delivery, only to find a newborn baby girl inside the package. One of them (aghast and extremely hungry) wants to send the infant girl back, but his husband has already fallen in love with the delivery they got—naming her, appropriately, Destiny.

The POEM, by Risa Lewak, is a relatable heartstring-puller about the unrequited love of a woman for her best friend, which goes all the way back to their school days, and is finally revealed in romantic verse.

In the tearjerking closing piece, The Cocktail Bench by John Harney, we have an unexpected encounter between an elderly gay man and his female neighbor, a college professor who has been taking the lithographs he had put in the trash. The man reveals they belonged to his partner, now in the hospital with dementia. Heartbreakingly, he has decided he doesn’t want any memories of the loved one who no longer has memories of him.

The nine pieces provided a magnificent afternoon of entertainment, and a welcome showcase for today’s LGBTQ playwrights, in a time when it’s crucial to champion and bolster their creative voices.

The Artistic Director of The Fresh Fruit Festival is Frank Calo. Learn more at FreshFruitFestival.com.