05/30/2026
Cleveland Play House is proud to present the 2026 New Ground Theatre Festival June 12, 13, and 14 in the Outcalt Theatre at Playhouse Square.
Every year, Cleveland Play House celebrates the art of playwriting by inviting actors, directors, and dramaturgs to workshop new plays, offer insights to the visiting playwrights, and inspire the next phase of the scripts’ development.
The most exciting part of this festival is hearing an audience respond to a new play being read aloud for the first time — with laughter, tears, gasps, and applause.
Here is this year's line-up:
The Untitled Navarro Sisters Play
Written by Sandra Delgado
A CPH Roe Green Commission
Friday June 12 7:30PM
This commission for the festival, written by Sandra Delgado, is a play with music inspired by the lives of the Navarro sisters, a singing quartet, originally from Panama, who in the 1920s made their new home Chicago and shared their music there. The play will feature music with both Spanish and English language songs from the 1920s and will include popular songs of the time, as well as feature the theme song of the radio show the sisters sang on every week. The music will be woven into the scenes and text to carry the story and share with the audience who these women were through their art.
The Goldsmith
Written and performed by Sharone Sayegh
Directed by Zachary Prince
Saturday, June 13 at 2:00 PM and Sunday, June 14 at 2:00 PM.
Stemming from Broadway Actress Sharone Sayegh’s true family’s journey, The Goldsmith is a treasury of stories woven through the golden jewelry passed down in her family, across borders, cultures, and generations. Each piece of jewelry takes us further along her family’s journey from Iraq to Israel, and then to America, where Sharone grapples for love as a first- generation Iraqi, Israeli, American. As she wrestles with identity, belonging, multiplicity of self, and acceptance, this solo play moves, surprises, and inspires the audience to investigate the stories and legacies with which we adorn ourselves throughout our lives.
Sister Chemistry
by Jeannie Affelder and Maggie Cain
Saturday, June 13 at 7:30 PM
Sister Chemistry is a story of two pairs of sisters: Amy and Carrie in 1995 Cleveland, Ohio; and Manya and Bronya in 1885 Warsaw, Poland. Each pair navigates sibling relationships, aging parents, careers in science, and balancing commitments to themselves and their sisters. Their paths weave across the kitchen as the characters learn from each other across time. The playwrights, sisters and actors in Chicago, got their start at the Cleveland Play House Youtheatre.
