the Story

Mowgli worked too hard to escape Yonkers. Manhattan was supposed to be his clean slate — a good job, a new apartment, a girlfriend his family hadn’t met yet. Then came the Venmo request. Just a few bucks from his niece, Brie. Easy enough to send. Easier to pretend it didn’t mean anything. But then his mother dies. And suddenly, the life he’s built is dragged back into the neighborhood he swore he’d left behind. Back to his brother Tyree — all hustles and excuses. Back to Brie — smart enough to know she deserves better, but trapped in the same cycles. Back to a home that now legally belongs to them… if they can stomach living in it together for a year. As Mowgli tries to juggle his fragile Manhattan life with the messy pull of Yonkers, he finds himself sinking into the gravity of family obligations, buried secrets, and old wounds that money can’t fix. Dependents is a sharp, darkly funny exploration of gentrification, grief, and what it really means to take care of the people who raised you — even when they broke you first.

The "Story Behind the Story"

Growing up poor isn’t terrible until you realize you’re poor. For me, that realization came when my father passed and suddenly I was the one responsible for holding my family together. Like Mowgli, I turned away from the neighborhood I came from, convinced that survival meant distance. But leaving doesn’t erase your roots, and it doesn’t erase the people who still need you. This show is my way of wrestling with that duality — the pull between self-preservation and family obligation, between carving out your own life and being tied to the lives of those you love. It’s about grief, loyalty, survival, and the messy humor in all of it.

Key Themes

Dependents is about what we inherit — not just houses or debt, but grief, responsibility, and the patterns we can’t quite shake. It’s a story about the pull between family obligation and self-preservation, asking whether you can ever truly move on if you leave your people behind. The show explores the double edge of gentrification — shiny new developments rising while families crumble inside the same walls — and the resilience of a teenager caught in the middle, desperate to build a future without losing herself. It also looks at love across cultural lines, and what happens when someone from the outside is pulled into a family that doesn’t trust outsiders. Ultimately, Dependents is about survival, belonging, and the messy, painful, sometimes funny ways we try to keep our families together even as they fall apart.

Project Status

A selection of
Awards