“You are going to face here the web of cultural quandaries of family, home, place and most of all, Being. Multi-sensory and multi-vocal forces will drag you across the immigrant and stage universe. Bilingual breath will surround you―India, Africa, Middle East, Korea and the triturating screams of river-crossing water in its borderland phantasmagoria. You are going to be loved, and pulled, teased, blurred, mud-mashed and sculpted by stories, longings, losses and migrant-soaked river blood. A new grammar, a new rhythm of writing, speaking, performing, sounding, movement and Queer speakers will thrash you―is this the immigrant experience? Is this America? Arrival? Accommodation? Is this Transcendence? Or is this Immigrant Liberation? Fractured spaces, cultures and the gone shackles of true persons call for a new Freedom. Wait until you meet La Sirena, the border river, freakish Mermaid riding your back - part Virgen de Guadalupe, part LLorona, part Mouth-spirit of the migrant drownings, howling through the fences of “Fascist” Border Guards. I bow to these brave writers. Each play and voice steps toward Humanity, Unity, Deep Reality, Borderland-Talk, the Unknown that America fears. We have been waiting for such Enlightenment, Art & Love. We are not ‘Invaders.’ Bravissimo, a Miracle, a ground breaking, prize-winning set and chorus of Truth.”
―Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, Emeritus

"This ground-breaking anthology shows us the people we are becoming; a nation of multilingual intimacies, our hearts split between homelands. The bold, visionary playwrights in What This Place Makes Me shatter stereotypes, and reveal the deep and beautiful human truths inside the immigrant experience."
―Héctor Tobar, author of Our Migrant Souls

“This vibrant and thrilling collection of groundbreaking plays explodes well-worn 20th-century tropes around immigration to show that movement across borders is central to the story of humanity. These plays make us feel, make us think, open up new worlds, and exemplify some of today’s best dramatic writing.”
―David Henry Hwang, Tony and Grammy Award–winning playwright

“This extraordinary assembly of plays speaks to the range of brilliant writing on the many meanings of being an ‘American.’ Each text projects a unique voice and a revelatory vision of immigration, belonging, and what it means to make a home in this nation. Stavchansky's selections resonate off of each other, and lead to a luminous portrait of how the theater can tell the stories that make us who we are, and help us see each other more clearly.”
―Melia Bensussen

Seven award-winning plays by rising stars of contemporary theater herald a profound shift in what it means to be an American, an immigrant, and an artist on today’s stage.

-Shayok Misha Chowdhury | Public Obscenities, shortlisted for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize
-Hansol Jung, 2018 Whiting Award–winner | Wolf Play
-Martyna Majok, 2018 Pulitzer Prize–winner | Sanctuary City
-Mona Mansour, 2020 Kesselring Prize–winner | The Hour of Feeling
-Charlie Oh | Coleman ’72, 2021 Paul Stephen Lim Award–winner
-Mfoniso Udofia, 2021 Horton Foote Award–winner | Sojourners
-Jesús I. Valles, 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize–winner | a river, its mouths

This groundbreaking collection of works by first- and second-generation immigrants unites seven exhilarating new voices of Lebanese, Nigerian, Korean, Bengali, Polish, and Mexican descent. Echoing beyond the stage, their stories draw on common experiences of displacement, alienation, and the sense of living in suspension; sometimes torn between two worlds, sometimes plummeting into the spaces between them. Amid tangled relationships, vengeful landscapes, and buried family mysteries, something universal flickers; the search for safety and the promise of home. Both haunting and galvanizing, What This Place Makes Me will be a vital touchstone for years to come.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a many-tentacled writer and director based in Brooklyn. A Mark O’Donnell Prize and Princess Grace Award recipient, Misha was an inaugural Project Number One Artist at Soho Rep, where he directed the world premiere of his play Public Obscenities (New York Times, Critic's Pick). Misha was also awarded a Jonathan Larson Grant for his body of work writing musicals with composer Laura Grill Jaye; their most recent collaboration, How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia, was awarded the 2022 Relentless Award. Other collaborations: Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special; MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater) with Kameron Neal; Your Healing Is Killing Me (PlayMakers Rep) with Virginia Grise. Misha is also an alumnus of New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, New York Stage and Film Nexus, the Sundance Art of Practice Fellowship, The Drama League’s Next Stage Residency, and Soho Rep’s Writer Director Lab.

Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland, and raised in New Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living, which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 2023. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages. Martyna studied at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, University of Chicago, and New Jersey public schools.

Mona Mansour is a Lebanese-American playwright and television writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Unseen (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Gift Theater); We Swim We Talk We Go to War (Golden Thread); The Way West (Labyrinth Theater, Steppenwolf). The full-length version of The Hour of Feeling was at Actors Theater of Louisville’s Humana Fest; an Arabic Translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi in 2016. Urge for Going was presented at The Public Theater and Golden Thread. Mona Mansour was a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. With Tala Manassah she wrote Falling Down the Stairs, an EST/Sloan commission. Their play Dressing is part of Facing Our Truths, commissioned by the New Black Festival. Awards include: 2020 Kesselring, 2020 Helen Merrill Award, 2014 Middle East America Playwright Award. Residencies: MacDowell Colony, Space on Ryder Farm, Sundance Theater Institute, New Dramatists Class of 2020. Mona writes for NBC’s New Amsterdam, and is working on a script for AMC International. In 2019, she formed the theater company Society with Scott Illingworth and Tim Nicolai.

Hansol Jung is a playwright from South Korea. Productions include Wild Goose Dreams (The Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse), Wolf Play (NNPN Rolling Premiere: Artists Rep, Mixed Blood, Company One), Cardboard Piano (Humana Festival at ATL), Among the Dead (Ma-Yi Theatre), and No More Sad Things (Sideshow, Boise Contemporary). Commissions from The Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theatre, National Theatre in UK, Playwrights Horizons, Artists Repertory Theater, Ma-Yi Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her work has been developed at Royal Court, New York Theatre Workshop, Hedgebrook, Berkeley Repertory, Sundance Theatre Lab, O’Neill Theater Center, and the Lark. Hansol is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship, Whiting Award, Helen Merrill Award, Page 73 Fellowship, Lark’s Rita Goldberg Fellowship, NYTW’s 2050 Fellowship, MacDowell Artist Residency, and International Playwrights Residency at Royal Court. She is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, NYTW’s Usual Suspects, and The New Class of Kilroys.

Charlie Oh’s plays have been developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep, The Lark, Second Stage, The Goodman, the BMI Lehmen Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, and the American Music Theater Project. His play LONG won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Award In Playwriting, placed second for the Mark Twain Prize for Comedic Playwriting, and was a 2019 Honorable Mention for The American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award. His play Coleman ‘72 won the Kennedy Center’s Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award and premiered at South Coast Rep in the spring of 2023, directed by Chay Yew. Commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Page 73’s Interstate 73, and EST/Youngblood. A recent graduate of The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.