TheatreSquared Artistic Director Robert Ford, Executive Director Shannon A. Jones, and Director of New Play Development Dexter J. Singleton announced today the lineup of new plays for the 2024 Arkansas New Play Festival (ANPF). New plays featured in staged reading performances will include Eugene Onegin by Sarah Gancher, Have to Believe We Are Magic by Sara Guerrero, Edi Ya & Diamond’s Grove by a.k. payne,and Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem by Jonathan Norton. Special additional showings include the 2024 Arkansas Young Playwrights Showcase, Sherlock Holmes: The Timbers Family File by LatinX Theatre Project, and the ANPF Apprentice Showcase of Songs for Drunk Cowboys Who May Also Be Women: An Anti-Musical (For Fools Only) by Sarah Loucks.
Performances will be held in Bentonville at Ovations Plus, formerly Trike Theatre (902 SW 2nd St., Bentonville), in Springdale at the Medium (214 S. Main St., Springdale), and in Fayetteville at TheatreSquared (477 W. Spring St., Fayetteville). New Play Passes, granting access to all performances, are on sale now for $50. Passes may be reserved by calling (479) 777-7477 or visiting www.arkansasnewplayfest.com.
Now in its 16th year, the Arkansas New Play Festival has helped incubate the development of more than 75 new plays. Join us for a series of trail-blazing new plays. In addition to watching/attending the performances, you’re also invited to hear from the playwrights about their process and share your own thoughts with the creative team—and help shape new works from the ground up. Through the Festival, TheatreSquared seeks to give voice to playwrights whose timely and relevant stories resonate with the moment we live in—in Arkansas, in mid-America, and as a nation.
"In the last several seasons in particular, many of the plays featured at ANPF have gone on to major productions and award recognition," says Singleton. "Most recently, FLEX by Candrice Jones, which ran last summer at the Lincoln Center with an all-star cast after co-premiering at T2 and being developed at ANPF a few summers ago."
Another example: TheatreSquared’s main season is set to close with a world premiere run from June 5-30 of the dark comedy Responders by Arkansan playwright Joseph Scott Ford, which was featured in the 2022 Arkansas New Play Festival. Tickets are available at theatre2.org/responders. As part of this year’s festival, Ford is set to lead a playwriting workshop in conjunction with the Fayetteville Public Library on June 18th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. This event will be free and open to the public, but registration is required on the FPL website.
"When you're a writer, and you're working on these things in a vacuum, or maybe sharing it with a handful of people along the way, just to get that kind of positive enthusiasm and support from a team of artists—it's hard to overstate just how helpful that is in and of itself," says Ford. "All sorts of little moments show up. It can be small words, it can be tiny words, but it's kind of like tightening all the screws—’Hey, do we need to add a moment here? Do we need to trim this moment there?’ All of these things can happen because the talent and the intelligence is so high in the room. This is probably a process that could take months, but because of the caliber of people that TheatreSquared put in the room, it's expediting all of that in a really helpful way."
This year’s selections include:
Eugene Onegin
by Sarah Gancher
directed by Ken Cerniglia
Saturday, June 15 at 5pm (at Ovations Plus)
Saturday, June 22 at 5:30pm (at TheatreSquared)
Eugene Onegin by Sarah Gancher (creator of the Obie Award-winning Russian Troll Farm) is a modern bluegrass musical that is half pickin' party and half barbeque. Pushkin's novel-in-verse and Tchaikovsky's opera have been reset and given new life in 1940s rural Arkansas, when a girl who dreams of writing songs falls for a magnetic but jaded touring musician.
Have to Believe We Are Magic
by Sara Guerrero
directed by Fran De Leon
Friday, June 14 at 7pm (at The Medium)
Sunday, June 23 at 2pm (at TheatreSquared)
What is magic? Are we magic? And if so, how do we hold it? This part-biographical-part-magic love letter to a Pocha-Chicana-Latina coming-of-age time is filled with roller-skating, family, friendships, sex, love, abortion, and self-discovery. How does one keep and find their magic? All unfolds under the shadow of "The Magic Kingdom" (or "The Tragic Kingdom") in central Orange County, California, in the summer of 1994.
Edi Ya & Diamond’s Grove
by a.k. payne
directed by Josiah Davis
Saturday, June 15 at 2pm (at Ovations Plus)
Saturday, June 22 at 2:30pm (at TheatreSquared)
Set at the edge of an old U.S. mill town, Edi Ya & Diamond’s Grove tells a story about two Black young people working in an amusement park dripping with ghosts. Haunted by stories of the places their grandparents could not enter and memories of long summers spent riding coasters and losing childhood, Edi Ya and Diamond try to make sense of grief in this place of lost dreams. Commissioned by City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh, PA.
Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem
by Jonathan Norton
directed by Dexter Singleton
Sunday, June 16 at 2pm (at The Medium)
Sunday, June 23 at 5pm (at TheatreSquared)
1943. Two young Harlemites—Little and Foxy—form a friendship over leftover fried chicken and dirty dishwater. But a long, hot summer of heartbreak, betrayal, and racial uprisings moves them closer to the men they will become and farther from each other. Commissioned by TheatreSquared.
Sherlock Holmes: The Timbers Family File
by LatinX Theatre Project
Friday, June 21 at 7pm (at TheatreSquared)
LatinX Theatre Project’s newest play, Sherlock Holmes: The Timbers Family File reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a Latine/x detective living and operating within their community. Our story follows a younger version of Sherlock Holmes as they make a name for themselves as the city’s newest detective by uncovering a string of robberies that has the entire neighborhood shook and police cracking down on the homies. With the help of the community and their unlikely companion, Watson, Sherlock is determined to figure out who is behind it all, and how to stop them.
TheatreSquared is also proud to support emerging playwrights through two additional events. First, the fourteenth annual Arkansas Young Playwright’s Showcase will feature a free performance at TheatreSquared June 22 at 12:30 pm. Students from across the state have submitted one-act scripts, and the top four submission will be selected for mentorship from a professional playwright and a public reading at the Arkansas New Play Festival. Finally, our ANPF Apprentice Company will present Songs for Drunk Cowboys Who May Also Be Women: An Anti-Musical (For Fools Only) by Sarah Loucks at 7:00 pm on June 20 at TheatreSquared, free to the public.
"The Arkansas New Play Fest is one of the most important contributions TheatreSquared can make to the theater world," says T2 Artistic Director Robert Ford. "New works bring fresh perspectives and diverse voices to the stage, reflecting the ever-changing cultural and social landscape. Additionally, supporting emerging playwrights and innovative stories helps to engage new audiences, stimulate creative growth, and maintain the vibrancy and dynamism of the theater community at large."
All-Access Pass & Ticket Info
Passes for the 2024 Arkansas New Play Festival are on sale now for $50 and include admission to five staged readings over two weekends. To reserve passes, patrons should call (479) 777-7477 or visit www.arkansasnewplayfest.com. Single passes are on sale now for $15.
About TheatreSquared
TheatreSquared’s signature offering of bold new plays in an intimate setting has driven its growth to become the state’s largest theater, offering more than 350 performances annually in an intimate setting. Its pioneering work has been recognized with the 2022 Obie Award as well as critical acclaim from The New York Times ("Best Theater of 2020" list), The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. The playwright-led company is one of mid-America’s leading laboratories for new work, having launched more than 70 new plays. Notable collaborators have included Candrice Jones, Bryna Turner, The Kilbanes, Sarah Gancher, José Cruz Gonzales, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Qui Nguyen, Mona Mansour, Amy Evans, and many others. TheatreSquared’s home—winner of the 2021 International Architecture Award—is a cultural landmark. Offering far-reaching access and education programs and an open-all-day gathering space, the Commons Bar/Café, TheatreSquared remains rooted in its founding vision, that "theater—done well and with passion—can transform lives and communities."
Major funding for the TheatreSquared Season 18 is provided by the Walton Family Foundation; the Walmart Foundation; the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation; the Windgate Foundation; the Shubert Foundation; the Tyson Family Foundation; the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; the National Endowment for the Arts; Bob and Becky Alexander; Jane Hunt; Barbara Shadden; Todd Simmons and Melissa Hall Simmons; and Simmons Foods.
Marketing support for TheatreSquared Season 18 is provided by Experience Fayetteville, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Fayetteville Flyer, 3W Magazine, CitiScapes, KUAF, 5NEWS, MailCo USA, iHeart Radio, NWA Daily, ROARK, and Fayetteville City Lifestyle.