Living Out Loud: Writing Radical Futures with Roger Q. Mason & Cannonball
Living Out Loud: Writing Radical Futures with Roger Q. Mason & Cannonball
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Living Out Loud: Writing Radical Futures with Roger Q. Mason Co-Presented by PlayPenn and Cannonball
2026 PlayPenn Conference Playwright, Roger Q. Mason, working with local queer Philly artists will guide audience members through a half day creative gathering of writing, discussion, and visioning, culminating in a sharing of short pieces that imagine radical futures for America. Event participants will have the opportunity dream, write, and respond creating work in real-time that reimagines what’s possible.
The Play Inspiring This Event
Living Out Loud: Writing Radical Futures is a community engagement event presented as part of PlayPenn's 2026 New Play Development Conference inspired by Bill, a new theatrical work in development by Roger Q. Mason. Bill is a powerful excavation of Constitutional history, exposing how BIPOC and queer individuals were intentionally excluded from the founding vision of “We, the People.” The play is about democracy and the founding of America told through a queer perspective of love, desire, exclusion, and forgiveness.
About The Playwright
Roger Q. Mason is an award-winning writer, performer, and thought leader whose work uses history as a lens to challenge systems of exclusion. Roger’s plays are theatrical mythologies for the marginalized, especially those who are Queer, Black, Filipinx, TGNC, plus-sized, and previously erased from the classical canon.
Their plays include The Duat, Lavender Men, The Pride of Lions, Califas Trilogy (California Story, Hide & Hide, and Juana Maria), The Pink, Waiting for a Wake, and Night Cities: A Bayard Rustin Ritual. The award-winning cinematic adaptation of their play, Lavender Men, directed by Lovell Holder, continues to resonate with audiences and is available to stream online on AppleTV+.
A fierce advocate for artist development and collective uplift, Roger mentors with the Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship, and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are also the creator and co-host of the acclaimed podcast Sister Roger’s Gayborhood and former host of Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage on This Way Out Radio.
Their artistic practice is grounded in the belief that when the myths of a society no longer serve its people, artists must write new ones. They embody Sankofa: a look back in order to reach forward — creating theatrical mythologies that center joy, resilience, and radical visibility for those whose stories have long been left untold.
They currently serve as Special Faculty at The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and have taught Playwriting and Play/Screen/Writing courses for Lambda Literary. Roger holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University.
About the 2026 New Play Development Conference
PlayPenn’s nationally recognized New Play Development Conference brings together readings of new plays alongside a citywide series of civic gatherings, workshops, artist exchanges, and public conversations focusing on art, democracy, historical memory, belonging, and collective imagination. This community-focused approach to new play development reflects a broader vision of theatre in a shared civic life that illuminates what theatre can do, who participates in it, how it unfolds, and why it matters.
The 19-event Conference brings together 22 playwrights participating across workshops, conversations, and five new work presentations while expanding its scope to include an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth (Primary Trust), free playwriting workshops for adults, teens, and women over 50, and a public conversation examining constitutional history and civic identity.
Additional programming includes a community workshop for queer theatre makers; a convening on innovation in theatre-making with leaders from Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Cannonball Festival, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Lemonade Stand, and Tiny Dynamite; and an acting lab focused on approaches to new play development and cross-community exchanges among theatre artists.
Location
The Proscenium Theatre at the Drake, 302 S Hicks St, Philadelphia, PA 19102