Cast Announced for Lavender Men

Skylight Theatre and Playwrights' Arena have announced casting for the World Premiere of LAVENDER MEN which opens August 6th at the Skylight Theatre. Written by Roger Q. Mason, the play is being directed by Lovell Holder.

The cast features Alex Esola as Elmer Ellsworth (Marco in Ivo van Hove's award-winning stageproduction of A View from the Bridge at The Kennedy Center, the Ahmanson Theatre, and shared the screen with Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore and Billy Crudup in Bart Freundlich's feature film "After the Wedding"), Roger Q. Mason as Taffeta (Welcome to the Blumhouse with Amazon Prime; God in Feel the Spirit with Colt Coeur), and Pete Ploszek as Abe Lincoln (Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard, directed by Kate Burton, soon to be seen on screen in "Babylon," directed by Damien Chazelle).

LAVENDER MEN is a historical fantasia which follows Taffeta, a self-proclaimed "fabulous queer creation of color," who invades Abe Lincoln's private world to confront issues of visibility, race and LGBTQ+ inclusion that still challenge us today.

This genre-pushing play courageously re-imagines one of America's most beloved historical icons, President Abraham Lincoln, through a queer person of color's storytelling lens. The much-anticipated production, directed by Lovell Holder, was developed as part of Skylight's SkyLab, a playwrights-in-residence program. The play received a reading on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre in 2019 and garnered a feature on the prestigious Kilroys List in 2020. The play's lead character inspired the multi award winning short film, "Taffeta," directed by Lovell Holder.