Announcing C&G’s 2025 Season

Six impossible projects.
Three legendary partner orgs.
A season for the ages.

It’s time: meet the projects that make up Coin & Ghost’s 2025 Season: [Underground & Overexposed]!

There are some stories they don’t want you to tell.
People they’re hoping you’ll forget about.
Ideas that, if expressed, could disrupt the power of [insert dominant culture here]. 

For as long as there have been books, there have been men in power trying to dictate which books are safe to share. From the Library at Alexandria to 15th century Rome to modern-day Florida, censorship of the written word has always been a primary tool in attempts to control the masses. And in our own experience, we’ve often found that the books these would-be autocrats are afraid of are EXACTLY the ones we should be reading. 

Welcome to The Index of Forbidden Books, a dangerously imaginative solo-performance festival co-presented by Coin & Ghost and Los Angeles LGBT Center. 

Named after the Vatican’s original banned book list (1557-1966), The Index began with a simple prompt: what topics feel too dangerous to talk about, even in today’s society? What parts of you have you been socialized to hide? What is off-limits? Coin & Ghost is working with remarkable artists from across disciplines to create original 5-10 minute solo-performances around the festival theme. The result will be a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience, performed for one night only at the Center.

Knowledge is power. Read banned books.

Tragic, darkly funny, and terrifyingly relevant, The Aaron Play picks up right where Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus left off: with its self-proclaimed villain, Aaron the Moor, sentenced to death for his many crimes and buried up to his chest in earth. Desperate to free himself and reunite with his infant son, Aaron must employ his deadliest weapon and the only thing he has left – his words. Watched by two Roman guards, Aaron plots his escape amidst memories of the past, portents of the future, and spirits of the wrongéd dead.

This fresh new riff on Shakespeare’s bloodiest play asks us to consider how our own society sees justice vs. vengeance, cycles of violence, complicity in larger systems, and the cost of building an empire.

Every day, the boy in the wheelchair sits by the window and dreams of flight, while his father – the architect – spends his days filled with worry and fear. After all, he still remembers what it was like to lose their home to the plague, and he knows how lucky they were to find sanctuary on this island. But he also knows that their place here is precarious. At any moment, they could be cast out. At any moment, they could lose everything. Again. 

One day, the king offers an answer to the architect’s prayers: he will ensure the boy’s safety for the rest of his days; in return, all the architect must do is build a structure that is bigger on the inside than out – a place so vast and complex that a person could wander its halls for a lifetime and never go the same way twice. But what could this impossible structure be for? And what will it mean if the architect is successful?

Room By The Sea is a story you know. It’s a story of families, class, and survival. But it is also the story of something else…something monstrous.

Geoff Rose wasn’t just an NBA player; he was a legend of the game, one of the best to ever do it. But his recent retirement has left him lacking purpose, and he finds himself at a crossroads, as he starts to to hallucinate a friend of his who died in prison. Reluctantly – and at the advice of a colleague – he gets involved in abolition work. But when a tragedy strikes, he must choose the kind of person he will become and who will be in his life.

The Heritage is a new play about the crossroads of athletics and activism – of politics, patriotism, and the cost of Black superstardom.

“They’ll say we’re disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we’re disturbing the war.” – Howard Zin

In this audacious reimagining of Lysistrata, the ancient call for revolution is flipped on its head to center the voices, desires, and experiences of Trans and Gender-Nonconforming sex workers and their clients. As the characters—united by a bold act of withholding intimacy—strike back against a system that profits from their bodies, they shatter the illusion of sexual subservience to reclaim their agency, control, and dignity.

Roger Q. Mason’s fresh adaptation is raw, irreverent, and unapologetically Queer, offering a vision of resistance that doesn’t just challenge the cishet white patriarchy, but absolutely obliterates it. It’s a call to arms for anyone who’s ever been told they don’t belong in the conversation—and a fierce celebration of those who dare to write their own rules.

Guard your cookies, ‘cuz Jolly Ol’ Saint Thicc is BACK!

Here at Coin & Ghost, we believe nothing says “good tidings and cheer” like tasteful nudity, which is why we’re bringing back our infamous holiday burlesque spectacular, The Naughty List. This sexy fan-favorite will have you begging for myrrh!

So giddy up jingle-horse, because this yuletide ain’t gonna gay itself.