Three-headed Monster by JuCoby Johnson

South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival presents a staged reading of

Three-headed Monster

Written by JuCoby Johnson

Directed by H. Adam Harris

Dramaturgy by Zenia Salame

Click here for tickets!

In a Bronx apartment, three friends make up for lost time—and try not to lose each other.

After serving time for a crime he didn’t commit, 21-year-old Kyrie returns to the Bronx and his two best friends. A once-inseparable trio is reunited at last. But in the cramped apartment, Kyrie begins to fear there’s no room left for him in a friendship—and world—that grew up while he was gone.

About the Playwright

JuCoby Johnson (he/him) is a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter originally from Jacksonville, Florida. Johnson is a second-year playwright in The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. As an actor, he has performed at the Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Theater Mu, Ten Thousand Things Theater, and many more. His plays have been developed and produced at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Playwrights’ Center, The Old Globe, South Coast Repertory, Round House Theatre, Page 73, Echo Theater, IAMA Theatre Company, Jungle Theater, Playing On Air, and The International Black Theatre Festival. His screenwriting credits include “The Runarounds” (Amazon). Johnson is the recipient of McKnight and Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships, is a member of 2026 Page 73 Writers Group, was a member of the 2022 Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program, and was part of the inaugural artist cohort at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

South Coast Repertory’s Pacific Playwrights Festival

Launched in 1998, South Coast Repertory’s annual Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF), part of The Lab@SCR, is a major national showcase for new plays.

The 28th festival—May 1-3, 2026—features two world premiere productions and five staged readings during an action-packed three days. PPF weekend attracts theatre professionals from across the nation, as well as SCR’s devoted new play audiences, who are drawn by the chance to be the first to see some of the best new theatrical works in the country.

The New York Times calls SCR “an incubator of major talent … South Coast has mounted an impressive list of acclaimed plays, long before the East Coast establishment got wind of them.” SCR’s 27 previous festivals have introduced such award-winning plays as Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, Julia Cho’s The Language Archive and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole.