“Audacious, imaginative and moving.” –Los Angeles Times

Whether you love Shakespeare or Shylock, this story lives between The Merchant of Venice and the realities of Jewish history. Jessica and Lorenzo are in love, but to be together they must plan an escape from her father’s house, the Venetian ghetto, and her entire culture. EVERYTHING THAT NEVER HAPPENED is about disguise, romantic intrigue, and the terrible price we must sometimes pay to be free.

What is a Preview?

Previews are an essential part of the theater-making process that allow directors and playwrights to see their plays with audiences for the first time and identify areas for adjustment. These special performances allow you to get a first look at the play and be a part of each shows’ creative journey before it opens officially. 

Sarah Mantell – Playwright 

Sarah Mantell is the recipient of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot. Their other plays include The Good Guys, Tiny, and Fight Call. They have worked with Playwrights Horizons, Boston Court Pasadena, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Playwrights Realm, Second Stage, Breaking the Binary Festival, The Folger, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Sarah has been awarded a Toulmin grant, Edgerton Foundation grant, and fellowships with MacDowell, Playwrights Realm, Sewanee, Yaddo, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. MFA Yale School of Drama.  

Jessica Kubzansky – Director 

JESSICA KUBZANSKY is the Artistic Director of Boston Court Pasadena, a theatre dedicated to risky, adventurous new works as well as significantly reenvisioned classics. She is also  an award-winning director working nationally, in theatres across the country such as Arena Stage, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Cherry Lane, Utah Shakespeare Festival, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Portland Center Stage, South Coast Repertory Theatre, The Pasadena Playhouse, The Geffen Theatre, and many more, especially in Los Angeles where she is based. Kubzansky had the privilege of directing the world premiere of Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened at Boston Court, it was subsequently programmed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival until the pandemic intervened. Kubzansky herself specializes in new work re-examing classics through a modern lens, in addition to Sarah’s play she has directed Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles (The Getty Villa), at Boston Court her own immersive Measure STILL for Measure, RII (her own three-person adaptation of Richard II), she is also a Shakespeare freak; favorite productions of the bard include Hamlet with Leo Marks, A Winter’s Tale (Theater 150), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Utah Shakes), Othello (with Wayne T. Carr) at A Noise Within, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Illinois Shakespeare Festival), Macbeth (Antaeus), and more. Recent work at Boston Court includes world premieres of Tira Palmquist’s The Body’s Midnight, Kit Steinkellner’s Ladies,  Stefanie Zadravec’s Colony Collapse, Sheila Callaghan’s Everything You Touch (also for Rattlestick at The Cherry Lane).Recently at other theatres, The Father with Alfred Molina, Pygmalion, Mauritius (Pasadena Playhouse), Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths (Arena Stage), Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Orange (South Coast Rep), Stupid F*cking Bird (ACT, Seattle). Kubzansky received the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle’s Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre, and is thrilled to be returning to Baltimore, where she received her undergraduate degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University.