“Mister Halston,” which traces the well-known fashion designer’s rise, fame, and ultimate fall, will kick off the Bay Street Theater’s 11th annual Title Wave Festival on Monday at 7 p.m. Three more works, selected from several hundred submissions, will follow in June; one about a middle-aged widow in the dating pool, another set in 1953 Iran during the C.I.A. coup that put the Shah on the throne, and the last about a journalist fired for racist comments.
The festival, which includes staged readings and critical discussion, showcases both new works currently in development and cutting-edge theater. Writers and actors will be on hand to hear and learn from remarks about their work.
“These plays are alive in the room,” said Hope Villanueva, the theater’s literary manager. “What’s electric is the moment when a playwright sees the audience feel something. That reaction becomes part of the revision. And for the audience, being inside that process is what makes it spark.”
Each fall, the theater issues an open call for full-length plays. The four finalists are selected through a national review process and invited to Sag Harbor for a week of rehearsal and a staged public reading, performed by professional actors and followed by a conversation between the playwright and the audience.
“Mister Halston,” by Raffaele Pacitti, is set in New York in 1987. The scene is the living room of the East Side apartment of the famed American fashion designer. The play, a fictionalized version of an interview that led to an important New York Times piece, traces Halston’s rocky career, set against a tumultuous time in the city’s history.
Mr. Pacitti is an art director with a background in advertising, magazine design, and publishing. His works spans theater, music, and fashion; he has said that his passion for storytelling and visual language led to a transition into playwriting.
“Curvy Widow,” a musical comedy with book by Bobby Goldman and music and lyrics by Drew Brody, is based on Ms. Goldman’s experiences in post-bereavement dating. The character of Bobby struggles with being middle-aged and single, braving the internet and its dating apps in search of a new beginning and a new version of herself. The performance is set for June 7 at 2 p.m.
Ms. Goldman is a Broadway producer and writer whose late husband, James Goldman, won an Oscar for his screenplay for “The Lion in Winter.” Drew Brody, a songwriter whose work spans rock, pop, and folk, has contributed music to Broadway, independent films, and solo and collaborative albums.
“Ajax,” by Habib Yazdi, is set in Tehran in 1953, the year a coup orchestrated by the United States and Britain overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister. (The operation was code-named Operation Ajax.) In the play, a clean-cut American arrives at a villa in Tehran where Kambiz, a gardener and pool boy with dreams of a better life, becomes entangled with the American, the Shah, and the prime minister. The play will be performed on June 9 at 7 p.m.
An Iranian-American playwright and filmmaker, Mr. Yazdi’s work has been featured at festivals and museums around the world. He is a graduate of the N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts, where he received the Oliver Stone Screenwriting Award and the Goldberg Play Prize.
In “U.X.,” by Jason Gray Platt, a jobless journalist partners with a tech entrepreneur on a new project: a virtual reality system that can be used in sensitivity and inclusion training. Once the project begins, things go awry, and it becomes clear that the best intentions can be used to amplify the worst instincts.
Mr. Platt’s work has been developed and produced by theaters across the country, including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Round House Theater in Bethesda, the Denver Center Theatre Company, and the Playwrights Realm in New York City.
Tickets to each performance are $15.
