Fantasma

Fantasma is a new play by Benjamin Benne about a Southern California family gathered in a kitchen at Christmas. It is a straight play, not a musical: six women on stage, 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission. The production is Benne's New York City and Off-Broadway debut.

The world premiere is a co-presentation of Primary Stages and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, in association with Jan McAdoo, in a limited engagement at 59E59 Theaters. It starts the Primary Stages 2026/27 season. The company was founded in 1984, has staged over 150 new plays and is the resident Off-Broadway company at 59E59.

Rosie's kitchen is freshly redone, and on Christmas Eve the women of her family, spanning three generations, crowd into it. They make chuchitos, a Guatemalan dish whose recipe was never written down but learned by heart, by touch and by instinct. The granddaughters decide to keep a careful record of every step.

Recording the dish turns out to preserve more than a method, and still falls short of remembering. The play moves across nearly two decades of the family's life. Its six characters are Rosie, Carmen, Celeste, Lizzy, Patty and Ramona.

Benne likes to set realistic, intimate relationships beside surreal and numinous touches, and his plays return to grief and loss and to what might lie beyond death. Here those interests meet a family question: what stays and what is lost when someone tries to capture a memory exactly.

The dialogue is in English with some Spanish. Cat Rodríguez collaborated during development and also supplied the Spanish translations. Benne's surname is pronounced beh-NAY. He lives in Brooklyn, holds an MFA from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and has been writing plays since 2013.

As of October 2026, the cast is Alma Martinez as Rosie, Zabryna Guevara as Carmen, Camila Moreno as Celeste, Elizabeth Ramos as Lizzy, Nancy Rodriguez as Patty and Adriana Sevan as Ramona. Among them, Martinez appeared in the world premiere of Zoot Suit, and Rodriguez has been on Broadway in The Great Society and Cymbeline.

The whole evening takes place in Rosie's kitchen, with original music and sound design running through it.

South Coast Repertory commissioned the play, backed by the Elizabeth George Foundation. It was developed in NewSCRipts and in PlayLabs at The Playwrights' Center, then at The Public in New York and in the Duke University New Works Labs Residency.

It also went through the Primary Stages Liff Lab, which gives a playwright a 29-hour workshop of an unproduced play and closes with a private invited reading. Those readings took place in June and July 2026. As of October 2026, three of the workshop actors, Alma Martinez, Camila Moreno and Adriana Sevan, are in the 59E59 cast.

The run is set to open with two First Look performances, beginning November 7, 2026. Opening night is set for November 22, 2026.