Christian Mendonça

Christian Mendonça

Christian Mendonça is a New Jersey-based Portuguese-American playwright, whose work has been read at the Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation's Roundtable Reading Series (Come Flores, 2020), Art House Productions' INKubator New Play Festival (Flowers for Men, 2022), Premiere Stages' New Play Festival (Flowers for Men, 2023), and American Stages Lift Every Voice Festival (Flowers for Men, 2024)....
Christian Mendonça is a New Jersey-based Portuguese-American playwright, whose work has been read at the Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation's Roundtable Reading Series (Come Flores, 2020), Art House Productions' INKubator New Play Festival (Flowers for Men, 2022), Premiere Stages' New Play Festival (Flowers for Men, 2023), and American Stages Lift Every Voice Festival (Flowers for Men, 2024). Further distinctions include: Finalist for the Goldberg Play Prize (American Quality, 2018), Semifinalist for Landing Theater's New American Voices Play Festival (Filomene, 2021), Finalist for DISQUIET International Literary Program’s Luso-American Fellowship (Untitled Screenplay, 2023), and a commission for Art House Productions via the Hudson County Historic Partnership Program to write a play about the Bayonne Oil Refinery Riots of 1915-1916 (Dearest Paweł, 2023). His work aims to create moments of tenderness and introspection where they might not otherwise exist.

Plays

  • American Quality by Christian Mendonça
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: drama, tragedy
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    Keyword: American Dream, Immigrants + 6 more
    Genre: drama, tragedy
    Keyword: American Dream, Immigrants, homelessness, Race, Newark, New Jersey, New York City, Portuguese
    Over the course of a summer, between 11pm-4am every night, three men convene at a parking lot in Newark, NJ, initially to each other’s chagrin… then, they get to know each other. Can that little morsel of connection break through the racist socio-economic underbelly of their American Dreams, or will the Brick City grind be their undoing?
  • Conventuais (Working Title) by Christian Mendonça
    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic + 3 more
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    Keyword: faith, Nuns + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, faith-based, period
    Keyword: faith, Nuns, sweets, pain, pleasure, truth, period, Portugal, comedy, drama
    Portugal, 1847. Dona Maria II has just given a painful, yet successful birth to Infante Augusto, Duke of Coimbra. On that same day, Sister Marta was excommunicated from the convent for having been caught with an abortifacient plant in her quarters (yes, while pregnant). With one nun down for the morning baking of doces conventuais (egg and almond-based sweets) to sell and keep the convent afloat, Madre...
    Portugal, 1847. Dona Maria II has just given a painful, yet successful birth to Infante Augusto, Duke of Coimbra. On that same day, Sister Marta was excommunicated from the convent for having been caught with an abortifacient plant in her quarters (yes, while pregnant). With one nun down for the morning baking of doces conventuais (egg and almond-based sweets) to sell and keep the convent afloat, Madre Superiora throws Sister Adelaide, who may be able to commune with angels, into the mix. Sister Perpetua and Sister Gorette, the other nuns on the morning bake team, are secretly aiding Sister Marta's re-settlement post-excommunication, and find Sister Adelaide's addition to be thorn in their plans. That is, until they bake their secrets into each other. A play about the dichotomy of pleasure and pain in veneration, self-realization, and in standing up for your truths when no one else will.
  • Dearest Paweł by Christian Mendonça
    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: Social Movements, Strikes + 8 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, period, political
    Keyword: Social Movements, Strikes, riots, period, Polish, World War I, New Jersey, Bayonne, historical, drama
    July 1915, Bayonne, NJ. Polish immigrant workers for the Standard Oil, Tidewater Oil, and other refineries are striking for higher wages and humane workdays. Siblings Iwo and Gita, alongside their cousin Szymon, navigate the complexities of what it means to partake in this strike while their loved ones are fighting World War I back in the divided motherland. When the strikes take a violent turn, each of the...
    July 1915, Bayonne, NJ. Polish immigrant workers for the Standard Oil, Tidewater Oil, and other refineries are striking for higher wages and humane workdays. Siblings Iwo and Gita, alongside their cousin Szymon, navigate the complexities of what it means to partake in this strike while their loved ones are fighting World War I back in the divided motherland. When the strikes take a violent turn, each of the three must reckon with the choices that led them there while confronting the limited options this new life has to offer. A play about capitalism's social framework and its innate and unstoppable disintegration of family dynamics and identity. Commissioned by Art House Productions through the Hudson County History Partnership Program.
  • Filomene by Christian Mendonça
    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: body autonomy, grief + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale, mystery/thriller
    Keyword: body autonomy, grief, trauma, gaslighting, psychological, supernatural, alligator
    Alma comes home to a gator in her living room, only the gator might actually just be her husband, Marquis, or at the very least, may have eaten him. Alma calls Low to help her get rid of it. Only there’s something off about Low. Come to think of it, just about everything seems off about Alma. A look at grief, guilt, autonomy (both of body and dreams), and the permission we need to heal and move on.
  • Flowers for Men by Christian Mendonça
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: Toxic Masculinity, healing + 4 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Toxic Masculinity, healing, forgiveness, loneliness, immersive group therapy, flowers
    Henri, a social worker, gets funding to test out his pilot program "Flowers for Men," a five-week healing journey that asks men to nourish a flower into blossoming and to heal a relationship in their personal lives. Easier said than done. Will this group of six men make it out of this program ready to grow, or will they be hell-bent on (self-)destruction? A review of toxic masculinity, machismo,...
    Henri, a social worker, gets funding to test out his pilot program "Flowers for Men," a five-week healing journey that asks men to nourish a flower into blossoming and to heal a relationship in their personal lives. Easier said than done. Will this group of six men make it out of this program ready to grow, or will they be hell-bent on (self-)destruction? A review of toxic masculinity, machismo, forgiveness, and the lack of grace and self-love that men (do not) afford themselves and others.