Kitchen Dog Theater, a founding core member of the National New Play Network (NNPN), has announced the official lineup for the 24th anniversary of its annual New Works Festival. For the Staged Reading Series, audiences will have the unique chance to hear and discuss five exciting new plays, selected from past NWF top-ranked playwrights from DFW and beyond as well as a new commissioned play by Kitchen Dog Theater Artistic Company Jenny Ledel. In addition to these five readings, this year’s NWF also features the 21st year of Playwrights Under Progress (PUP) Fest, co-produced with Dallas Playwriting Arts Collective, an alliance between KDT, Dallas ISD, and local youth organization Junior Players, created to provide innovative programs and opportunities for high school playwrights.
This year’s NWF Staged Reading Series schedule:
AL/ALFRED/ALICE by Blake Hackler (Dallas, TX)
Saturday, June 18 at 1pm
Al/Alice/Alfred riffs on the true story of Alice Miller, a young woman who murdered her lover Freda Ward in Memphis at the turn of the 20th century. The play explores gender, the limits of love, and the deep and enduring violence of patriarchy.
THAT DRIVE THRU MONTERREY by Matthew Paul Olmos (Los Angeles, CA)
Saturday, June 18 at 4pm
Inspired by the life of the playwright’s mother. The story of a Mexican American woman in 1971 Los Angeles as she experiences a first, nerdy love. Throughout the courtship, she experiences mysterious premonitions of what lies ahead in her life and how the ever-present machismo will ultimately bring her heartbreak as it gets passed down from fathers to sons, generation to generation.
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME: THREE ADAPTATIONS OF SHORT STORIES BY ANTON CHEKHOV
Written and directed by KDT Artistic Company Member Jenny Ledel
Wednesday, June 22 at 7pm
What Do You Want From Me presents three of Anton Chekhov’s most depressing yet hilarious short stories about people who do not know what they want. In WITCH a married man grows paranoid living in Siberian isolation. He grows convinced that his wife is a witch and cursing their sad lives. In UPHEAVAL, a $2000 brooch has gone missing, and the mistress of the house has frantically searched her servants’ bodies and their rooms. The governess wants to quit and leave in protest. Can the Master get her to stay? And in HELP, a Lyft driver struggles with deep grief while working a shift, looking to the passengers for a sympathetic ear and finally getting one. This play is a meditation on humans failing to connect.
THE LAST TRUCK STOP by Crystal Jackson (Austin, TX)
Saturday, June 25 at 1pm
A tenacious trucker-turned-truck-stop-owner and her poetic, gun-toting postal carrier debate staying or going when their desert town becomes a no-go zone.
M THEORY: A PLAY IN 11 DIMENSIONS by Jami Brandli (Los Angeles, CA)
Saturday, June 25 at 4pm
The near future. Former biographer Pauline Grey has shut herself and her daughter Ava away in a remote cabin in Angeles National Forest for nearly a year. Pauline will not let Ava go until she has the answers she is desperately seeking. But when a solar flare storm hits, cutting the women off from communication with the outside world, and a downed pilot appears at the cabin asking for help, Pauline’s reality is challenged in more ways than one.
All 2022 Staged Readings are one-time events and will be followed by a moderated panel discussion focused on the unique process of commissioning, developing and creating new work, involving the playwright, KDT staff and the audience.
PUP FEST 2022, Saturday June 11th at 1pm and 4pm at Booker T Washington HSPVA – FREE!
Written and performed by some of the DFW’s finest high school talent, the 21st Anniversary D-PAC PUP Fest will feature an afternoon of six world premiere staged readings mentored and developed through playwriting workshops with celebrated local artists Erin Ryan Burdette and Omar Padilla. This year’s fest will also include free master acting workshops for all PUP Fest student participants, led by area arts professionals Gloria Vivica Benavides and Tim Johnson.
PUP Fest 2022 Titles and Playwrights:
THE TEN CHIMES by Jude Baremore, Booker T. Washington HSPVA, 11th Grade
TRASH CANS COME IN MANY DIFFERENT SHAPES AND SIZES by Isabella Berber, W.T. White HS, 11th Grade
GOODBYE, GALAHAD by Olivia Greenhill, Conrad HS, 9th Grade
A BAD FRIEND by Lillian Hess, New Tech HS at Coppell, 10th Grade
A DAY IN THE OFFICE by Dontrelle Kayde, Wilmer Hutchins HS, 11th Grade
THE DO-OVER by Camille Rigamonti, Woodrow Wilson HS, 9th Grade
Now in its 24th year, Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival is an exciting, eclectic series that not only includes this collection of five staged readings and PUP Fest but also features the full-produced anchor mainstage production of High Five, an evening of five commissioned short plays that will each shine a spotlight on one of the five senses: taste, touch, vision, hearing, and smell. Full production details available at kitchendogtheater,org