2025 Matchbox Reading Series

Lenora II
by Aidaa Peerzada
directed by AeJay Mitchell
dramaturgy by Cathleen Riddley
Friday, November 14th, 7pm

In Lenora II, playwright Aidaa Peerzada envisions a near future where memory can be recorded, replayed, and rewritten. When a scientist resurrects her mother’s consciousness through experimental technology, she must face the consequences of love that refuses to die. Blending lyricism and science fiction, Peerzada crafts a world that’s haunting, intimate, and alive with moral tension. Part elegy, part speculative dream, Lenora II asks what remains of us when our memories outlast our bodies. This is a story about ancestry, innovation, and the fragile beauty of remembering.

Featuring: Keren Southall (Michaela), Sydney Jacobs Allen (Lenora / Lee), Tommy Soulati Shepherd (Dahomey), Andre K. Jefferson (Elijah / Xavier), Tierra Allen (Ms. Mushin / Styx), Storm White (Stage Directions).

Stage Manager: Elio Amador

Aidaa Peerzada (she/her) is a Black and Pakistani American theatre maker based in the Bay Area. Her plays have been developed with the Playwrights Foundation, Prop Thtr, Catalyst: C3T, Meet Cute LA, Northern Sky Theatre, and SFBATCO, where she is also part of the artistic staff. As an actor, Aidaa has performed with Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre, Word 4 Word, SFBATCO, Pittsburgh Public, Illinois Shakespeare, Utah Shakespeare, Steppenwolf and American Players Theatre. Aidaa studied at the Baltimore School for the Arts and went on to receive her BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

I Did Not Kill My Mother; and Other Lies I Tell Myself
by Anthony Doan
directed by Ely Sonny Orquiza
dramaturgy by Natalia Duong
Saturday, November 15th, 1pm

Anthony Doan’s I Did Not Kill My Mother; and Other Lies I Tell Myself is a darkly comic meditation on grief, family, and the stories we invent to stay alive. A queer Vietnamese son confronts his mother’s ghost, the myths of his childhood, and the weight of inheritance—both cultural and emotional. I Did Not Kill… shimmers with absurdity and ache, blurring the line between ritual and reality. By turns hilarious and devastating, the play transforms mourning into revelation, asking what we owe the people who made us—and what we gain when we finally let them go.

Featuring: Louel Señores (Con),  Chloe Wong (Mẹ / Nhi), Paula Vercudia (Mom / Vivianna), Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (Má / Bà Ngoại), Joyce Domanico-Huh (Stage Directions)

Stage Manager: Zoe Lozano

Anthony Doan (he/they) is a queer, first-generation Vietnamese American theatre artist currently based in the Bay Area. He writes to excavate and process truth from and for the interconnected and complex human experience. Through an anti-racist, culturally-informed lens, they strive to viscerally entertain and challenge audiences, provoke political thoughts, and inspire people to empathetically listen to the world in a different vibration.

Tehran Baby
by Yasmin Van Deventer
directed by Nailah Unole dida-Nese’ah Harper-Malveaux
dramaturgy & choreography by Adin Walker ◼
Saturday, November 15th, 4pm

In Tehran Baby, a daughter digs through memory, myth, and cigarette smoke to find her mother—and herself. Yasmin Van Deventer’s razor-sharp solo play is a poetic excavation of identity, exile, and the fierce bond between mothers and daughters. Through fragments of memory and imagination, Van Deventer unearths buried histories of love, loss, and survival with humor, sensuality, and defiance. Equal parts confession and confrontation, Tehran Baby burns with wit and longing as it asks what it means to grow up between worlds—and what we inherit, or risk losing, when we try to bridge them.

Stage Manager: Paige Weissenburger

◼ Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC)

Yasmin Van Deventer (she/her) is an Iranian-American actress, writer, and producer based between Paris and Los Angeles. She began acting as a child at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California before training at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York and L’École Périmony in Paris. Yasmin appears in La Bête alongside George MacKay and Léa Seydoux and served as associate producer on Ambush by award-winning filmmaker Yassmina Karajah. She is executive producer on upcoming films by Sara Boutarabi and Alireza Ghasemi. Through her company, One Thousand & One Nights Productions, Yasmin champions soulful, character-driven stories. She recently wrapped two shorts as executive producer, producer, and actress, opposite Oulaya Amamra (Divines) and Julia de Nunez (Bardot). She has just completed production on Pomegranate, a short film adapted from her play Tehran Baby, which she wrote, directed, and produced, and in which she stars opposite Sandor Funtek (Suprêmes, Blue Is the Warmest Color).

Presently Untitled Spysh✨t
by Leigh M. Marshall
directed by Will Detlefsen
Saturday, November 15th, 7pm

Welcome to a world of danger, decadence, and deception. In Leigh M. Marshall’s Presently Untitled Spysh✨t, a noblewoman and a secret operative flirt, scheme, and test the limits of morality in a collapsing empire. Blending opulence with sharp wit, the play asks: what’s left when desire and duty collide? Equal parts thriller and fever dream, Spysh✨t transforms espionage into an allegory of intimacy and control. This is theater that smolders, glitters, and surprises—an erotic, political fantasia that exposes the revolution hidden behind every glance.

Featuring: Alicia Mason (Victoire), Z Hansen (Cockaigne / Minister of Defense), Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (Detective Inspector de Chiel / Noble Voices), Joyce Domanico-Huh (Stage Directions)

Stage Manager: Shaila Sarathy

Leigh M. Marshall (she/her) is a multidisciplinary writer/performer and the Theater & Film Editor online at BOMB Magazine. Her work has been selected for Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Residency, the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, Iowa New Play Festival, the Examined Life Conference, the Prague Quadrennial, and Live Design International. She is a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation. BA: Stanford University. MFA: Iowa Playwrights Workshop.