New Play Festival
The Old Pueblo Playwrights organization has provided 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 features 17 original works by 11 playwrights at the Temple of Music and Art: 330 S Scott Avenue, Tucson. Take elevator at rear to Cabaret Theatre on the 2nd floor.
Festival newcomers include Michael Singervalt, Jeffrey Webster, and award-winning Dramatist Guild member Leslie Powell. A recent OPP board addition, Powell’s plays have been read and produced in Phoenix, San Antonio, Scottsdale, Toronto. She co-founded the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, Writers & Actors Ink, and Random Acts festival.
Festival veterans include award-winning playwright Gavin Kayner and OPP Treasurer Mel Hector, MD, a University of Arizona College of Medicine professor who explores the family dilemma of a young man’s addiction in You Never Know. OPP board member and Southern New Hampshire University Professor Liisa Rose returns with seven (!) shorts. Other veterans include OPP board member Sydney Flynn, husband Vince, Sharon Surhoff. And David Rochon’s Finding Mary Tyler Moore is a change of pace from his Curious Incident of the Dogs Who Might Bite (2022) and Shower Monster (2023).
“Like Hamlet, we believe the play’s the thing,” notes best-selling author, actor, playwright, director, producer, screenwriter, journalist, and Active Imagination Theatre co-founder John Vornholt. “Each play is performed just once, script in hand, on a bare-bones set. Post-performance talkbacks add a workshop experience.”
Playwrights Scott Berg and Liisa Rose cochair this year’s festival.
ADMISSION: Pay $10/performance or $35/all-festival pass at the door with cash or check; no credit cards; no reserved seats. Credentialed media admitted free.
