(NEW YORK, NY) -- NewYorkRep has announced Emily Dzioba as the recipient of its 2026 Curtain Rising grant, a play development initiative committed to fostering bold new voices in playwriting. The grant recognizes Dzioba's play, make one left purlwise, which will receive an AEA 29-hour staged reading, with a carefully-curated creative team to bring the work to life in a presentation before an audience of industry leaders on Monday, June 15 at 7:00pm at Houghton Community Arts Center (22 E 30th St, NYC). An award reception will follow the presentation, at which Dzioba will be presented with a $1500 stipend for future development of her work.
In Dzioba‘s make one left purlwise, it’s March 2023, and the Purls of Wisdom Society has gathered for their biweekly fiber arts meeting in the upstairs multipurpose room of the Fairview Library. Stephanie and Taylor have welcomed newcomer knitter Sandy to their mix, despite the strange crowd gathering downstairs. Donna, head children’s librarian and leader of the Society, arrives and reveals that they are, in fact, a mob of protestors. The source of their ire? A banned books display created by Donna. make one left purlwise examines what it means to make something and why people knit themselves together.
Emily Dzioba is a playwright and dramaturg based in Jersey City. This reading marks her professional playwriting debut. Emily was named as a finalist for the 2026 Art House INKubator Program for a full-length play she is developing about Ellis Island and Hudson County. Her writing on chronic illness was workshopped and performed at the 2025 NJ Theatre Alliance's "Healing Voices" showcase at Premiere Stages.
Emily is interested in creating work that feels like a potluck dinner: something to gather around, with a little bit of everything at the table to take and give. Dramaturgical collaborations have included work with The New Jersey Play Lab, Premiere Stages, Art House Productions, Theater Masters, The Strides Collective, and Blinking Light Productions in Sydney, Australia. She has studied Tectonic Theatre Project's Moment Work method, and remains interested in the world of devised theatre. She is a script reader for the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill, The Playwrights Foundation, She NYC Arts, and 1319 Press.
“My play, make one left purlwise, was inspired by my own experiences as a knitter and a library lover. Accessible community spaces are essential for our well-being as individual people and as a society,” says Emily Szioba. “I wanted to write a play engaging with different issues swirling around -- book bans and information censorship, parental rights movements, rising anti-queer violence, the way online culture has shaped the way we engage with each other. There's something meaningful to me about the idea that this play looks at just a few people, all struggling with something deeper and looking for something meaningful, in a little corner that could be anywhere in this country.”
The June 15 presentation of make one left purlwise will be directed by Dev Bondarin, a New York City-based theater director and Artistic Director at Prospect Musicals. She specializes in developing and directing new musicals and has also served as the artistic director of the Astoria Performing Arts Center where she directed critically acclaimed and award-winning revivals including Raisin and Merrily We Roll Along (both winners of NY Innovative Theatre Awards for Outstanding Musical), Follies, and Caroline, or Change (AUDELCO Award winner for Outstanding Musical Revival).
“With a deep commitment to developing socially urgent, thought-provoking and perspective-challenging works, NewYorkRep created the Curtain Rising grant and play reading festival to provide early-stage playwrights with critical artistic and financial support,” says Gayle Waxenberg, Founding Executive Director of NewYorkRep. “It has long been the goal of NewYorkRep to develop and champion original plays that address urgent social issues, and produce new works with real-world impact. Emily Dzioba is an extraordinary talent who you will, no doubt, be hearing more from in theater seasons to come.”
NewYorkRep is a dynamic theater company dedicated to developing and producing new plays and musicals that inspire social change. By exploring humanity’s complexities and ethical dilemmas through compelling storytelling, NewYorkRep fosters empathy, compassion, and inclusion, using art as a powerful tool to illuminate critical social issues and spark meaningful dialogue. Recent recognition includes the Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for “New American Play,” Off-West End award nomination for “Best Production” at the Southwark Playhouse, the Bergen Record Top 10 productions of the year, and the Off-Broadway Alliance nomination for “Best New Play.”
