5th Annual 1st Stage New Works Festival

Now in its 5^th year, the 1^st Stage New Works Festival showcases great new works in their earliest incarnations. The plays selected can be considered works-in-progress, and are in various stages of development.

The plays are cast with professional actors, who are led through 12 hours of rehearsal by noted local directors and dramaturges. Often the plays are changed and revised dramatically. The culmination of all the work is then presented as staged readings and is followed by talkbacks with the audience.

The festival gives the playwright the opportunity to hear his or her words aloud, gain insight from the rehearsal process, and gauge audience response before working on another draft.

In addition to the play readings, the festival events include a keynote address from a leader in the field, workshops, panel discussions, and receptions with the artists.

Florida Stage’s 1^st Stage New Works Festival has produced several new plays that are now being produced around the country: END DAYS by Deborah Zoe Laufer had its World Premiere production at Florida Stage last season and went on to win the prestigious Harold and Mimi Steinberg American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. The hugely successful THE COUNT by Roger Hedden had its World Premiere here at Florida Stage in 2008. William Mastrosimone’s acclaimed hit play DIRTY BUSINESS, which opened Florida Stage’s 22^nd season, is preparing a New York and a London production, Deborah Zoe Laufer’s SIRENS from the 2008 festival was presented at last year’s Humana festival and Christopher Demos Brown’s WHEN THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTER was the final play produced by Florida Stage before its move to the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.  This season’s CANE, THE CHA-CHA OF A CAMEL SPIDER and GOLDIE, MAX & MILK all were part of last year’s festival and all are finding enthusiasm for other productions around the country.

1^st Stage New Work Festival 2011 Line-up

BEVERLEY by Israel Horovitz

A love triangle among three 70+-year-olds… Beverley, who came to America from England as a war-bride; Zelly, her fisherman-husband and Archie, the Brit she jilted 53 years earlier. A romantic comedy set in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

 LEVELING UP by Deborah Zoe Laufer

How do you straddle the fuzzy line between reality and virtual reality when you’re playing video games 20 hours a day?  Ian, Zan, and Chuck  are two years out of college when the government comes looking for expert gamers to launch remote missiles. 

 POET by Kew Henry

Two muses, assigned to Edgar Allan Poe at his birth, compete for his talent and imagination.  Throughout his life, these artistic demons, one the poet muse, the other the prose, haunt him to write through the power of their conflicting inspirations.

THE AMERICANS ACROSS THE STREET by Carter W. Lewis

Derek has a Pulitzer Prize, but he's tired of the world and all that inhabit it. His only source of pleasure is lurking alone on his porch, sipping scotch and accosting his neighbors with articulte rants. Then his distant sister arrives with her perplexing daughter in tow–a year later, there's cupcakes, a cannon or two, a dead fat lady, and an all encompassing moon.

BRILLIANT CORNERS by Andrew Rosendorf

Marshall is divorced, poor, and alone, except for his jazz music. He's paying alimony to an unsympathetic ex-wife, Carol. His son, Eli, returns home asking for tuition for college and his unstable daughter, Sarah, is demanding money she believes she is owed.

CAPTIVA by Christopher Demos Brown

When a woman invites her family to their traditional island getaway to meet her fiancé, she hopes to renew old ties and find the imagined comfort of her youth. Instead, when everyone is trapped by a late season hurricane, their pent-up secrets and frustrations get loose in this dark comedy.

TIEMPO DE AMOR by John Herrera

Set in Havana and Tampa in the 1920s. A young woman is torn between her mad passion for an older man newly arrived from Spain and her loyalty to her controlling mother.