What’s your love language as a playwright? Perhaps it’s having your words read, heard, and digested by actors and audiences. Get to know the ANPF 2022 New Voices Emerging Playwrights Mikki Gillette, Lindsay Partain, Lorenz Qatava, Leslie Slape, and Ken Yoshikawa as they share their thoughts about this and more in their recorded conversation at the end of their retreat weekend in Ashland. The playwrights flow through topics like the kind of stories they gravitate toward telling, their retreat...

Emerging playwrights Kathryn de la Rosa, Ty Greenwood, Heesun Hwang, Jasmine Sharma, and Carlos-Zenen Trujillo cover a lot of ground as they dish on their experiences taking part in Ashland New Plays Festival’s first New Voices virtual retreat, August 1 – 7, where they worked directly with mentors and met with other theatre professionals as they developed a new play. The vibrancy and camaraderie of this group of fantastic playwrights is felt throughout their talk. They introduce you to the...

Grab your favorite potato chips and get in on the conversation with playwright Inda Craig-Galván and director Kyle Haden as they talk about Inda’s new play BERTH BREACH/BREECH BIRTH, which ANPF is presenting on April 24 and 25. We learn about the poetic influence that inspired the play, the African-American farming community in Illinois that sparked the roots of the play’s setting, what they’re both looking forward to this week as all the artists come together to start the workshop and...

Barret O'Brien | Three men are caught in a crisis of torrential proportions, trapped in a taproom in a city that has been decimated by flooding. Featuring: Rodney Gardiner, Barret O’Brien, and Daisuke Tsuji, with stage directions read by Annie Paul. Learn more at ashlandnewplays.org/play/water-made-to-rise/

Bob Clyman | Mark, a respected moral philosopher, is convinced that people are fundamentally good. Ben, who investigates intellectual property theft, is equally convinced that every seeming act of kindness is simply a more indirect route toward self-gratification. They have maintained an unlikely friendship since childhood; however, the effort Mark has always put into helping Ben has been matched by Ben’s resentment toward him for the lack of respect these efforts imply. When Ben decides to...

Bob Clyman | For the past five years, a team of highly regarded scientists has been studying the development of “exceptional” children. To create these children, the team selected a small group of mothers with “superior genetic scans” who agreed to be artificially inseminated by sperm donors with IQs over 180. The team has also been developing a special, cutting-edge school, which is finally ready to open. Despite the impressive abilities and skills shown by almost every five-year-old in the...

Gabriel Neustadt | Eric is a recent college graduate working as an SAT tutor to pay the bills. Tonight he arrives at the Tarzana home of one of his wealthy students but finds that her mother, Michelle, is waiting for him instead. Her daughter Jessica isn’t there yet, she explains, but she’ll be arriving soon. However as the conversation between them carries on, it becomes clear that Jessica is not coming at all, and that Michelle has brought Eric here for different reasons. His relationship...

Stephanie Neuerburg | While serving detention for something she may or may not have done, Lauren and her science teacher realize they might be more similar than they think. Featuring: Stephanie Neuerburg and Armando McClain, with stage directions read by Kyle Sanderson. Learn more at ashlandnewplays.org/play/science-night/

Jeannine Grizzard | British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst championed the fight for women’s right to vote as the most important of all causes, declaring: “We are on the greatest mission the world has ever known: to free half the human race, the women, and through that freedom to save the rest.” The women of Britain claimed the vote in 1918, with the United States Congress granting it the next year. Using Pankhurst’s own words to explore her personal battles and her fierce commitment to the...

Marin Gazzaniga | When Millicent needs a time-out from her life, she ends up subletting Sparky’s grunge-infested apartment while he’s out on the road. She organizes his home and puts his life under a microscope as a distraction from her own demons. When he returns, she won’t leave. Her constant probing makes the mild-mannered roadie snap, and he unleashes some observations of his own. As the two strangers reach a détente, they help each other in unexpected ways. Featuring: Erica Sullivan...

Barbara V. Anderson | Every second Sunday of the month, four women meet at Marge’s Santa Cruz Mountain cabin for a hike and lunch. Today is different, very different. Marge has asked to paint her friends’ portraits. Marge paints using only fugitive pigments, colors that fade in time. Katherine and Alicia are intent on talking Marge into moving to assisted living. Marge tells them she has made her own plans. Kimberly, a young friend of Katherine’s daughter, has joined the group. She is making...

Robert Emmet Lunney | Nina Dalton is a major movie star performing in a new play by her older, Pulitzer Prize-winning husband, Brian Bartov. Their world is shaken by the return of Gar Jackson, Nina’s former love, who has spent the past 20 years creating a work of staggering beauty and epic proportions…for Nina. Set in Stockbridge, MA, in the summer of 2004. Featuring: David Kelly, Robin Goodrin Nordli, U. Jonathan Toppo, Meghan Nealon, Elizabeth Gudenrath, and Rodney Gardiner, with stage...

Donna Hoke | After 14 years of marriage, Britt and Joe called it quits, so Joe is surprised when three years later, Britt asks him to try again. Cheater Joe still loves his ex and their boys, so he’s willing to go along with date nights and counseling—until he realizes that Britt has a very specific agenda. Set in various locations in New Jersey. Featuring: Elizabeth Gudenrath and Aaron Galligan-Stierle, with stage directions read by James Pagliasotti. Learn more at...

Steven Haworth | The play is a farce about tragic people. Zacharia Smythe, assistant professor of art, has come to Madrid to take a short sabbatical and study a painting by Fernando Rafael Vasquez de la Cruz. Zach considers the painting a masterpiece and the painter one of the greatest Spanish artists of the last 100 years. He is entirely alone in this. The artist has been missing for three years, and those who are familiar with his work believe he is dead. Nevertheless, nothing will deter...

Andrew Perez | Klaus Kinski is one of the most celebrated and controversial actors in the history of world cinema. The reckless abandon with which he approached both life and art left him tortured, demonized and worshiped. Before his famed collaborations with director Werner Herzog (Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo), Klaus Kinski was a tortured B-movie character actor who had become a touring sensation for his livewire theatrical performances. It was during this time that...

Donna Hoke | Elevator Girl was never meant to be more than an urban legend, a sexual revenge fantasy created by Vanessa and her graphic illustrator boyfriend. But when the comic superhero unleashes her boyfriend’s darkest fantasies, as well as a flesh-and-blood copycat, Vanessa must stop EG in her tracks—with the truth. Featuring: Aurelia Grierson, Jonah Thorpe-Kramp, and Jake Raiter, with stage directions read by Annie Paul. Learn more at ashlandnewplays.org/play/elevator-girl/

Oded Gross | Hazel has fallen in love with John. She met John three months prior when she found him naked in a field, unable to remember anything, not who he is, how he got there or any detail about his life. John is in love with Hazel, and seems content not remembering his past, his new present has made him that happy. Unfortunately, when a mysterious Woman enters their lives, John’s memories start slowly returning, and what they learn changes their destinies forever. Set entirely in a...

In THE WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD, new mom Nina has a healthy baby boy, a loving husband… and is struggling with terrifying nightmares and anxiety attacks. Her therapist, Bonnie, is trying to help her discover how she can be a better mother to her infant son. In the meantime, Bonnie’s estranged daughter, Mary, arrives home with some life-changing news. When Nina and Mary become friends, Bonnie’s professional and personal lives get a lot more complicated. Featuring the cast of Marie-Claire...

This conversation brings together two generations of playwrights: Grace McLeod is an emerging playwright (also one of the youngest winners ever at ANPF) and William Cameron is an established theatre maker, retired from teaching and focusing on his playwriting. Like their plays, they don’t shy away from important topics — white privilege, economic disparity, and the nature of truth. Listen along and find out more about their ANPF 2020 winning plays, Williams’ TRUTH BE TOLD and Grace’s THE...

Ranging from hilarious to heart-full, this conversation between playwrights and friends Ian August and David Hilder delivers it all. They discuss their ANPF 2020 winning plays ZERO and THOSE DAYS ARE OVER, respectively, sharing the stories behind the plays. David shocks Ian with how quickly he drafted THOSE DAYS ARE OVER, and Ian shocks David when he learns about Ian’s benchmarks for submitting his work to festivals. They talk about acting as the gateway drug to playwriting and discuss both...

“You do angry/funny better than anyone.” So says past ANPF winner Callie Kimball to friend and current ANPF winner Kari Bentley-Quinn. Today on the podcast, they discuss Kari’s ANPF 2020 play HYANNIS and Callie’s play PERSEVERANCE, which ANPF workshopped in August. Their conversation then delves into the world at large, fan-girling over Lucy Thurber, and nurturing their artist selves.  ANPF will present virtual readings of HYANNIS, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt, on Thursday, October 22,...

Art, race, activism, smoothie diets, and the future of American theatre. There’s lots on the table in this conversation between friends and multi-hyphenate theatremakers Reginald Edmund and Kyle Haden. They get personal, from discussing their experiences as Black men and artists, to making each other laugh and appreciating how they balance one another. They also talk about the work they’re doing to amplify Black stories, like with the activist theatre organization Reginald founded, the Black...

By Reginald Edmund | In SOUTHBRIDGE, a white widow has been assaulted and an angry mob is at the jailhouse door demanding the sheriff lynch the accused. The only way to untangle the truth is for the accused, a young Black man called Stranger, to relive the events that led him to the hangman's tree in Athens, Ohio, in the year 1881. Based on historical events, it is the second play in Reginald Edmund's nine-play City of the Bayou Collection. Featuring the cast of Chris Butler, TaiReikca...

Reginald Edmund | In SOUTHBRIDGE, a white widow has been assaulted and an angry mob is at the jailhouse door demanding the sheriff lynch the accused. The only way to untangle the truth is for the accused, a young Black man called Stranger, to relive the events that led him to the hangman's tree in Athens, Ohio, in the year 1881. Based on historical events, it is the second play in Reginald Edmund's nine-play City of the Bayou Collection. Featuring the cast of Chris Butler, TaiReikca L.A.,...