COLLECTIVE RAGE follows five very different women — all named Betty. One is rich, one lonely, one charismatic, one lovelorn, and one spends her time working on her truck. When one Betty decides to stage a play, their lives collide “at the intersection of rage, love, and the thea-tah.”

Bess Wohl’s GRAND HORIZONS is a sharply funny and deeply moving comedy-drama about a couple who, after fifty years of marriage, calmly announce their decision to divorce . . .

Winner of the 2024 Jewish Play Project, a national contest that identifies, develops and presents new works of theater through one-of-a-kind explorations of contemporary Jewish identity between audiences, artists and patrons.

This funny, moving and thoughtful play asks whether following one's truth is worth it, no matter the cost.

A comedy with dark edges, CRY IT OUT takes an honest look at the absurdities of being home with a baby, the power of female friendship, the dilemma of going back to work, and the effect class has on parenthood in America.

O, a childless female neurobiologist in her 40s, is blindsided by her husband who wants a divorce but refuses to leave the house. With that, her life is upended and she’s thrown into an epic couch-hopping odyssey . . .

Jam-packed with princesses, dragons, pirates and more, TOOTH & TAIL is part fairy-tale, part rescue mission, part love story, and all adventure. 

Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company started its 2022-2023 season with a show like no other, making its audience laugh and cry while educating about the struggles of infertility and motherhood for women.

The world premiere of THE MOTHER PROJECT: A Collaboration to Honor Black Mothers and their Children.

"This is a play of finding what can be rebuilt after tragedy; of redemption and hope after trauma."

Three new plays by women that were inspired by the pandemic.

This round of FEMFEST HOUSTON was BLACK WOMEN'S VOICES, in collaboration with Esurient Arts, and featured two full plays and four short plays by African-American women.

FINE WINE: a series of classic monologues written for ingenue actresses, but instead performed by actresses in their late 40s and older, for a new perspective.

OH MY GOD is a dark comedy that explores what could happen if God walked into a therapist's office.

Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company and Asia Society Texas Center present three staged readings of Houston premiere plays by Asian and Asian American women.

In a barrio kitchen in North Philly, a professor moonlights as the local soup kitchen queen, offering rice and beans to any hungry neighbor. Halfway around the world, her cousin relives his military trauma...

Four of Beckett’s most intriguing short plays (COME AND GO, FOOTFALLS, ROCKABY and NOT I) featuring all female characters.

Presented with the support of the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest, Voices of Israel features three Houston premiere staged readings by Israeli women playwrights.

This year we’re sifting through the files to bring you the best of the best of our dysfunctional shorts.

Set at the turn of the century, after Christopher Columbus’s return from the New World, HUNCHBACK is a madcap re-telling of Spanish history and the evils of colonialism.

This event features a series of three staged play readings all addressing the question, ‘What is consent?” highlighting the works of three playwrights...

In honor of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company (MU) is presenting the U.S. premiere reading of Sam Hall’s MY MIND IS FREE, a play created out of the testimonies of traffickers and the trafficked.

Mildred’s Umbrella presents a reading of Terrence McNally’s hit play, MOTHERS AND SONS, in honor of World AIDS Day.

A young working-class English woman unexpectedly comes into a large sum of money and decides to live a life of extreme luxury at a Swiss resort while it lasts.

Set on the bleak Yorkshire Moors of northern England, THE MOORS centers on two spinster sisters living alone in a manor house with their maid and mastiff...

Step into a dark, quirky, and hilariously uncomfortable celebration of human flaws. Museum of Dysfunction X is the ten-year milestone of Houston’s premier short-play festival.

Dark Matter combines a selection of short plays from Nigro’s Tales from the Red Rose Inn in a festival-like atmosphere with spare sets that underscored the strength of the scripts, acting, and direction.

WELL combines ideas of social activism, mind over body, and experiments in theatrical form.

We had to postpone this family-friendly production by Elizabeth Keel, so we're giving you a fun preview reading online for free! 

Castro-Smith’s horror comedy is set in a sleepy factory town at the end of the 1970s, and centers on teenaged Chris and her father’s new fiancée Carol, who don’t exactly get along.

Today is the two-year anniversary of Fiona’s son’s disappearance, and still, nothing makes sense to her. Not her blasé husband, the incompetent detective, or the neighborhood kidnapper who keeps introducing himself in the checkout line.

The ninth edition of our dark, quirky, and hilariously uncomfortable celebration of human flaws.

Set amidst a family vacation at an idyllic lake house in upstate New York, A Heroine Free Summer examines what happens when a family becomes divided – the result of two teenage sons confessing to drug use.

Sex trafficking seems like someone else’s problem, until an upper middle-class family in a prominent Houston area suburb finds itself ensnared.

Amy and Ester are an unlikely pair – Amy is brash and blunt while Ester is the more unassuming of the two – who are forced together in trying to solve the problem of Amy’s unplanned pregnancy.

Loosely based on the infamous Papín sisters who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, in 1933, THE MAIDS tells the story of two servants who act out elaborate role-plays while their mistress is away, all centered around killing her.

The eighth iteration of Houston's premiere short-play festival

Dollface tells the story of a young woman’s journey from innocent to outcast at the hands of an unknown suitor and in the eyes of society.

This disarmingly thoughtful and at times hilarious drama tells the story of Becky Foster, a woman caught between middle age, middle management and a middling marriage

The Other Woman is a full-length, one-act play adapted from five essays appearing in the bestselling anthology The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal. The play tells the stories of five women with very different viewpoints and experiences around infidelity.

Bizarre and offbeat, Mac Wellman’s play Dracula completely re-vamps Bram Stoker’s classic novel..

The regional premiere of THE DROWNING GIRLS is a modern interpretation and poetic retelling of the “Brides in the Bath” slayings in 20th century England.

On a dark and rainy night in L.A., “average joe” Anibal de la Luna picks up a very pregnant hitchhiker named Celestina del Sol and offers her refuge.

The Texas premiere reading of Hotel Volkswagen by Icelandic writer, comedian, actor, and former Mayor of Reykjavik Jón Gnarr.

“Mary, always late and always married, meets a lady cowboy outside the city limits of Pittsburgh who teaches her how to ride a horse."

Jane Whithers, an erstwhile kindergarten teacher/lifeguard has been sent to find the “origin of evil, the root of denial and the basic human weakness that causes us to fear death."

At sunrise, Polly wades alone into the spring waters of the Atlantic to begin her first ocean swim. In a small container secured to her body are her mother Jule’s ashes...

During an extravagant wedding reception at a southern estate, five bridesmaids, each with her own reason for avoiding the bride and the reception, hide out in an upstairs bedroom.

Cassandra is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Cassandra, the beautiful girl who was given the gift of prophesy in exchange for the promise of sex with the god Apollo.

As John Keats is dying in the next room, a group of people lament the absence of wine and servants, see dark shapes in the garden, endure a violent visit from soldiers and wait for Keats to die.

Mildred’s Umbrella Theatre Company and Wordsmyth Theatre proudly presented Museum of Dysfunction VI: A SHOWCASE OF SHORTS. The sixth installment of our annual short play festival.

When Kate visits the death bed of a close friend, she is taken on a wild theatrical ride, as she is forced to acknowledge that no matter how much denial, positive thinking or prayer people practice to avoid death, the existential fears that every human being holds about the end of life will result in the same end…death.

William Bloor, a ‘foxfinder’, arrives at Sam and Judith Covey’s farm to investigate a suspected contamination. He is driven by his education and beliefs to unearth and destroy an animal that threatens man’s civilization, and to remain free from its influence himself. As his investigations proceed, the events that follow change the course of all their lives – forever...

On a snowy night, Inspector Ruffing is called to a remote house to investigate the death of Patrick Roarke. He becomes involved in the lives of five alluring and dangerous women, all of whom are suspects in the murder.

Kimberley Akimbo follows a 16 year old girl suffering from a form of Progeria, a disease that causes her to age 4½ times faster than she should.

This year’s shorts focused on the agony of love, and the roller coaster that is the human relationship.

This incisive, unexpected, and larger than life tale of sex, love, and self delusion tracks the overlapping escapades of a group of friends old enough to know better in love but still naive enough to mess things up anyway.

Jean becomes annoyed when the man sitting next to her won’t answer his ringing phone, until she finally answers it herself, and in doing so discovers that the man is dead...

Notions of Right and Wrong is the story of a human outnumbered by ideas. Some, like Justice, try to lay claim to her, while others just want to help her slog through puberty.

In a small seaside town, a carnival arrives with a three-headed barking dog that predicts the future, a woman who flays herself alive and a bodiless boy who recites the poetry of John Keats.

A black comedy told in 33 (mostly) quick scenes.

A skeleton in the cupboard, a doctor in the house, and coitus ad infinitum on the living room floor, Cuckoos is a tragi-comic retelling of the Oedipus myth.

Margo Veil is a young actress whose strange adventures lead her into an ever-changing landscape of dream and reality.

Evening begins to fall. Lamps are lit, a child walks outside with a saw, and two sisters in a broken-down house make a ham sandwich for their father who sits on a couch–tied and bagged...

June has a terrible secret. Gash has an outrageous plan. Leah is open to possibilities. And Joy is drinking to forget...

After being pressed by a student, Biology Professor Henry Darden admits that he finds Darwin’s emphasis on natural selection as the means of evolution “unconvincing." This public confession thrusts Professor Darden into a culture war he wanted nothing to do with.

Winner of a 2004 Oppenheimer Award, THE FLU SEASON is a reluctant love story,.

It is 1661, and the most famous portrayer of female roles on the London stage is Ned Kynaston. He’s the toast of the town and of the very secret “mistress” of the powerful Duke of Buckingham, until King Charles, decides to change the law, allowing women to act, and making it illegal for men to play female roles on stage.

A MURDER OF CROWS satirizes a family struck down by the toxic winds of pollution. In a world where the air’s “mustardy”, and the ocean is so polluted it looks like a bowl of custard, young Susannah reels from the death of her father, killed under a pile of radioactive chicken droppings.

Darkly comic and deeply moving by turns, ONE FLEA SPARE is set in plague-ravaged 17th Century London where social roles and the boundaries that describe them have turned upside down.

What is ROT? A collaboration between two of Houston’s premiere theater companies. What is ROT? A husband dying of the plague, a wife longing to move to Arizona. What is ROT?

Five short plays of gothic horror by Don Nigro.

What is ROT? A collaboration between two of Houston’s premiere theater companies. What is ROT? A husband dying of the plague, a wife longing to move to Arizona. What is ROT?

Andy is a young recluse who rarely leaves his closet, but things change after a visit by the 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson.

Three women, full of life, lust and power, reveal their passion for the same man, and confront the ways that love can both liberate and entrap.

Three young urban failures navigate the slippery allegiances of their triangular friendship.

Hester Swane is a woman tormented by the memory of her mother who deserted her, and enraged by a man who has betrayed her. On the brink of heartbreak and desperation, she travels a terrible path of vengeance that results in a tragic conclusion.

Needful creatures. Green fire. Night sweats. Melting Limbs. Must be love…

A mother remembers her husband sitting in a dark cave, her affair with a bull, the children she abandons to horrible fates.

MAC WELLMAN'S DRACULA tells the story of two sexually repressed women who find freedom and passion in the vampiric world of late Victorian London.

In the Spring of 2004, Mildred’s Umbrella invited its growing audience to “board the train” on a strange, exploratory journey through the absurdity of human condition.

Murder plots, a secret wedding and a suicidal wedding planner... all before the curtain opens.

A play within a play in which a Ringmaster, Acrobat, and Tumbler eat duck, play chess, assault each other, and argue about love and death as they rehearse scenes from EROS: A CIRCUS.

“A well-turned lesson on how not to fall in love”