Our Mission
Bespoke Plays creates bi-coastal opportunities for writers with diverse stories and worldviews, by producing staged readings in Los Angeles and NYC, customized to the goals of the writer and readiness of the play.
What's a staged reading?
A staged reading is a performance of a new play that gets as close as it can to the feel of a production with 25 hours or less of rehearsal and the actors keeping their scripts in their hands. Not having to memorize lines frees up the actors to focus on their characters and the writer to make changes to the script during the rehearsal process once they start to hear it out loud. All you NEED for a staged reading is actors and scripts, but we're a bit extra so we like to throw in a bit of blocking, lights, sound, or costumes when we can.
About Us
Bespoke Plays is a writer-driven company of playwrights who work in genre across TV, Film, Games, Comics and Podcasts. The plays we’ve developed in our first four seasons have run the gamut of science fiction, historical romance, dark comedy, magical realism, and political drama. Our core writers all have experience not just working in multiple mediums but recognizing the strengths of a story for adaptation in one medium vs another. Actors in our company have had significant roles in shows such as Star Trek: Discovery, The Magicians, Yellowjackets, Leverage, The Affair, City on the Hill, Supergirl, Daredevil, Punisher, Madam Secretary, Supernatural, Westworld, Sailor Moon, Girls5eva and House of Cards as well on Broadway and in National Tours. All of our casts have been multicultural and many have included the full gender and sexuality spectrum. The stories that we choose to tell and the artists behind the scenes also represent gender parity and this diversity of worldviews. We offer opportunities for cultivating multi-hyphenates as writers and actors frequently switch hats as well as crossing over into directing and producing. Our readings are customized to the goals of the writer and the readiness of the play and we have always paid our actors and directors union recommended stipends. We believe theater is a community first, and a vital living artform where future diverse content and talent can still be discovered.