Mel Nieves

A soldier, struggling with post war trauma tries to hold on to what's left of her life.

An aging super light-weight club fighter, Roberta “La Potencia” Montoya after a devastating knock-out at the hands of a faster and much younger, Terri “Sweet & Sour” Jones must come to terms with the realization that she has come to the end of the road of the only kind of life skill she’s ever known, but her long-time manager, Joe Pacheco might have other plans for her future; to squeeze out one more fight for one last big payday to pay off a life threatening debt.

An illegal immigrant finds herself in a detention center holding cell, separated from her young son when a guard approaches her and tries to assure her that she and her son will be safe and reunited even though they both know this is far from being the truth.

It is the most important moment in Andrew's life and he's falling off the edge with doubt and it's up to his life long childhood friend, Tommy to reel him back in, get him to his senses before he ruins his entire life as well as Tommy's little sister's.

Working from home is supposed to be a luxury, but when your home becomes your workplace that luxury turns into just another place to punch the clock.

A young man tries to connect with his deceased mother.

On a flight back from his tour of duty, a soldier meets a stewardess who will forever change the course of his life.

Best friends D & M are apart from each other again, only this time it's not by either ones choice, but rather for their survival.

At the crossroads of the world, on a dark rainy night, a boy and a girl will meet, take a ride into the wee small hours and perhaps forever change the course of their tomorrows.

Traci Reyes is a smart but temperamental inner city teen with a chip on her shoulder who doesn't like to be stared at and Carmen Baez, the brightest student in the school just got caught looking .

A group of childhood friends do their best to navigate the maze of their day to day adult working class life, through love and loss, maintaining a household, a roof over their heads, food on the table, raising children and staying employed while living with the crippling fears of being just a few paychecks away from finding themselves out on the streets and never getting the opportunity to fulfill their hopes and dreams of a better life for their family.

Is violence a hereditary trait? For sixteen year old, Dee Dee Figueroa, the answer to that question may forever change the course of her young life.

Lester Collins, a one time saxophone player with several jazz bands lays down the law to a younger fellow player on the ups and downs of a true jazz man's life.

A man struggles with the loss of his beloved wife and whether another morning without her is worth seeing.

They smashed into each other's lives like a head-on collision on the interstate, both desperately seeking to close fresh wounds. Now in their final six hours together Karen and Tomas cut open, dissect and finally heal those very same wounds that turned them into lovers, but not they would soon discover a couple.

The ball is about to drop ringing in another new year filled with new beginnings, fresh starts and excitement for the unknown future, but for two old friends it’s just another knife digging into cupid’s heart, just another reminder of their what-could-have-been and never was existence. A reminder of the little boy inside themselves that keep tripping up the life of the man they want to be.

After being away for five years, incarcerated for a crime he did commit, Rudis Soto returns to his old neighborhood a different man trying to restart the life he left behind in pain and loss. As he struggles to reconnect with his family, his ex-wife, and his young son, Rudis Soto learns that Prospect Avenue is not the same place that he once knew, that the
neighborhood has moved on just as his family has, but some of the ghost from the past still remain to speak to him and he must decide whether to listen to those voices or not.

For a group of working class families and desperate dreamers in the Frederick Douglass Housing Projects, the struggle to hold on till morning is a way of life.

A Struggling writer finds himself at a crossroads between life and art and must ask himself if writing what you know is too costly a price to pay if it means losing the most precious part of ones life.

When his mother dies, Ramon returns to his old neighborhood to reconnect with the estranged wife and teenage son he abandoned years ago. He’s ready to pick things up where they left off, but his family has moved on – and they have no intention of repeating the past. An intergenerational story about the possibilities of reconciliation, unconditional forgiveness and a past that refuses to be left behind.

A romantic drama about two lonely people, a working-class Puerto Rican mechanic from the Bronx, Mateo Solis and a Korean physician's assistant, Nara Jeong from Queens, both living at home taking care of elderly parents, who cross a bridge, find each other and try and build a relationship despite their family's opposition and cultural divides.

In the wee small hours of the morning Vincent and Anamarie are dancing to the tune of Jack Daniels and smokes (and I ain’t talkin’ about cigarettes), but the music is about to stop and a shoe is about to drop before the sun rises.

November is the season of endings and beginnings. It is also the time of Esbat, where one is free to frolic and amuse oneself, but it is also a time when anything you are holding onto, for which you’re hoping for some kind of resolution from can finally be released from ones soul and into the night air and it is on one such night underneath a full moon inside a red sky is where at Sacco’s Café-Bistro, Lisa Crosco and Anthony Santoro with the help of a magical and mystical Maitre d’, these two strangers with wounded hearts will discover that the possibilities of true love just might be only one single fallen snowflake away.

Three desperate inner-city teens, Wilton Fernandez, Yazmin Garcia, and Jamal Faulkner find themselves at a crossroads in their young lives and must choose which path not to take. For Wilton, it’s a return home to a family that fears him and the hope for them not to. For Yazmin, it’s a search for a place where she can feel save, protected, and loved. For Jamal it’s simply looking for a place to belong and to find who his true self is, but at what cost? Because in the South Bronx for these three teens the struggle to survive where not living beyond today is just another heartbreak and gunshot away.

A nervous waiter at the Windows on the World restaurant studies with his gregarious older brother for his impending U.S. Citizenship test. As his girlfriend waits to tell him something very special, it's a time of possibilities on this bright, clear September morning, and as he prepares for his new life, 'Los Embrujados' looks at what it means to be an American.

The play follows a group of New Yorkers connected by 9/11: a war veteran whose trauma may cost him his family; his brother, who must leave his pregnant fiancée to go on his first tour of duty; a nurse whose husband perished in the Towers; and a veteran firefighter desperate to reclaim the courage he knew as a First Responder. In the wake of tragedy, Midnight Mass reveals the profound struggle to regain hope and faith.

From a makeshift Army call center in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn to the far away desert city of Fallujah, Iraq. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Soldiers, their voices filled with loss, confusion, loneliness, hurt, anger and hope, try to make sense of the ever-changing landscape around them during a questionable time of an never ending war and a world where for some, home is nothing more than a disappearing distant memory they are desperately trying to hold on to in order to survive while for others on the front lines between life and death the idea of home and family is nothing more than a blur.