One night. Three plays. All about reproductive justice.

A is For is so excited to announce our 2025 all it takes is ONE ACT Play Festival will be on Thursday, June 26th at Playwrights Horizons in NYC. 

The Festival will feature readings of the winning plays from A is For’s 2024 Playwriting Contest. You can find detailed summaries of the winning plays below.

The A is For Playwriting Contest and all it takes is ONE ACT Festival engages playwrights who are passionate about abortion and reproductive justice, and offers audiences the opportunity to see those stories represented on stage. Over the past four years, we have received more than 1,100 one-act plays about reproductive justice, and presented nine of them as staged readings with casts of talented actors including Celeste Den, Garret Dillahunt, Ann Dowd, Michelle Hurd, Moses Ingram, Haviland Morris, Harold Perrineu, and Carrie Preston.

This year, we received 512 one-act plays from 20 different countries! 

At a time when both abortion rights and the arts are under direct attack, A is For is proud to offer this festival to the community. Join us, and help us advance reproductive justice on stage. 

All proceeds from this year’s ONE ACT Festival will go directly to A is For’s Beneficiary Program that provides unrestricted, critical funds to abortion funds and reproductive justice organizations across the country.

Playwrights Horizons generously donated the Judith O. Rubin Theater for this evening's ONE ACT Festival, directly supporting A is For's mission to bring art about abortion to the stage.

A Winning Plays:

3rd Place: Safe House by Kendall Grenolds

At a safe house in New Mexico, people come and go as they cross state lines to get reproductive care. When a new arrival’s past is revealed, the entire house is jeopardized as a brutal question is asked: how much responsibility must we take for laws we didn’t pass?

2nd Place: All the Things She Never Said by Sophie Goldstein

In present day Los Angeles, sisters Lupita and Mari are cleaning out the house of their recently deceased mother, Monse. As they go through boxes, they discover that she was part of the Madrigal 10. A group of Latina women who sued the LA County Medical Center back in 1978 for committing forced sterilization.

1st Place: Getting Attached by A.M. Palson

Max has traveled for miles to see the octopuses at a small marine lab in Florida, only to find that one of the octopuses has died. Sara, a lab technician, tries to explain that it’s natural and beautiful for female octopuses to die after laying their eggs. Max isn’t buying it. Together, the duo navigates questions of motherhood, biology, and gender through their mutual love and fascination with octopuses. Above all, Getting Attached explores feelings of biological betrayal and the human need for care.