Celebrating Past Winners and Welcoming the New:
Ashland New Plays Festival announces its 2018 season
Ashland New Plays Festival is pleased to announce its 27th season of staged play readings showcasing new theatrical works, along with a program of talks with theater professionals.
ANPF’s flagship annual Fall Festival Oct. 17-21 will unveil four new plays in staged readings by casts of professional actors. The plays will be selected from 400 entries currently being read by local volunteer readers, with the final decisions to be made in June by ANPF artistic director Kyle Haden. They will be performed at Ashland’s Unitarian Center.
In carrying out its mission to support new works for the stage, ANPF is “working to develop underrepresented voices in theater, including women and playwrights of color,” said Haden.
The 2018 season opens Sunday, March 25, with a staged reading of Meridith Friedman’s Your Best One, directed by Paul Mason Barnes, in the Music Recital Hall at Southern Oregon University. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance go on sale online Feb. 11.
Four actors who previously appeared at ANPF in 2015 in Friedman’s The Luckiest People will reprise their roles in Your Best One – Rex Young, James Edmondson, Paul Michael Garcia, and Kate Berry.
Next in the schedule will be an extensive workshop in Ashland of another as yet untitled Friedman play, culminating in a Sunday, May 13, dramatic reading of the work at Southern Oregon University’s newly renovated Main Stage Theatre. Eventually, the Friedman plays will form a related trilogy.
“ANPF increasingly is focusing on the workshopping model for presenting new plays, in which playwrights are given a place to refine their work in preparation for production,” said Board President James Pagliasotti.
Also on this year’s schedule is ANPF’s popular Theatre Talk series, hosted again this year by John Rose and moving to Bellview Grange. Guests for the talks June through September, with exact dates to be announced later, are OSF actors Rex Young, Nancy Rodriguez, Daniel José Molina, and Alejandra Escalante.
A special added feature will be a March 30 talk for members only, featuring Christopher Acebo, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s nationally prominent associate artistic director.
Information about ANPF, including memberships, is at www.ashlandnewplays.org.
Playwright Meridith Friedman, photo by Joey Stocks
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.