6 out of 71 Submissions!

This year, Helltown Players received 71 short play submissions from Cape Cod-affiliated playwrights — more than ever before. Every play was read aloud by our trustees and scored across four criteria: quality, relevance, theatricality, and meaning. After months of reading, discussion, and difficult decisions, six plays were chosen to share the stage this fall.

Six world premiere short plays, six Cape Cod connections, one unforgettable evening of theater. This fall, Helltown Players brings you the strongest lineup of New Little Devils yet — performing at Cotuit Center for the Arts and in Provincetown. Dates coming soon.

The lineup…

Susan Lumenello

Kissing in Public

by Susan Lumenello

Acting queer: lesson one.

When two actress friends meet, one wants the other to teach her to "play gay."

Susan Lumenello's Dreamsville has been produced at the Cotuit Center for the Arts' Black Box Theatre (2024) & Academy of Performing Arts (2026); The Sherlock Problem, Cape Cod Theatre Company (2022); the one-act A Period Piece, Academy of Performing Arts (2023; radio play, WOMR, 2024). Short plays include Stacy & Tommy (Boston Theatre Marathon, 2025); Buzz (BTM, 2015); Meltdown (BTM, 2023); The Boulder (Cape Playhouse, 2023); Pink & Green (Artists Exchange, 2020). She is a Dramatists Guild member. Susan grew up on Cape Cod and returned home in 2020, after living in Boston for many years.

Stripers

by David Adam Gill

Two men. One airport delay. A lifetime of baggage.

When two stranded travelers — an erudite older man and a volatile working-class fisherman — bond over a shared love of angling, their airport small talk detonates into a collision of prejudice, vulnerability, and unexpected grace.

David Adam Gill has spent nearly every summer of his life on the Cape since the year he was born; it's in his DNA. Irregulars (Cherry Lane, NY); Providence; Experimenting with Katz (TheatreLab, NY); More Myself Than I Am (Secret Theatre & Manhattan Repertory, Best Play); Fault Lines (Secret Theatre, Short+Sweet Dubai, Best American Short Plays 2018-2019); Eugene and Oliver Back at the Whitehorse Tavern (Elmwood Playhouse One-Act Weekend 2026), In the Garden of the Hesperides (Blurring Boundaries 2023, Smith & Kraus Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2025), The Bay of Fundy (Pittsburgh New Works Festival 2025, Outstanding Playwright Prize for Best Script, Oswego Players 2025 Donald J. McCann Playwriting Contest Second Place Award). Co-founder and Artistic Director of New Ambassadors Theatre Company. DGA Member.

Predators

by Jim Dalglish

Just another slow shift in the Mojave — until all hell breaks loose.

Two drone pilots are killing time, four months into a boring surveillance rotation, when a blip on the radar changes everything.

Jim is a playwright, director, filmmaker, and producer with more than 30 plays and films produced and screened worldwide, winning awards in New York, Boston, London, and Dublin. Several have been anthologized in best play collections. He holds an MFA in playwriting from Brown University, where his thesis advisor was Paula Vogel. Jim is Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Helltown Players, Cape Cod's newest theatre collaborative. His recent work includes The Playground, selected for United Solo Festival Fall 2026 at Theatre Row in New York City. For more information and to read his plays: www.jimdalglish.com

Matt Spano

Little Dust Clouds

by Matt Spano

Blood may be thicker than coffee, but can that help solve the wounds of the past?

Two brothers at very different points in their lives confront the trauma and perceived slights of the past.

Matt Spano is a Boston-based writer, performer, and arts administrator, having worked with organizations as diverse as the American Repertory Theater, Huntington Theater Company, Lyric Stage of Boston, the Boston Children's Museum, and the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. Most recently, an excerpt of his full-length play-in-progress, P-Town Summer—a love story starring the ghost of Tennessee Williams and the second of a planned Provincetown-set trilogy—was produced in Brooklyn, NY, as part of Purplelight Productions' SWATCH 2026, a festival of rising new works. Matt is deeply honored to have his work recognized and produced in a place so close to his heart and artistic sensibility. He is also a proud member of Actors' Equity and the Dramatists Guild.

Wait Time

by Kathryn Zaniboni

A cup of coffee, a long line, and everything Eleanor thought she knew about "them."
In the waiting room of a government agency, a local woman strikes up small talk with an asylum seeker from Kabul — and neither of them leaves the conversation the way they entered it.

Lynda Sturner

Stuck Again

by Lynda Sturner

Two people, one Ferris wheel, and a proposition that doesn't go as planned.
Stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel, an aging couple's romantic gesture spirals into a panic attack, a lost ring, and a question neither of them expected to answer.

Lynda's plays have been produced in New York, Dublin, Tokyo, Valdez, Alaska, and Cape Cod. A Talented Woman, written with Jim Dalglish, won the Kaplan Prize at Eventide Arts and was produced at Cotuit Center for the Arts. Her plays include Remote Control Oatmeal and The Death of Huey Newton; Look What You Made Me Do was produced in Dublin and Provincetown in Quickies. She was a member of the Actors Studio Playwrights Unit, the Woman's Project workshop, and the BMI Musical Theater Workshop. She is a proud member of Helltown Players, a new theater group of Cape Cod playwrights.

Where & when…

All six are world premieres — written by playwrights with deep Cape Cod ties, never before performed anywhere.

Cotuit Center for the Arts (Black Box) | Provincetown This fall — dates announced soon

Follow Helltown Players for ticket information and casting updates.

Announcing the 2026 New Little Devils Short Play Festival