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There’s always something happening at Harper Joy! Just one week into the spring semester, the Box Office is hard at work preparing for its first show weekend. On January 29th—tonight!—Harper Joy’s annual Studio Series will have its first performance. Opening night will feature a play entitled Boxed, written by current Theater faculty fellow Mylan Gray.

Gray is a graduate of Stanford University and holds an MFA in playwriting from UC San Diego. As an undergraduate, he received the for his honors thesis. Since then, he has also been awarded the for his play Buried in Blood and has his work developed in theater companies across the United States. At Whitman this year, he is teaching courses in playwriting and theater history, organizing the biennial One Acts production, and bringing Boxed to a sold-out audience.

Gray describes being at the Venice Biennale the summer before he started writing Boxed, where the theme was “The Milk of Dreams”. Wanting to try his hand at surrealism, Gray chose to focus in on an image of two enslaved men in an office. “As I wrote into [this image],” he says, “I found myself thinking about the ways that Black men are encouraged to fight each other for supremacy and dominance: football, rap beefs, gang wars, boxing—it all asks for us to cheer on the aggression and dominance of one person over another.” Boxed seeks to imagine a different kind of reality. In a world where black masculinity is hyper-visible, commodified, and vilified, Gray wants to instead “see black men live and love in the face of death.”

Bringing a work like to the stage doesn’t happen alone. For The Studio Series, Gray is working in collaboration with New York-based director . “She has a brilliant dramaturgical mind, generous heart, and is a great researcher,” he says. “With her, I've been able to talk through the play, bring in new scenes, change things around, and still feel like we'll be able to offer a captivating show.” On Thursday night, Boxed will be performed by Marcus Fitzpatrick and Tyson Scott. In their less than 30 hours of rehearsal, these actors have been asked to talk through certain pages of the show and navigate its frequent rewrites. According to Gray, the actors aren’t ever expected to memorize the script entirely. Rather, they are “creating engaging ways to stage an ever-changing show, while remaining on-book.”

Tyson Scott, one of the actors mentioned above, is actually a Whitman student. So is the director's assistant and playwright shadow. Gray says that working with students has been the most exciting part of The Studio Series. To be able to share the room with individuals who are eager to experience a rehearsal room similar to a professional reading workshop is incredibly invigorating for him. “I hope that this experience empowers them to create similar experiences for their own acting and writing after they graduate”, he says. 

Boxed evidently seeks to deal with a multitude of important topics. Ahead of its performance, Gray encourages his audience to consider the following:

“Without captivity and forced labor, the United States would not exist. These two institutions have been the pillars of U.S. economic production since 1619. In 2026, that reality is no different, but perhaps it's expanding and consuming more people than ever before. As for-profit prisons and detention centers rapidly expand, I hope that Boxed inspires people to question the precarity of their own freedom. I hope it inspires people to risk losing the comfort or privilege afforded in acquiescing to oppressive systems and instead choose to value the lives of the people that are right in front of them. Above everything, I hope that Boxed makes people feel that change is necessary, possible, and thrilling when we work together.”

We’re beyond excited to have the opportunity to present Boxed on our stage, and we hope that you’ll all come out and support the wonderful work that Mylan, Allie, Marcus, and Tyson have been doing. Tickets to Boxed and the other Studio Series performances can be found . With that, it’s onward to opening night! 

Acknowledgements from Gray: “I want to personally thank the Division of Inclusive Excellence. Without their support, I would not have been able to fly my collaborators from New York to work with me. Their encouragement made this unique workshop process and reading possible. I also want to thank Renée and the Theatre and Dance department for valuing new work creation and giving me a chance to bring a new play to Whitman.”