“This is the kind of exciting new voice, and potential fresh audience, that Chicago theater badly needs. Sharma should not hold back.”

- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

I’m on New Play Exchange.

 

Playwriting

 

Radial Gradient

A hate crime has taken place at a liberal University in America. Three women enter a research study planning to create positive change, but instead, uncover their complicated shared history. Jasmine Sharma's new play, Radial Gradient challenges what complicity looks like - what do we do if it looks like us?

 

PEACHY: a sorta chekhovian traumedy

In 2022, the owner of a Los Angeles based, family-run, Indi-Mex restaurant has the opportunity to franchise. In 1962, a Mexican woman and Punjabi peach farmer enter a "Mexidu" marriage in order to circumvent California's stringent miscegenation laws. Jasmine Sharma's PEACHY is a sorta chekhovian traumedy about cooking with love…and, family.

 

Pigeonhole

Kaaya and Dev are siblings with nothing in common except their childhood home in New fkn Jersey. Over fifty years on the day of Raksha Bandhan, or, Rakhi, two siblings played by six actors try to protect each other from their past flying by them in real time. Jasmine Sharma’s PIGEONHOLE is a new play about an old Big Ask - can you build a nest where there was none?

 

Showtime, Auntie

Rohan and Reena have both been told they have to perform a solo at yet another family wedding. It's competitive, until Rohan catches Reena smoking a joint outside. Showtime, Auntie is a short play about performing under pressure - or trying to, anyway.

  • Reading, APIDA at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Dir. Lavina Jadhwani, May 6, 2023.

 

For Your Consideration

Newtflix is looking for their next big reality TV hit, and Surya will finally be getting her shit together in order to deliver. In the basement of a Hindu Samaj, Surya - and her Uma Auntie - audition an interracial couple for a potential new dating show, turning her recent heartbreak into a marketable pitch deck. Jasmine Sharma's new play, For Your Consideration, examines what happens when what you make is seen by everyone - including the person who inspired it.

 

KIDS CLUB/CLUB KIDS

During “Nightcare Night” in the childcare section of an unnamed lesbian nightclub, six year olds Milo and Petunia offer no nonsense relationship therapy for adults. This four part musical episodic was written for SERIALS by The Fled Collective: A Late Night Short Play Competition! We’re all kids at the kids club.

  • Episode 4, The Flea, Dir. Mackenna Goodrich, September 15-17, 2022

  • Episode 3 (First place!), The Flea, Dir. Mackenna Goodrich, September 8-11, 2022

  • Episode 2 (First place!), The Flea, Dir. Raz Golden, August 18-20, 2022

  • Episode 1 (First place!), The Flea, Dir. Raz Golden, August 11-13, 2022

 

VIRGINS: A Madonna Bootcamp

Florence and Julia are the final two in consideration for the role of Madonna in the Madonna biopic. But who can kick, screlt, and most importantly, drop enough weight in time to play the icon? Virgins: A Madonna Bootcamp, is my silly little love letter to the actors still dealing with this shit.

 

AMERICAN GIRL DOLL HORROR PLAY: Or, Kavi Sharma Stole My Identity

Doll has the chance to break into the industry if she agrees to the deal her agent and former AGD herself, Ivy Ling, has negotiated – “Kavi Sharma, The 2023 Girl Of The Year”. AMERICAN GIRL DOLL HORROR PLAY Or, Kavi Sharma Stole My Identity, is a short, spooky play about big, spooky compromises.

  • Production, ?!: New Works 2024 at The Brick, Brooklyn, NY, Dir. Mackenna Goodrich, April 10-11, 2024.

 

SCRABBLE

Two old friends spend their last night together, before the flood, as planned. The board game is sentient.

  • Written for DOGTOWN V2: End of the World.

 

THE JAZMINES: a rage play - and for legal reasons, a parody.

In this multi(hypenate)verse, South Asian-American creatives carve out space in the American Theatre canon. In the audition room, the casting office, and at the talkback, THE JAZMINES asks who is behind the table and who puts themselves in front of it. Where are you?

  • Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, 2023

  • Reading, Multi-Gen: New Works Lab by Moxie Arts NYC x Entertainment Community Fund, May, 2023.

Cancelled/Cancel Me

It's us against them and us against us and us be in isolation. Between hours spent on Tik Tok and Tumblr, college juniors demand accountability from the world and each other during the 2020 pandemic. Jasmine Sharma's new play, Cancelled/Cancel Me, are two acts in conversation about care.

The Assistants

Plotting, strategizing, and doing mental math at all times, eight high schoolers vie for a coveted internship that will confirm a “successful” future - whatever the fuck that means. THE ASSISTANTS asks us what ambition looks like, and also, who is taking who to prom?

  • Commissioned by North Shore High School, 2022.

Women Supporting Women

Thank god there’s another woman working at this company! Women Supporting Women is a 10 minute onboarding call gone wrong.

Gut Punch

Is it gauche to improvise with white people when you constantly have to sweep edit their implicit bias? Jasmine Sharma’s Gut Punch is a 30 minute Harold within a Harold about a collegiate long form improvisation team is an experiment in the theatre of the oppressed.

Leaving Wonderland

A modern day adaptation of the 1865 novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland), Alice tries to discern the imagined from the reality of a night where memory is up and down, grown and shrunk upon recollection. Jasmine Sharma’s new play, Leaving Wonderland explores Alice's encounter with sexual assault, and the space in which she looks for control in the #metoo era.

  • Workshop/Reading, AstonRep’s Writer’s Series at The Edge Theater, 2020.

    • More information here.

  • Reading, Lovers and Madmen, dir. Harley Kirchoff, 2019.

  • Workshop/Reading, Access Theater NYC, 2018.

  • Awards: The Athena Project’s Plays In Progress Series 2020 Semi-Finalist, American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Competition Semi-Finalist 2019.

Hot Dogs and Feminism

If fitting in with fifth graders means hosting girl gang meetings in your basement to discuss new wave feminism, okay! But while figuring out how to navigate their new "friendship", Olga and her pals resort to cafeteria crime in order to catch the liberal eyes of much cooler fifth grade feminazis. In Jasmine Sharma’s 30 minute farce, Hot Dogs and Feminism, suburban liberals must confront…suburban liberals.

  • Production, Lipstick Theater’s Make Your Mark Festival, dir. Jessica Levin, 2018

  • Workshop/Reading, Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference, dir. Kalli Randall, 2018

  • Production, Mayo Performing Arts Center, Dir. Jim Ligon, 2017.

  • Production, Bergen County Academies, dir. Lacee Schuck, 2017.

Death Rows

On her thirteenth birthday, a storm cuts the power in a hospital, causing Mack to get a new roommate. In Jasmine Sharma’s 30 minute dark comedy, Death Rows, two terminal party guests celebrate the ethics of dying on their own terms or living by others.

  • Production, The Blank Theatre, Dir. Richard Tatum, 2017.

    • More information here.

  • Production, Mayo Performing Arts Center, Dir. Jim Ligon, 2016.

    • More information here.

  • Production, Bergen Community College, Dir. Mary Clifford, 2016.

  • Awards: New Jersey Governor’s Award, Scholastic Gold Medal (Dramatic Writing)

Revisited (Holy Moly)

This is a play about mothers, daughters, grief, and cake. Throughout playgrounds and living rooms, from 2008 to 2018, a woman and her daughter reenter a community of women who have lost each other in one way or another. Jasmine Sharma’s bechdel test, Revisited interrogates human need, closure, and the generational cycle of female relationships.

  • Workshop, Jewish Theatre Ensemble, Dir. Allison Zanolli, 2019.

  • Production (Holy Moly), Manhattan Rep NYC, dir. Jessica Levin, 2018.

A Leaky Pipe

What’s going to break down next, Mira and Carter’s plumbing, or their relationship? Fresh off moving in together, the couple uncovers home issues in the form of…personal issues. Jasmine Sharma’s 10 minute comedy, A Leaky Pipe asks if a wrench is enough to repair the damage.

  • Production, Vertigo’s 10 Minute Play Festival, dir. Alex Cohen, 2018.

Screenwriting

CCC: Conflicted Cuties of Color

If you're a woman of color with a white legacy partner at ***Unidentified Ivy League School***, you may get tapped on the shoulder. This secret society exists as like, alcoholics anonymous for interracial couples. But when a transfer student from Cornell is invited to pledge, the society discovers her partner is actually not white, but MIAMI CUBAN, okay?!?!

GRO Up Pilot

Fresh out of juvie, three teen girls work at an urban garden, and, try to get their shit together. Co-written with Camille Thomas and Nina Rodriguez, Gro Up won the 2022-2023 Reel Sisters Film academy award qualifying fellowship and grant.

Other Writing

“A Midterm Check-in on Both Educations: Balancing School and Anti-Racism”

Commissioned essay for iWeigh Community. Content co-created with illustrator Merav Epstein for the iWeigh social media platform.

“Be Scared, Not Racist”

Commissioned essay for iWeigh Community. Content co-created with illustrator Merav Epstein for the iWeigh social media platform.

Installment One, Installment Two, Installment Three.

“Kept an Audio Message From You”

Created for Tummy Ache World to be included in their TOGETHERNESS issue.