Ashland New Plays Festival

Ashland New Plays Festival is a community-based, non-profit theatre dedicated to assisting playwrights in the development and enhancement of new works for the stage through workshops and readings while also offering an educational forum to the community through discussions and classes. For thirty years, ANPF's annual Fall Festival presents new plays by exceptional playwrights during the weeklong flagship event featuring matinee and evening performances with talkbacks where the playwright and...

Ashland New Plays Festival is a community-based, non-profit theatre dedicated to assisting playwrights in the development and enhancement of new works for the stage through workshops and readings while also offering an educational forum to the community through discussions and classes. For thirty years, ANPF's annual Fall Festival presents new plays by exceptional playwrights during the weeklong flagship event featuring matinee and evening performances with talkbacks where the playwright and cast share about their process and answer questions from the audience. Playwrights spend the week in beautiful Ashland, Oregon, refining their work with invaluable input from world-class directors and actors as well as expert guidance from our artistic team. ANPF also presents stand alone readings throughout the year and has a podcast with new play recordings that broaden our outreach and further our mission, giving new plays more ways to be heard.

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  • “You were oceans away. There were lifetimes of water between us.” - Pocket Universe. Beautiful, transporting, poignant, and high drama. These are some of the one-word responses audience members gave after seeing Pocket Universe by Thomas Brandon at Ashland New Plays Festival. This science fiction mystery tells a moving story about love and grief. Director Rhonda Kohl shared, “Grief is a universal language, and this play explores that common experience through an uncommon lens.” This wonderfully unpredictable show dazzled audiences at ANPF, and we are proud to support Pocket Universe by Thomas...

    “You were oceans away. There were lifetimes of water between us.” - Pocket Universe. Beautiful, transporting, poignant, and high drama. These are some of the one-word responses audience members gave after seeing Pocket Universe by Thomas Brandon at Ashland New Plays Festival. This science fiction mystery tells a moving story about love and grief. Director Rhonda Kohl shared, “Grief is a universal language, and this play explores that common experience through an uncommon lens.” This wonderfully unpredictable show dazzled audiences at ANPF, and we are proud to support Pocket Universe by Thomas Brandon as an ANPF 2021 winner.

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  • Heroines from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing come to vivid life in this comedic romp of self-discovery. An audience member stated, “Great farce is challenging to write. Great farce that riffs on Shakespeare triply so. Meghan Brown has created a unicorn.” Director Holly L. Derr says this play “...gives one of Shakespeare’s famously underdeveloped women characters a chance to take up space and come into her own in a way that is exciting, funny, and sexy." Here at ANPF we are excited to support What Happened While Hero Was Dead by Meghan Brown as an ANPF 2021 winner.

    Heroines from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing come to vivid life in this comedic romp of self-discovery. An audience member stated, “Great farce is challenging to write. Great farce that riffs on Shakespeare triply so. Meghan Brown has created a unicorn.” Director Holly L. Derr says this play “...gives one of Shakespeare’s famously underdeveloped women characters a chance to take up space and come into her own in a way that is exciting, funny, and sexy." Here at ANPF we are excited to support What Happened While Hero Was Dead by Meghan Brown as an ANPF 2021 winner.

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    “A history lesson and an important cultural message via a compelling, entertaining and intensely human story with characters so alive that their creation seems effortless.” An enthusiastic account of Last Drive to Dodge from an audience member at Ashland New Plays Festival. ANPF audiences praised Last Drive to Dodge for its poeticism, truth, and authenticity, stating that this show "underscores why the stage really does matter." We are excited to support Last Drive to Dodge by Andrew Lee Creech as an ANPF 2021 winner, and we can’t wait for more audiences to experience this exciting new work.

    “A history lesson and an important cultural message via a compelling, entertaining and intensely human story with characters so alive that their creation seems effortless.” An enthusiastic account of Last Drive to Dodge from an audience member at Ashland New Plays Festival. ANPF audiences praised Last Drive to Dodge for its poeticism, truth, and authenticity, stating that this show "underscores why the stage really does matter." We are excited to support Last Drive to Dodge by Andrew Lee Creech as an ANPF 2021 winner, and we can’t wait for more audiences to experience this exciting new work.

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    Donna Hoke is always surprising, her characters disarming, her themes intricately explored. We recorded BWOA at play4keeps.org with Anthony Heald, Stefani Potter, and Román Zaragoza and the play just smokes! It was a very deft, in-your-face look at the way priorities shape the relationships we build and the choices we own. The conclusion may rattle you a bit, but it won't leave you doubting who's really in charge.

    Donna Hoke is always surprising, her characters disarming, her themes intricately explored. We recorded BWOA at play4keeps.org with Anthony Heald, Stefani Potter, and Román Zaragoza and the play just smokes! It was a very deft, in-your-face look at the way priorities shape the relationships we build and the choices we own. The conclusion may rattle you a bit, but it won't leave you doubting who's really in charge.

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    SCREENWRITER is a two-hander tour de force of great writing and deft character development that plunges us into the heart of Hollywood, where its peculiar brand of creative accomplishment and ennui eventually undoes even the brashest of the power brokers. Two very outstanding and thoroughly experienced actors, Douglas Rowe and Denis Arndt, performed this percussive dialogue for play4keeps.org and they absolutely crushed it. Jim Shankman writes like one who knows the soft underbelly of LaLaLand, where too much is never enough, and finds a place of empathy, maybe even forgiveness, for its...

    SCREENWRITER is a two-hander tour de force of great writing and deft character development that plunges us into the heart of Hollywood, where its peculiar brand of creative accomplishment and ennui eventually undoes even the brashest of the power brokers. Two very outstanding and thoroughly experienced actors, Douglas Rowe and Denis Arndt, performed this percussive dialogue for play4keeps.org and they absolutely crushed it. Jim Shankman writes like one who knows the soft underbelly of LaLaLand, where too much is never enough, and finds a place of empathy, maybe even forgiveness, for its tortured souls.

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