Sweet Noise Festival: Fall 2025
Join us for readings of powerful plays by members of our Women’s Work Full-Length LAB.
At New perspectives studio
458 West 37 St., New York, New York 10018
Friday, November 14:
Neanderthals by Christine Benvenuto, directed by Melody Brooks, 7:00pm
On the winter solstice, anthropology student Graceful arrives for a trial run as a live-in caregiver to Marti, an older woman showing early signs of dementia. When a mysterious man appears—claiming to be Marti’s son—the day turns strange and unsettling. As screams echo outside, memory, grief, and guilt collide, forcing both women to confront buried truths about fear, loss and survival.
Christine Benvenuto's plays have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Western Massachusetts, Alaska, Atlanta, Florida, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maine, via podcast and online. Plays and monologues have been published in anthologies such as The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2024, and The Best Men's Stage Monologues 2025 will include a monologue from her play A Female Variety of Suffering, written and developed as a member of New Perspectives Theatre's Women's Work Short Play Lab. She is the author of two books from St. Martin’s Press and her short stories and essays have appeared in many magazines, newspapers and anthologies.
Saturday, November 15
WORKSHOP: Creating Documentary Style Theatre with OBIE-winner Stephanie Berry, 12:00pm
Stephanie Berry is a writer whose work emerges from the intersection of art, ritual, and social consciousness, grounded in her deep roots in Harlem and her decades-long career as an actor, educator, and community builder. A pioneer in documentary style theatre pieces, Berry's work blends personal narrative, historical inquiry, and communal storytelling to transform lived experience into theatrical ritual.
Stephanie Berry
The Village Beautiful by Jane Denitz Smith, directed by Teresa Fischer, 4:00pm
A small New England town is preparing to celebrate their 250th Anniversary. School children, assigned to dig through the historical archives, discover disturbing facts about the town’s development, including a shocking revelation that challenges residents’ rosy assumptions about what they have to celebrate.
Jane Denitz Smith is a Berkshires MA-based writer. In July 2025 Jane traveled to Rwanda, where she conducted a playwriting workshop with Afghani girls who fled the Taliban and are enrolled at SOLA (School of Leadership, Afghanistan) and is currently a proud member of the Full Length Play Lab at New Perspectives Theatre, NYC, where her play THE VILLAGE BEAUTIFUL has been in development. Her play MY OWN FLESH AND BLOOD received a professional staged reading in Hudson, NY. (Michelle Joyner, Dir.) and her one-act, OUR LADY OF BROAD STREET, was also developed at New Perspectives and performed as part of the Road Theatre’s Summer 2021 Playwrights Festival (Susan Vanita Diol, Dir.), and selected for performance at Festival de Teatro Alternativo in Bogotá, Colombia (Melody Brooks, Dir). THE MARROW IN THE BONE, a 45-minute musical exploring the relationship between a serf and an aristocrat on the eve of the Russian revolution, was workshopped in NYC (Tara Elliot, Dir.) I AM YOU ARE WE WERE received a staged reading as part of Berkshire Voices (Joe Cacaci, Dir.)
Sunday, November 16
Day of the Kings (Acts 1 and 2) by Daphne Greaves, directed by Elena Vannoni, 4:00pm
In 19th-century Havana, where a society built on enslavement quietly enslaves everyone, Dr. Enriquetta Faber lives in disguise as a man to practice medicine in defiance of the law. Longing for connection, she begins a love affair that risks exposure and ruin. Across town, the Nuñez family works to uphold the illusion of wealth and power while their daughter Blanca and the enslaved Esteban develop forbidden feelings for each other. During the annual Festival of the Three Kings, Havana hides behind costumes and revelry—but the celebration unmasks rebellion and reveals the truths everyone struggles to conceal.
DAPHNE GREAVES is a playwright living in New York City. Her play Day of the Kings had its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia and was directed by Susan Booth. It is published by Dramatic Publishing. She was a co-author of The Audience which was produced by Transport Group and was a nominee for a Drama Desk Award for best new musical. Other plays include, The Men, Killing Time, Good Lessons from Bad Women, and Crash! From staged readings to workshops and full productions she has worked with such organizations as The Public Theater, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, The Lark, Women’s Project, StageWorks and others. Her radio drama The African Grove aired on National Public Radio. Daphne has a BFA in acting from New York University and was a Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwriting Fellow at Juilliard where she worked with Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman.
Reception and Launch of new On Her Shoulders Database. 6:30pm