Comedy | Dark Comedy | Drama | Arab American
About The Ancestry Dot Com Play
Samia never knew her father, and her secretive Lebanese mother is more interested in watching Wheel of Fortune than providing answers. While she’s proud of her Arab American heritage, Samia wishes she knew more about her family history – until her friend does her DNA test without her consent, making Samia confront just how much knowledge about her ancestry she can handle.
Alyssa Haddad-Chin (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based Lebanese American playwright, educator, and arts facilitator from Upstate, NY.
Her play, YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY, received the 2025 American Blues Theater Blue Ink Award for Playwriting and was selected to be a part of the Denver Center 2026 New Play Summit. She has developed work with New York Theatre Workshop, The Playwrights Realm, The Mercury Store, Clubbed Thumb, Keen Company, Premiere Stages at Kean, B Street Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, The People’s Theatre, and others. She is the Company and Community Manager at Target Margin Theater, a Resident Artist at Breaking & Entering Theater Collective, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. A collection of her short plays, And Now a Little Something for the Ladies (among others), is published with 1319 Press. MFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
About Playfest
Orlando Shakes PlayFest is a two week long annual festival that provides a place for writers, theater professionals, and audiences to connect and share ideas that promote thought-provoking stories. Audiences experience staged readings of six new works over two weekends and participate in the development of new plays, conversing with playwrights, directors, and actors while absorbing groundbreaking new works.
Orlando Shakes is a core member of the National New Play Network, a nationwide organization devoted to developing new work through the New Play Exchange, rolling world premieres, the Producer-in-Residence Program, and annual conferences. Orlando Shakes prides itself on active participation within the national new play community while engaging its local audiences in the latest and greatest in playwriting.
Presented by
