George Krajca kept a play in a drawer for more than two decades. The 27-year Rye City School District English teacher wrote the first draft in the aftermath of 9/11, when National Endowment for the Arts funding had frozen. It stayed there, untouched, until federal grant cancellations in 2025 gave the story new relevance.

From a drawer to a Manhattan stage.

Krajca dusted off the manuscript, rewrote it, and on July 15 watched "Canto250: A Comedy in 4th Person" open at the New York Theater Festival at Teatro LATEA on the Lower East Side. The 30-minute play ran three performances through July 19, presented by Ground Truth Theater. "When I sent this out, I was just hoping for a table read and maybe some feedback," Krajca told the Rye Record. "Instead, I was offered an opportunity by the New York Theater Festival to stage it."

A cast built entirely from Rye connections.

The production reads like a Rye City School District reunion. Penelope Nazra Deen, a 2017 Rye High School graduate, played the lead — a 29-year-old government lawyer — and also served as producer. Noam Ben Yakir, class of 2013, played a New York City case manager. Peter Green, a retired Rye Middle School social worker with 15 years in the district, directed. The pieces fell into place almost by accident: Deen had just returned from a performing tour in India when she sent Krajca a LinkedIn request, right as he happened to be looking for a cast. She suggested Green, who'd directed her in high school productions, and Green brought in Ben Yakir, whom he's known since Ben Yakir was in sixth grade.

The story at the heart of the play.

"Canto250" follows a 75-year-old artist who spent 50 years creating a 250-part multimedia poem representing each year in American history — only to be told his NEA grant won't be honored unless he sanitizes his life's work into a government-approved narrative. The premise draws directly from real events: federal grant cancellations in 2025 stripped funding from cultural organizations nationwide, before a federal judge later ruled the cancellations unlawful and unconstitutional. Krajca said he researched the issue thoroughly and takes pride in the accuracy behind every detail in the script — no Rye programs have been publicly identified as direct recipients of the cancelled grants, but the broader principle is what drove him to finally finish the story he'd shelved decades ago.

Finishing the cast.

Scott Schneider, a veteran teacher at North Rockland High School, rounded out the cast as the artist at the center of the story, with Victor Vabuan Jr. handling lighting and sound. The New York Theater Festival gives aspiring playwrights a chance to self-produce their work with a stage, sets, props and technical support already in place.

No additional performances have been announced. Krajca credited the community that made it all possible: "The solution to staging this was right in front of me: It was the Rye community."