Theatre 4the People

July 13-August 1 2027

3B Development Series

Tickets 

IN RESIDENCE: July 7 – August 3, 2026

Two middle-class Black families from Humble, Texas: The Hollingsworths and The Rutherfords are long-time friends that bond over their mutual love of basketball and a shared dream to become Black NBA families—banking on the success of their respective sons: Andre Hollingsworth and Jules Rutherford. Courting Mayhem begins at a basketball tournament that a highly acclaimed basketball recruiter, Big Earl Jensen, attends. Eager to secure their child’s future, the Hollingsworths—Trina and James, and the Rutherfords—Cam and Benny, meet with the stern, “no nonsense” Mr. Jensen, that delivers the news that only one of their sons would be recruited to the team. Both families, experiencing their own deferred dreams, inferiority complexes, greed, and yearn for stardom all at the face of being Black with limited opportunities, grasp at every straw to secure their future—even if they may have to abandon their morals, friendships, relationships and family values.

PERFORMANCE:
July 11 @ 8pm (1st Preview) 
July 12 @ 3pm (2nd Preview) 
July 13, 20, 27 @ 7pm 
July 17, 18, 24, 25, 31, & August 1 @ 8pm 
July 19 & 26 @ 3pm
RUN TIME: 2 hours. + 10 min intermission
PRICE: PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
At IRT: 154 Christopher st. NYC #3B (third floor)
ADA Accessible
PLEASE NOTE: All sales final and there is no late seating at IRT Theater.
VISIT/CONTACT US»

Actors: 
Raven Jeannette 
LaChrisha Brown
Omari “Sim” Miller 
Javere Green 
Wilson Hernandez 
Chris Cook 
Sidney Rushing 

Production Team: 
Playwright: Sidney “Syd”  Rushing 
Director: Cooper Howell 
Assistant Director: Carol Hardern 
Stage Manager: Alisha Simons 

Designers: 
Scenic and Lighting Design: Josh Bob Rose
Sound Design: Sawyer Knadler 
Costume: Christy Hall

Credit/Bios of key people: 
Wilson Hernandez (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist who is a DominiYoker raised in the Bronx, New York. He is an Actor, Model, and Director. He recently graduated from Lehman College with his BFA in Multimedia and Performing Arts. Acting credits include: Two Noble Kinsmen (Theseus), In The Heights (Usnavi), Daddy Love (Lee). Who’s Gaze is it anyway? (Host). Love’s Labour’s Lost (Don Adriano de Armado). A Boy Called Lobo (Horse Jack Daniels). Lambs of the Bronx (Casímiro). Sea and Sky (Spaceship). He’s The First (Ernesto Sanguillèn).

LaChrisha C. Brown is an actor, writer and vocalist in NYC. She recently debuted at Joe’s Pub as the Narrator of the concert reading And She Became the Rain. As a result of her work with Donkysaddle Productions (There is A Field) and Colab Arts (Life Death and Life Beyond) she has been a principal collaborator in the development of new works and a facilitator of political conversation inspired by Social Justice Theater.  Film Credits: Pillow Talk (Lyric), Teacher Problems (Amy Lovett), MADD (Detective), Sub-Par (Creator). Theater Credits: Richard III (Lady Anne), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Mattie Campbell), For Colored Girls (Lady in Red), Peter and Wendy (Tinker Bell). 

Raven Jeannette (she/her) is an award-winning artist from the South. She has worked with various companies in production, collaboration, and storytelling. Raven is dedicated to amplifying the unheard and untold stories of her ancestors. She is excited to continue creating space for Southern narratives to be highlighted. Raven expresses gratitude to God for all her answered prayers. Previous Credits: Law & Order SVU 26002; NYTW Annual Gala 2025 (V.O.G); The Searching for Willie Lynch; No Turning Back (Chain Theater Festival)  Luke 1:37; linktr.ee/RavenJeannette.

Javere Green is a Meisner-trained actor based in Queens, New York. Standing tall at 6’8″, Javere brings a unique presence to his work. He discovered his passion for acting at a young age and pursued it through higher education, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Shenandoah University. Beyond acting, Javere is a creative individual who believes in the power of bringing ideas to life. He is passionate about his craft and dedicated to making a lasting impression in the industry.

Omari “Sim” Miller is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and actor based in NYC with a background in cinema, rhetoric, and over a decade of experience in television and film production. After years of working behind the camera, he stepped into acting and began training in the Meisner technique at Matthew Corozine Studio. He began building his on-camera experience through short films and voiceover work before making his stage debut in the darkly comic play Sick, an experience that affirmed performance as an essential part of his artistic path. In addition to acting, Sim is currently developing his debut one-man show, Becoming Sire, a musical interwoven with monologues exploring hardship, addiction, self-doubt, and the journey of finding his voice.

Chris Cook hails from the great desert of Phoenix, AZ. Chris started acting 4 years ago at Arizona Actors Academy. Since starting his journey he has been in several theater productions and even won an AriZoni Award for Actor in a supporting role playing Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet with Southwest Shakespeare Company. Additionally, Chris is part of a sketch comedy group on all social media platforms known as “The Stuffmakers” where they film, write and direct their own sketches and short films. They also have live shows (Last Friday Live) at The Bridge Improv theater in Mesa Arizona.

Sidney “Syd” Rushing  has penned various stage productions in both Chicago, Texas and Los Angeles. He also wrote and performed his one man show Brother’s Tellin’ in Los Angeles which was nominated for a NAACP Theatre award. Syd was then selected for the Mark Taper Playwright’s Program. He went on to write a string of produced plays including Akashic Permutations, Unsung Heroes, Patterns, Flossie, Zu’s Earth and many others. Soon thereafter, Syd was employed at Paramount Studios where he learned under mentors in the TV industry with the nation’s top rated shows. Rushing was grateful to be a winner in the Queensbury Theatre New Work Playwright series and a recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Distinguished Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center. He was the recipient of the Inaugural August Wilson Playwright Fellowship for 2021 and received the honor of 21st Century Voices for 2022. He is a graduate of the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in New York, the University of Mississippi, Writer’s Boot Camp Screenwriting in Los Angeles, Kingwood College and Texas State University’s dramatic writing program. He thanks Greenlight Production Company for hiring him to write numerous plays, the people that did not give up on him and the Grahams. Before playwriting, Syd enjoyed a career performing in hundreds of professional productions in summer stock theatre, regional theatre, tours and Off-Off Broadway. 

Alisha Simmons (they/them) is a Caribbean-American theatermaker, arts administrator, and writer from Atlanta, Georgia. Their work prioritizes Black queer imagination as praxis and the power of community-based devised performance. Alisha received a B.A in Theater and Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, with a concentration in Performance Studies. Alisha has produced work with Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theater, The Public Theater, Olin Memorial Library, Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, The Tank NYC, 7 Stages Theatre, and Theatre 4the People. They also teach with the Alliance Theatre and Synchronicity Theatre. www.alishaasimmons.com @alishaasimmons

Media Quotes or Related Commentary
Directors Note from Cooper Howell
The genius of Syd Rushing’s Courting Mayhem is that it’s not a play about basketball at all. Basketball operates as the stage upon which a much larger American ritual unfolds. This is a play about the psychological cost of Black survival in America disguised as a sports drama. Courting Mayhem examines what happens when a society systematically limits the ways Black excellence is allowed to imagine itself, and the impossible game parents are prompted to play to keep their children alive, safe, successful, and seen in a country that has never fully known what to do with Black ambition except monetize it, fear it, market it, or consume it. In Syd’s wisdom, none of his characters believe they are doing any harm. They are acting out of love. Fierce love. Terrified love. Survival love. Love built by generations who understood that one wrong turn, one missed opportunity, one injury, one failed test, one moment of being overlooked, could alter the course of an entire bloodline. In approaching this production, I wanted to take the structure of the great American family drama and stage it like a live sporting event — using the spectacle, expectation, performance, and desperate need to win surrounding basketball to gamify a story about inheritance: the points we think we’re scoring for the next generation, and what we ask them to carry for us.

IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT’s mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council; A.R.T./New York’s NYC Small Theatres Fund made possible with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation. Thank you to IndieSpace, and everyone who supports venues like ours in New York City.

ACCESS: IRT is a fully wheelchair-accessible facility. Please reach out to Kori Rushton if you have any accessibility questions or concerns, krushton@irttheater.org

PLEASE NOTE: All sales final and there is no late seating at IRT Theater.