Read and Rant: January 2026

Athena Project’s Read & Rant program seeks to combine the sharing of theatrical work with the wider public and the new play development aspects of our former Plays In Progress Series while also fostering collaboration between playwrights and dramaturgs. Think book club for plays! Learn what makes a good script, discuss how it affects us, and explore the ways it links to the larger world. This monthly free offering to the community aims to raise awareness of the under-representation of women’s stories on stage.

Each month, we read two new and unproduced scripts selected from a nationwide call for submissions and typically meet every third Monday online via Zoom to discuss the works. Join us to converse with invited playwrights who bring an in-depth knowledge of the works and theatrical writing at large. Guided by a dramaturg, we also invite you to share your constructive comments, thoughts, and affirmations in order to aid in the development process of the pieces.

Evening hosted by Read & Rant’s incoming Literary Manager, Reilly Conlon!

This month we will be featuring:

Atomic Bill and the Payment Due by Libbe HaLevy

The Oppenheimer-adjacent true story of media manipulation at the dawn of the Atomic Age and the New York Times reporter who sold his soul to get the story. Anti-nuclear podcaster Jessie stumbles across mention of a reporter embedded in the Manhattan Project who was the source for all the earliest public information about the bomb. Through her search for long-suppressed information, interactions on the spiritual plane with dead journalists, and her own time-limited future, she embarks on a secret, deadly plan to raise visibility for nuclear issues.

Dramaturg: Beverly Sylvester

Libbe HaLevy is producer and host of Nuclear Hotseat, a weekly podcast on nuclear issues, now in its 15th year (NuclearHotseat.com). She is U.S. Ambassador for the International Uranium Film Festival and winner of the 2022 Nuclear Free Future Award. A staged reading of ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE was a featured presentation of the Wilmington College Peace Resource Center’s 50th anniversary in September, 2025. Her other plays and musicals have received more than 50 productions.

Time’s Up by Mary Anzalone

A country singer is sent to prison for attempted murder. She must survive in the hopes of being exonerated, but may die alone, when shortly after she arrives a fatal virus hits. A play with bite, humor, and love. A very ALIVE play about, well, maybe dying!

Dramaturg: Dezi Tibbs

Mary Anzalone is an American actor from Central Texas. She is best known for her poetic monologue turned short film Smoke & Mirrors and her stage play Mourning Doves which was a Second Rounder at AFF in 2019. She was also accepted into The Playwrights Welcome Program in 2019 launched by Marsha Norman. Mary is a member of The Dramatists Guild and received her formal drama training at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York, New York.