The New Play Reading Series is a unique collaboration that brings undergraduate and graduate students together in a repertory company to produce two to three staged readings of contemporary plays each semester.
Working alongside students from the Graduate Group in Performance Studies, undergraduate company members get a taste of the early stages of new play development, have opportunities to meet and work with emerging playwrights and directors, and perform in staged readings open to the public.
Spring 2024 Readings
Directed by Evan Sakuma & Maria Silk
Together Men Make Paradigms
By Maxe Crandall
February 8, 2024
What is the geometry of a deconstructed patriarchy? Together Men Make Paradigms stages gender crises at impossible historical crossroads where the picaresque collides with office talk and Plato with romantic comedy. Stretching the bounds of performance and working against theatrical convention, Together Men Make Paradigms is designed as a play that is impossible to stage. With a focus on language, experimentation, and activist principles, this work fuses raw sexuality into anti-pro-masculine cosplay.
Wrestle With Jimmy
By Nathanael Stephen Payne
February 29, 2024
Get ready for a summer you’ll never forget! Wrestle With Jimmy takes a look inside of a Christian summer camp where adolescence meets absurdity. As six teenagers deal with power-hungry counselors, religious existentialism, and dreaded teenage hormones, Wrestle With Jimmy explores the crossroads of religion and growing up (and the ridiculousness therein). In equal measure a light romp and explorative satire, this one-act play takes audiences into a forest of thoughtful laughter, crafting a wholly unique performance.
Modern Love
By Leela Velautham
April 11, 2024
When Steven suggests opening up their relationship, Kate reluctantly attempts to get on board and finds herself having to navigate apps filled with interchangeable partners as well as compete, for the first time, for Steven’s affection. Modern Love explores the shifting power dynamics in relationships, the illusion of choice in and consumerist nature of modern dating culture, and what happens when relationships are reduced to transactions.
