Joy Black Club by Aja Houston

IAMA Theatre Company presents a staged reading of

Joy Black Club

Written by Aja Houston

Directed by Rosalind Bevan

Click here for tickets!

Sold Out! Join the waitlist in-person 30 minutes before showtime at the box office.

In this magically absurd play with music (not a musical) spanning classical, rock and roll, and country genres, we follow a devastated Melancholy who after losing her high-powered job in a massive DEIA purge, joins a Black activist group to aid her getting retribution. Instead its vibrant members challenge her to first discover what society, family, and even herself has blocked her from experiencing—radical joy.

The IAMA Emerging Playwrights Lab

IAMA Theatre Company presents staged readings of six new plays written by members of the company’s 2025-26 Emerging Playwrights Lab. Readings will take place over the course of two weekends, July 18 through July 26, at the Atwater Village Theatre.

Admission is free and open to the public; reservations are recommended.

Submissions for IAMA’s 2026-27 Lab will open July 13, 2026. Please click here for more information.

Making up the Lab’s Class of ’26 are Andrew Grace, Aja Houston, Josh Levine, Tyree Marshall, Samah Meghjee, and Erica Wachs. The six playwrights met on a monthly basis during their one-year residency to share and develop work in a peer-guided format led by program director Nicholas Pilapil, himself an IAMA Playwrights Lab alumnus. Pilapil’s play, The Bottoming Process, developed in the inaugural 2019-20 Lab, was produced by IAMA in a co-production with the Los Angeles LGBT Center in 2023. Also developed in the 2019-20 Lab, Job by Max Wolf Friedlich, went on to receive a Broadway run in 2024.