Down Once More

is a fresh, new work from collaborators Asim Ali Naqvi and Marlon Wallace

A melodramatic psychological thriller born from nearly a year of developinment as a screenplay, and then a stage play. For the first time, these characters are stepping out of imaginative dimensions and into the flesh. Under the direction of Frank Williams, (creator of the hit off broadway play & soon to be film,) The Options Game.

Blurb:

Set primarily in and around New York City—with a pivotal moment unfolding in Philadelphia's Bike Stop—the play follows a queer South Asian Muslim therapist whose own grasp on stability begins to slip. Something starts stalking them. Someone loves watching them. As the presence gets increasingly volatile, Rohan becomes uncertain whether what hunts them is human…especially because it feels way, way, hotter than anything they've ever known.

Down Once More embraces the full complexity of queer South Asian life: spiritual longing, intimacy ethics, mental health, desire, cultural inheritance, and supernatural traditions carried through Muslim and South Asian storytelling. From this intersection comes a world where melodrama meets psychological horror, where the sacred entangles with the erotic, and where rediscovering one’s abandoned faith becomes an act of both confrontation and liberation.

Where the funding goes:

Your support on Givebutter goes directly toward paying the artists who are building this world and toward the production elements that make this workshop possible.

By donating, you’re helping queer, Black, and South Asian storytellers carve out space in a landscape where these kinds of narratives are rare, needed, and often underfunded. Down Once More is a story that exists for anyone navigating the intersections of queerness, faith, culture, desire, and fear—and for anyone who simply loves powerful new theater. Thank you for helping us bring this world to the stage.

We cannot wait for you to experience the heat for yourself!

Down Once More

By Sad Magic Productions

Down Once More

Play your part in telling this melodramatic psychological horror

Team Members