AUGUST 15, 2026
Join us for our annual Blue Ink Festival of new plays. Celebrate the 2026 Blue Ink Award recipient Nia Akilah Robinson and featured finalists Benjamin Benne and Claire Crowley. Reservations for individual tickets can be made HERE or by calling (773) 654-3103. Suggested donation is $12 per play or $30 to see all three. RSVP recommended. Send any questions or concerns to BoxOffice@AmericanBluesTheater.com. Refreshments and beverages will be served throughout the day.
All readings take place at our theater – 5627 N. Lincoln Ave. More information about the plays and artists are below. *Ensemble member or artistic affiliate of American Blues Theater.
Limited seating capacity – this festival will sell out.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
10:00 AM – Doors open for the 2026 Blue Ink Festival
10:30 AM – OVERNIGHT AT THE MUSEUM by Nia Akilah Robinson *winner of 2026 Blue Ink Award*
12:00 PM – Reception
12:30 PM – and thou shalt be healed by Benjamin Benne
02:30 PM – THE SCOUTS OF AMERICA DON’T SELL COOKIES, B*TCH by Claire Crowley
Learn more about the 16th annual Blue Ink Award recipient Nia Akilah Robinson HERE!
About the Plays
OVERNIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
by Nia Akilah Robinson
directed by Manny Buckley*
Saturday, Aug 15 at 10:30 AM
OVERNIGHT AT THE MUSEUM Featuring Rasaan Khalil (DaMarcus), Terah Jene (Deandra & others), & Martel Manning* (Darius)
“One and done before the full-time security come through with them fancy museum suits, and them ear-piece-sez and- and them lil’ first aid certified pins.”
Two Black men who work as night guards for museum security are stealing Ghanian artifacts from a gentrified American neighborhood. Can they get them where they need to be before the grand opening of a “Neo-African Museum”? Overnight at the Museum is a hilarious heist story that masterfully toys with our definitions of history, legacy, and art.
To request a perusal script, please contact the American Blues Theater.
NIA AKILAH ROBINSON (she/her) is a playwright and actor who reps Harlem with all her might. Productions: Soho Rep U.S. Off Broadway Premiere (2025 New York Times Critics Pick), NextStop Theatre (2026 Helen Hayes Recommended), Co-Pro: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company & Company One Theatre, Urbanite Theatre, Theatre503, Theatre Exile, and The Hearth. Her work has been seen and developed with Nashville Repertory Theatre (Ingram New Works Project), Steppenwolf Theatre, The New Group, The Ground Floor: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Waterwell, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Urbanite, and New Georges. Nia has been a MacDowell Fellow, Travis Bogard Eugene O’Neill Foundation Fellow, and a writer for PEN America and EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (short play). She has had residencies at NYSAF and The Pocantico Center through YoungArts. Nia’s work has been featured at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, and the 48th Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival. Nia has been awarded 1st Place for the 2023 A is For Playwriting Contest, the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Writing Scholarship, a Miranda Family Fund Commission, and the NYSCA Grant (CCCADI). She was shortlisted for the 2023 Theatre503’s International Playwriting Award. And Nia is a member or alumna of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, I-73 at Page 73, The Orchard Project NYC Greenhouse, The Wish Collective, and TheBlackHERthePen. Education: Yale (DGSD- MFA Playwriting Candidate) & Juilliard (Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program).
and thou shalt be healed
by Benjamin Benne
directed by associate artistic director Elyse Dolan*
Saturday, Aug 15 at 12:30 PM
and thou shalt be healedFeaturing Editha Rosario-Moore* (Mary) & Nate Santana* (Johnny).
“The article explores how what we believe can be powerful enough to become reality”
Mary and Johnny are siblings – with a complicated cult upbringing. Johnny has left the cult but Mary remains. They reunite on a remote mountain in New Mexico when Mary brings news that will force them both to reckon with their relationship, their beliefs, and their faith.
To request a perusal script, please contact Skyler Gray, sgray@gersh.com
BENJAMIN BENNE (he/him) was the 2019 winner of the Blue Ink Playwriting Award for his play Alma, which had its World Premiere with American Blues and Center Theatre Group (Los Angeles) in 2022, then went on to productions at ArtsWest (Seattle), Curious (Denver), Central Square (Cambridge), The Spot (Ketchum), Chance (Anaheim), and Passage (Trenton). He has also had plays produced with Mosaic (DC), First Floor (Chicago), Portland Stage (ME), Pillsbury House (Minneapolis), Actors Theatre (Louisville), and forthcoming at Crowded Fire (San Francisco) and Boston Court (Pasadena). His plays have also been developed by the O’Neill, Ojai, Oregon Shakes, The Public, Roundabout, Primary Stages, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, and The Playwrights’ Center, among many others. He was named part of “LA Vanguardia: The Latino innovators, instigators, and power players breaking through barriers” by the Los Angeles Times and received an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. www.benjaminbenne.com
THE SCOUTS OF AMERICA DON’T SELL COOKIES, B*TCH
by Claire Crowley
directed by Ian Paul Custer*
Saturday, Aug 15 @ 2:30 PM
THE SCOUTS OF AMERICA DON’T SELL COOKIES, B*TCHFeaturing Kieran McCabe* (Joe), Kelan Smith (Kelan Smith), Manny Buckley* (Benny), Christopher Acevedo (Jared), & JG Smith* (Effie).
“Nope nope nope cookies aren’t just for girls. Cookies are for everyone!”
The Scouts of America Don’t Sell Cookies, B*tch interrogates the relationship between capitalism and violence through the lens of American youth. The Scouts of America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America, have changed their name to be gender inclusive! Effie, a girl, decides to join the Scouts, eager for new friends and an escape from the norm. She enters the formers boys’ club with an intensity and hunger for new skills that surprises her troop leader, Joe, and scares her fellow scouts. As she traverses the unfamiliar landscape, she battles assumptions and underestimations of her personhood. There is also a bald eagle. This is important.
Read this script at NPX: https://newplayexchange.
CLAIRE CROWLEY (she/her) is a New York-based playwright and screenwriter from the ocean and mountains of New England. Sometimes she writes dark comedies, and sometimes she writes drama, but always her plays are centered on themes of violence and money, grief and loss and yearning, hypocrisy and intra, inter, and structural power, (dis)belonging and home and liminality, community and friendship and queerness. Her plays include THE SCOUTS OF AMERICA DON’T SELL COOKIES, B*TCH (Blue Ink Award Featured Finalist, GPTC New Play Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, O’Neill Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, Echoes Writers Program Finalist), THE CALLING or BROKE (O’Neill Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, Fringe Fest PVD) and METASTASIZED (B&E Rooftop Reading Series Finalist, Woodward Residency Finalist). Her plays have been developed with Great Plains Theater Commons, American Blues Theater, Primary Stages, The Tank, Playwrights Realm, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and The Barrow Group. She is a Hunter College Playwriting MFA ’28 Candidate.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions:
Actors’ Equity Association
American Guild of Musical Artists
American Guild of Variety Artists
SAG-AFTRA