People’s Light has continued its commitment to deepening relationships within our community and to generating new plays through a commissioning program called Queerways, PA (QPA), supported in large part through a grant from the William Penn Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Modeled on our New Play Frontiers program, through Queerways playwrights are selected and invited to explore our area and get to know the people and community partners that create and serve the diverse tapestry of our region. QPA specifically aims to elevate Queer and BIPOC artists, experiences, and stories.

Since the Fall of 2023, the four commissioned QPA playwrights have developed a deep relationship with our area, our communities, and People’s Light staff. They have been inspired by a diversity of stories, locations, and relationships, and have used their unique artistic lenses and voices to craft remarkable pieces that feel both local and expansive. Harrison David Rivers became intrigued by historical events in West Chester. Donja Love was inspired by the healing work happening at Gateway HorseWorks in Malvern. Ro Reddick has been captivated by community histories and experiences around Phoenixville’s Firebird Festival and Coatesville’s steel industry. Vichet Chum is exploring the API (Asian and Pacific Islander) experience in our region, focusing especially on Cambodian-American communities.

We are so honored to be in relationship with these incredible playwrights and their artistry that expands our connection and mutual investment with our communities.

Beginning in Fall of 2023, we began to welcome four nationally recognized playwrights to explore the myriad sites and stories of our area. The playwrights were invited for multi-day residencies to foster relationships and create connections with People’s Light Community partners and pillars of our community such as The Charles A. Melton Center in West Chester, LGBT Equity Alliance of Chester County, Alianzas de Phoenixville, Camp Dreamcatcher, Gateway HorseWorks, and Arrive Therapy.

Harrison David Rivers (https://www.harrisondavidrivers.com/) became intrigued by stories and photographs of a 1991 KKK march in West Chester. He was told by community members and a West Chester historian that to understand the context of the 1991 march, he needed to learn about a multi-day race riot that happened in 1970 at a neighborhood bar across the street from St. Agnes Church. Harrison’s explorations of these “moments of racial discord” in this “ideal town” led him to draft Everhart Park, a play “about queerness, about Black and white race relations, about West Chester” and how these two moments in West Chester “impact these two humans and their relationship over time.” In addition to local community historians, Harrison worked closely with People’s Light Community Partners, the Melton Center and The Chester County History Center.

In December of 2024, Harrison, Director Pirronne Yousefzadeh, Dramaturg Gina Pisasale, Stage Manager April Marion, and Actors Todd Lawson, Ben Brown, Aaron Bell, and Shawn Laub gathered at the Charles A. Melton Center for a workshop of Harrison’s first draft of Everhart Park. In addition to giving Harrison a chance to hear his words out loud and hone the script following questions and conversations, Harrison also led the collaborators through key sites in West Chester that are referenced in the play, including the playground swings at Everhart Park. Both Harrison and Pirronne were able to stay in West Chester during the 5-day workshop, and frequented coffee shops and some of the local eateries. We also had a culminating meal at the Melton Center’s new 2Fish Community Café space, catered by Filet of Soul.

Playwright Donja Love found his inspiration in the work at Gateway HorseWorks (GHW), an organization that offers equine therapy for mental health treatment and wellness, prioritizing access for our most marginalized and vulnerable people in our communities.

Donja was in residence in Malvern for 3 visits spanning 6 months. He was able to get to know Gateway HorseWorks Executive Director Kristen de Marco, engage with their staff and the horses, and attend several sessions to experience their transformative work directly.

We workshopped the first draft of Donja’s play The Horse and the Man for 5 days at the end of February into March, 2025. Donja reunited with director Jason McDowell Green and Dramaturg Gina Pisasale, and met additional workshop collaborators, Stage Manager Jessica Beaver, and actors Barzin Akhavan and Varín Ayala. The workshop team had the privilege of visiting GHW, meeting a former client, hearing their story, and spending time with the horses in the yard. During a culminating reading of Donja’s play hosted at People’s Light’s rehearsal room, the staff from GHW in attendance knew immediately which horses were referenced in the play.

Multi-hyphenate artist and playwright Ro Reddick was intrigued by conversations swirling around and between communities in Phoenixville and Coatesville. Ro’s residency spanned 8 months, where she spoke to organizers of the annual Phoenixville Firebird Festival and participated in the build of the wooden phoenix, spoke to community members about the evolving identities of Phoenixville and Coatesville, and researched the racialized history of the Coatesville steel industry at the Chester County History Center and Hagley Museum, focusing on events and trial transcripts of the lynching of Zachariah Walker in 1911. Ro stayed in Phoenixville for 2 of her 3 visits during her residency and got to know the town well.

In April 2025, Ro began to braid together questions around spectacle and crowd contagion, the social control of murder ballads, prophecy and fate, and the history of and primary source material dealing with Walker’s lynching during a 4-day workshop and devised process that re-united her with Director Molly Rosa Houlahan and actor Andrew Watring. Additional Workshop collaborators were musical historians and musicians Hubby Jenkins (https://www.hubbyjenkins.com/) and David Lutken, actor Jessica Johnson, dramaturg Gina Pisasale, and Stage Manager Lisi Levy. All of the out-of-town artists were able to stay a few steps away from our rehearsal room workshop space in our Farmhouse kitchenette apartments. At the end of the workshop, Ro shared what had come of the devised work with People’s Light staff members as well as new-found friends also being housed in the Farmhouse, the cast members of Birthday Candles, in performance on the Steinbright stage at the time.

Still to come are discoveries, stories, and connections from playwright Vichet Chum, who is exploring Asian- and Cambodian-American experiences in our area. Vichet’s workshop will happen in the Summer 2025.