PlayLabs Festival

April 24–30, 2023
Filmed readings online May 15–21

PlayLabs is one of the nation’s most comprehensive new play festivals.

During the festival, playwrights partner with a team of artistic collaborators of their choosing for an extended workshop including two public readings with time for rewrites in between. The festival also features a showcase of scenes by our playwriting fellows.

Each year, we fly in a number of The Regulars partners to join in this premiere new play incubation program. These connections help move PlayLabs plays more quickly into production.

The PlayLabs festival has become a must-attend event for theater leaders across the country as well as fans near and far. And with the ability to view filmed readings online, more people than ever can experience these vibrant stories.

THAT MUST BE THE ENTRANCE TO HEAVEN
by Franky D. Gonzalez

Monday, April 24 at 7:00 p.m. and Friday, April 28 at 7:00 p.m.
Available online: Monday, May 15 – Sunday May 21

Glory. Survival. Legacy. Citizenship. Four Latino boxers all chase a world title to achieve their personal versions of heaven. But to get there, they must battle each other, their own battered bodies, society, and the universe itself. All four men walk the line between life and death in this collision of combat and cosmos.

A WALLESS CHURCH: THE BLACK WOMAN'S GUIDE TO MAKING GOD
by AriDy Nox

Wednesday, April 26 at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 29 at 8:00 p.m.
Available online: Monday, May 15 – Sunday, May 21

A Walless Church is a Living Room play/ritual/lecture where three godlings create God, interweaving between narrator and protagonist and teacher and student and priestess and witness and god and God recklessly. Oru, the seasoned expert, Nona, the perfectionist, and Mo, the newbie. While Oru, Nona, and Mo struggle to create a God worthy of Creation, they also struggle with the various black women they haphazardly embody, all of whom are struggling to see the God within themselves. But our godlings are persistent and they refuse to fail. (At least, not without a fight.)

STOCKADE
by Andrew Rosendorf

Tuesday, April 25 at 7:00 p.m and Saturday, April 29 at 1:00 p.m.
Available online: Monday, May 15 – Sunday, May 21

Five years after the end of WWII, a group of gay soldiers gather for a reunion of sorts on Fire Island—and are met by an outsider with a surprise that will cause them to question whether history is best left in the past. At a time when “security risk” was government code for “homosexual,” it will take courage to step out of the shadows as each confronts their present and future.

Stockade was commissioned and developed by Local Theater Company (Boulder, CO) and Goodman Theatre (Chicago, IL).

PLAYLABS FESTIVAL FELLOWS SHOWCASE

Sunday, April 30 at 1:30 p.m.
Available online: Monday, May 15 – Sunday, May 21

Join us for an afternoon of scenes from plays-in-progress by the 2022–23 Playwrights’ Center Fellows.

Featuring work by Sharon Bridgforth, J. Corey Buckner, Francisca Da Silveira, Zola Dee, Gethsemane Herron, Blossom Johnson, Johanna Keller Flores, TyLie Shider, Minghao Tu, Katie Ka Vang, Liqing Xu

ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION: PLAYLABS 2023

Online Monday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. CDT

Join us for a conversation with the three writers featured in this year's PlayLabs Festival of New Plays! Franky Gonzalez, AriDy Nox, and Andrew Rosendorf, joined by Playwrights' Center's interim Associate Artistic Director Pirronne Yousefzadeh, will dive into the relationship between story and form, discuss the ways new play development can support nonlinear storytelling, and explore the connection between radical narratives and radical experimentations with form.