New Play Festival 2026
The Old Pueblo Playwrights organization provides a venue where playwrights can bring their works for a candid review as a play or screenplay by their peers. For 36 years, OPP has provided an annual four-day play festival inviting local actors, directors, and technicians to help perform these works so that a playwright has the real-life experience of mounting a play, conducting auditions, assembling their cast and crew, rehearsals, working with costuming and sets, and performing before a live audience for the first time.
THIS YEAR The New Play Festival will be April 2-5 at The Invisible Theater in Tucson! 1400 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719
Cost will be pay-as-you-will. Come support your local playwrights and actors!
Preview this year's new plays
HOA Blues by Debra Vassalo
Characters:
ALEXIS Elvia Bow
CARL Dave Cavallero
SAVANNAH Roseann Couston
PHILIPPA Kay Ewy
TIM Joe Smith
PEACE LILY Rob Sanders, Plant Wrangler
Director Dennis O’Dell
Facilitator Liisa Rose
Synopsis: The Sparkling Springs HOA’s streets are falling apart, and they’ve got to act quickly. But, they only have $77.13 in their deferred maintenance fund. Even the executive board can’t agree on what to do. Now a hedge fund wants to buy the Sparkling Springs HOA and tear it down to build a high rise for luxury condos! What is the HOA executive board to do? Will they be able to keep their homes?
Don't Feed the Troll by Adrian Cory
The Characters/Actors:
AMY: freelance feminist columnist for a national newspaper / Meagan Jones
DAN: Amy’s husband / Drew Kallen-Keck
NAOMI: Amy’s newspaper editor / Courtney Pulitzer
ANON: the male troll / Tristan McCrocklin
MELON: the CEO of Y? / Chad Eggen
LIV: senior programmer at Y? / Kira McNeill
MALE CUSTOMER & PRISON GUARD: Mattie Klass
Facilitator: Steve Duson
Show description:
Amy is an intersectional feminist who begins to attract online abuse when she broadens her writing career as an op-ed columnist. While Amy accepts trolling as a necessary evil in her line of work, her world spirals out of control soon after her husband becomes a victim of doxxing. In Amy’s pursuit of the troll terrorizing her, she seeks help from an employee of Y? – a social media platform whose anti-woke owner is all about the first amendment. Can Amy draw the troll out from under his bridge and appeal to him to stop his onslaught or will the online threats break out into a real-world calamity?
meet the playwrights
Debra Vassallo
Debra Vassallo
Debra Vassallo
Debra Vassallo studied playwriting at Portland Center Stage and has written five plays. Her first play, Prima Donna, was a finalist in the 2022 American Association of Community Theatre’s New Play Fest. Nana and Paige, her second play was presented in the 2021 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and is now a published play. Her third play, Ready, Set, Go, is also a published play and appeared in the 2023 OPP New Play Festival. Gathering the Flock was presented at 21TenTheatre in Portland, Oregon, in April of 2024. She is grateful to the talented members of the Old Pueblo Playwrights from whom she has learned so much. She thanks her husband for his invaluable encouragement and support.
Mel Hector
Debra Vassallo
Debra Vassallo
John Vornholt
Debra Vassallo
John Vornholt
Adrian Cory
Leslie Powell
John Vornholt
Adrian has had several plays produced for both stage and radio including Social Outcast (Canal Café Theatre, London), The Knight of Malta (Manhattan Repertory Theatre, NYC), and Terror on Edge Island (Narada Radio Company). Adrian is a UK ex-pat who has been engaged with Tucson’s theatrical community since moving from Seattle two years ago. An active member of the Old Pueblo’s Playwright group, Adrian also played Father Benito in Borderlands Theatre’s recent production of Claudia’s Family.
Leslie Powell
Leslie Powell
Leslie Powell
Liisa Rose
Leslie Powell
Leslie Powell
Kristen Kallen-Keck
Kristen Kallen-Keck
Kristen Kallen-Keck
A Look Back on the 2025 festival!
