Theater:Village presented last year’s The Hill Town Plays, which presented five works by the playwright Lucy Thurber. 

This year’s festival, E Pluribus, will feature four new plays celebrating the diversity of America.

The world premiere of Randy Sharp’s Solitary Light, a musical about the turmoil surrounding the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, is presented by Axis Theatre. The Cherry Lane Theatre presents TO THE BONE, a new play by Lisa Ramirez (Exit Cuckoo) about female immigrant poultry plant workers. The New Ohio Theatre presents I Like To Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, or, This Is A Mango, a new multi-writer play from Theatre 167 (The Jackson Heights Trilogy) set in the most diverse neighborhood in the world. And finally, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre presents JUÁREZ: A Documentary Mythology, a new work by Theater Mitu that explores the ever complicated landscape of the US/Mexico border.

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Solitary Light
Directed and Written by Randy Sharp
Music & Lyrics by Randy Sharp and Paul Carbonara Presented by Axis Theatre
Sept. 10 – Oct.

"On March 25, 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on Greene Street was engulfed in flames. On the 8th and 9th floors all the doors were locked form the outside to prevent employees from discussing unionism in the hallways, to discourage suspected theft and to ensure a full days work from the essentially enslaved seamstresses. 146 people died in this disaster. Some stood at windows begging to be saved. Some tried to climb down the fire escape that immediately collapsed because no one had wanted to pay for its repair. Some tried the elevator that was valiantly operated until it could no longer rise because of the weight on its roof of girls who had jumped into the shaft."

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TO THE BONE
Written by Lisa Ramirez
Directed by Lisa Peterson

Produced by Cherry Lane Theatre 
Sept. 9 – Oct. 4
 

"New York City actor and playwright Lisa Ramirez, who wrote and performed in the critically acclaimed play Exit Cuckoo (nanny in motherland), about the often complicated relationship between mothers and nannies, has made the Latina female immigrant poultry plant workers the stars of her next play. TO THE BONE is a contemporary American drama written in the tradition of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, that gives the audience a close up look into the lives of the invisible work force that puts food on our tables. The play was inspired by interviews conducted over a six-month period in New York's Sullivan County. "

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I Like To Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, or, This Is A Mango 
By Camilo Almonacid, Jenny Lyn Bader, J.Stephen Brantley, Ed Cardona Jr., Les Hunter, Melisa Tien and Joy Tomasko
Conceived and Directed by Ari Laura Kreith

Presented by New Ohio Theatre and Theatre 167
Sept. 6-27

"Theatre 167's Jackson Heights Trilogy — collaboratively written by 18 playwrights — featured 37 actors in 93 roles speaking 14 languages. I Like To Be Here is the newest, edgiest piece from this multilingual, multicultural company. In the span of one very late night, new faces encounter existing characters and re-imagined scenes from the Trilogy. An elderly Irish woman fights to keep her home. A Bangaladeshi cab driver working the night shift yearns for a woman who rises at dawn to bake bread but does not speak her language. A closeted Long Island cop comes into town for a date, and a dosa chef inadvertently heals a customer's heart. Drag queens, car dispatchers, under-slept parents, gamblers, insomniacs, and dreamers find one another on the streets of Jackson Heights."

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JUÁREZ: A Documentary Mythology
Conceived and created by Theater Mitu
Directed by Rubén Polendo

Presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in a co-production with Theater Mitu
Sept. 4 – Oct. 5
 

"More than two years in development. Over 200 hours of interview footage. Hundreds of conversations. Theater Mitu creates an artful portrait of a community in crisis and transformation. Gangs, cartels, corruption, NAFTA, femicide, the War on Drugs, fear, familial honor, mythology and hope all appear in stories collected from parents, politicians, artists, activists, factory workers, journalists, professors and more."

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Individual show ticket prices vary and four-show passes are available for $95.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit theatervillage.com.