In 2023, Plays Inverse Press became an imprint of 53rd State Press. Learn more about the 53rd State Press catalog and leadership here.

Plays Inverse Press is a publisher of dramatic literature, publishing plays and performance texts based on literary merit rather than production records from new, established, and cross-genre writers.

We believe dramatic literature should be more than just manuals for performance, publishing quality editions intended for a life on the shelf as well as in the hand.

We are advocates of radio, collaborative, hybrid, translated, exploratory, digital, experimental, and all other forms of hyphenated drama.

We believe, along with Faulkner, that "the aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life," and that that, at its core, is the purpose of drama.

We also agree with Artaud that "we are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all."

We sometimes believe in ghosts.

— Tyler Crumrine, Founder