The American playwright and novelist Betty Smith is best known for her 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Largely autobiographical, it’s the story of Francie, an aspiring playwright growing up in Williamsburg with a tough, immigrant mother and a charismatic but alcoholic dad. The book brought Smith great fame and other books followed. What never came to light, however, was a play Smith wrote back in the day, Francie Nolan, which won a contest that made drama study at Yale possible. In 1930, when Smith copyrighted the work, she changed the name to Becomes a Woman. It took the Mint Theater, a group that specializes in lost and forgotten plays, to rediscover the unpublished, unproduced work. Becomes a Woman catches up with Francie at 19—she’s working in a five-and-dime store and dying to make the leap to theater. The world premiere is directed by Britt Berke. —Jensen Davis