(LEFT to RIGHT) Pia Wilson, Gloria Majule and Dacyl Acevedo

(UNION, NJ) -- Premiere Stages at Kean University announced that three playwrights will have new plays developed as part of the 2025 and 2026 seasons: Mala Aria by Gloria Majule, Lia Del Mar by Dacyl Acevedo, and Effa Loves Baseball by Pia Wilson.

Premiere Stages has selected Mala Aria by Gloria Majule as the winner of the 2025 Play Festival. The Premiere Play Festival is an annual competition for unproduced scripts that offers developmental opportunities to playwrights. In Ms. Majule’s new play, Amazia leaves her family in Tanzania to pursue a PhD abroad, hoping to discover how to eradicate Malaria. As new opportunities and connections make it harder to return home, Amazia must contemplate staying in America or pursuing her life’s work in Tanzania. Mala Aria will have a full production in Premiere Stages’ 2026 season in the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center.

Gloria Majule is a storyteller born and raised in Dodoma, Tanzania. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes for and about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria’s work has been supported by numerous institutions, including the American Playwriting Foundation, Abingdon Theatre Company, the Alley Theatre, The Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration, Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater, and The New Group. Gloria graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and was the first African woman to receive an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama.

A second Play Festival finalist, Lia Del Mar by Dacyl Acevedo, will receive a staged reading this December at Premiere Stages, as directed by Benjamin Viertel, in the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center. In Ms. Acevedo’s new play, set in the Costa Chica region of Mexico, two generations of Afro-Mexican women do their best to make ends meet. Dalia faces pressure to sell her family's land, Luisa loses her spot to sell food, and Yolanda tries to keep the restaurant Lia Del Mar afloat. As Luisa's and Yolanda's daughters navigate new ways to make money, the older generation must find a way to reconcile a longstanding feud in order to provide for their futures. Lia Del Mar is a poignant exploration of familial love amid economic upheavals.

Dacyl Acevedo is a New York based playwright and actor; Dominican American, first-generation child of working-class immigrants, raised in Hialeah, FL. She worked as an actor for over 20 years in New York, in regional theaters, TV and Film. She was a member of Dramatic Question Theatre's 2024 Playtime program. Currently, she is working on a delirium play called Temping Forever with Latinx Playwrights' Circle and an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s restoration comedy, Bartholomew Fair, advised and inspired by the late, great Morgan Jeness. She’s a graduate of Columbia University's MFA Playwriting program and the Acting Conservatory at SUNY Purchase College.

Premiere Stages has selected Pia Wilson for the Liberty Live Commission, a biennial commissioning program for New Jersey playwrights to support the creation of new plays that specifically explore New Jersey history. Ms. Wilson’s play, Effa Loves Baseball, explores the life of Effa Manley, the manager of the 1947 Newark Eagles Negro League Baseball team and the first woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Based on true events, the play will explore Effa’s crusade to get the Eagles to the Negro League World Series. Battling the press, coaching staff, segregation, and sometimes herself, Effa will do anything to win at the business of the game she loves most of all. Staged readings of Effa Loves Baseball, as directed by marcus d. harvey, will be held Friday, November 21 through Sunday, November 23 at Kean University’s Liberty Hall Academic Center.

Pia Wilson wrote the audio component in the Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, New Jersey, performed by Queen Latifah. She is also a 2024 Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove participant, Traveling Master for Dramatist Guild Foundation, resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Sundance fellow, and member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater. Her plays have been produced across the country. Her Webby Award-winning fiction podcast, If I Go Missing The Witches Did It, starring Gabourey Sidibe, was listed as one of the Best New Podcasts of 2021 by Variety and Mashable. She has also written for Audible’s Till Today podcast and Wondery's Black History For Real. In television, Pia was a staff writer for NatGeo’s Genius Aretha and BET’s Sacrifice.

To learn more about the events above, please visit premierestagesatkean.com. Please note that readings are by invitation only. To inquire about attending either reading, visit our website.

Premiere Stages is committed to producing topical plays and interactive programs that reflect people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, national origins, nationalities, ancestry, religious groups, gender expression or identities, sexual orientation, political beliefs, ages, abilities and disabilities.

Premiere Stages is made possible in part through funding from W. John Bauer and Nancy Boucher, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Shubert Foundation, Carole Shaffer-Koros and Robert Koros and ExxonMobil Foundation, The Northfield Bank Foundation, Blue Foundry Charitable Foundation, Union County Savings Bank Charitable Foundation, The Hyde and Watson Foundation, The Union Foundation, E.J. Grassmann Trust, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, The Union County HEART Grant and through the generous support of individual patrons and local organizations. Discover Jersey Arts is our marketing partner. Visit JerseyArts.com for more information about other arts programming happening around the Garden State.

Created in 2004, Premiere Stages is the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University. Through its unique partnership with Kean, Premiere’s play development programs, educational initiatives, and professional development opportunities actively embrace the university's academic curriculum while expanding the scope, accessibility, and prestige of the professional programming on campus.

Kean University, New Jersey’s urban research university, is a national institution of higher education recognized for its diversity, innovation and the social mobility of its graduates. Designated an R2 research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Kean ranks among the top eight percent of U.S. universities for research and doctorate production. Founded in 1855 as a teachers college, Kean has evolved into a thriving research university that supports students as they persist to graduation, give back to their communities and launch successful careers. Kean’s six colleges offer more than 50 undergraduate programs, six doctoral degree programs and more than 70 options leading to master’s degrees, professional diplomas or certifications, across a full range of academic subjects. With campuses in Union, Toms River and Manahawkin, New Jersey, and Wenzhou, China, as well as Kean Online, the University provides students of all backgrounds an affordable and accessible world-class education.