Why Safe House Needs to Exist Right Now

In the final days before a presidential election, a father locks his pregnant teenage daughter in a bunker to save her from a world he believes is ending.

He calls it love. She calls it a cage.

Safe House, a new play by L.B. Browne, begins where so many American conversations have stalled - at the collision of political fear and private life, where the language of protection becomes the machinery of control. It's a play about a family undone by a father whose love for his children, distorted by illness and ideology, tips into violence he cannot name as such.

Playwright L.B. Browne writes at the intersection of gender, power, and survival; in the spaces where large political forces infiltrate the most private corners of our lives. Developed at the La MaMa Umbria Playwriting Retreat under Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith and presented in its first public reading at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in April 2026, Safe House arrives at this moment with both the craft and the courage the subject demands.

This fall, split/decision is bringing Safe House to New York City for its world premiere production — and we need your help to make it happen.

Theater has always been where we go to look at the things we cannot look away from. Safe House asks its audience to sit inside a story about fear and love and what happens when one poisons the other. To witness a family fracture in real time. To leave asking: who bears the cost when protection turns authoritarian?

Your support makes this production possible — the rehearsal space, the design, the performers, and the access that ensures this story reaches the audiences who need it most. Every contribution, at any level, is an investment in work that takes seriously what theater can do.

SUPPORTER Up to $250

— Acknowledged in our programs

FRIEND $251 to $999

— Acknowledged in our programs

— Updates on the work through our newsletter

— Opening Night invitation (2 tickets)

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER $1,000 to $4,999

— Associate Producer credit on the World Premiere production

— Behind-the-scenes access to Safe House rehearsal and technical rehearsal process

— Set visits during production

— Opening Night invitations (4 tickets)

CO-PRODUCER $5,000+

All benefits listed above plus:

— Co-Producer credit on the World Premiere production

— Opening Night invitations (6 tickets)

To learn more about supporting all of split/decision's 2026-27 slate, click here.

Safe House

Support L.B. Browne's World Premiere at Theatre Row!