Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival
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The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival honors new American plays that provide dynamic performance opportunities for college-aged actors.
The festival endeavors both to recognize playwrights for their outstanding work and to provide a resource for universities across the country to identify dynamic plays with robust roles for college-aged actors for production at their institutions. The festival features both a full-length and short-play division.
The 2025 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival will be held in person at the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance on the River Campus of Southeast Missouri State University from May 25 to May 31, 2025.
The festival will feature staged readings of five Official Selection full-length plays and ten Official Selection short plays, as well as workshops and seminars on playwriting and new play development.
After the festival, one full-length play will be selected for the festival’s top prize. It will receive its world premiere in the 2025-2026 Dobbins Conservatory Mainstage Season. It will be considered for publication by Concord Theatricals, the world’s most significant theatrical company, comprising the catalogs of R&H Theatricals, Samuel French, Tams-Witmark, and The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection.
Featured Guest Speakers
-
Jenn Colella
Tony-Nominated Actor (Come from Away, Suffs, If/Then) -
Gregory Graham
Jeff Award-Nominated Costume Designer -
Graeme Gillis
Co-Artistic Directory of the Obie-Winning Ensemble Studio Theatre -
Full Length Play Official Selections
Squishy Emotional Insides by Mehrnaz Tiv
Monday, May 26, 2025 / It’s 2018 in Western Pennsylvania, home of the Ruby Valley High School Jaguars Marching Band. The seniors, victims of an elementary school shooting in 2006, prepare for their final Labor Day parade performance and next steps out of high school through their post-traumatic eyes. In this group dromedy, Clarinet, Flute, Percussion, French Horn, and Trombone navigate band kid geekdom, queerness, trauma, and American gun violence through comedy and teenage angst.
The Hanging Girl by Aleks Merilo
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 / Newly expelled and seemingly futureless, Sonny and his friends engage in a final night of revelry that will end with one going missing. Eighteen years earlier, Sonny's parents were involved in a crime that would never be reported. These two stories collide in the present day in the play The Hanging Girl.
Six Inches Above the Knee by Sally Seitz
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 / Okay, so, here’s the thing…there’s only one student speaker spot at The Harpeth Valley School for Girls 2013 graduation ceremony. And it will be absolutely over Mary Elizabeth, Mary Alice, Mary Louise, and M.KAT’s DEAD BODIES that they miss the chance to tell the whole school what Coach Mag did to their best friend Mary Morgan. It’s about time everyone heard her side of the story. Revenge is best served in a kilt!!!
Tracks by John P. Bray
Thursday, May 29, 2025 / It's 1998. A group of pill-popping teens attempt a letter-writing campaign to save their sacred spot near some train tracks, which is about to be closed off in the name of progress. Mythological figures look on, unseen, as the teens attempt to create a disruption by any means necessary. Tracks remind us that we all become mythological characters to those who wonder what life must be like under a Catskill Moon.
Hockey Wives by Tanya O’Debra
Friday, May 30, 2025 / The real action in the last game of the 1995-96 North Quincy High School Hockey season isn’t on the ice with the players—it’s in the stands with their girlfriends. A seemingly frivolous night amongst friends ultimately becomes a battleground where far-reaching social consequences are threatened at every turn.
Official Selection Short Plays
Sunday, May 25
Getting Rid of Ferdinand (the mouse play) by Sierra Blanco
Jar of Lightning by Steve Apostolina
Worth a Try by Trent Clifford
Strangers Off a Train by Samara Siskind
Miss Julie by A.M. Palson
Saturday, May 31
Outfielders by Lani Kording
But Soft by Vince Gatton
Cartwheels by Jason Rainey
Two Summer Evenings by Jeff Carter
First Time by Dana Schwartz
Featured Guest Speaker Bios
Jenn Colella most recently starred in SUFFS as Carrie Chapman Catt on Broadway, for which she garnered a Drama League Award nomination for Most Distinguished Performer. Jenn starred in the Tony Award-winning smash hit musical Come From Away as Captain Beverley Bass in a performance that garnered her 2017 Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards and a 2017 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, as well as Craig Noel, Helen Hayes and Dora Awards for pre-Broadway productions of Come From Away. Jenn won a Grammy Award for her work on the Dear Evan Hansen cast recording. She has been previously seen on Broadway in If/Then, Chaplin, High Fidelity, and Urban Cowboy (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), Off-Broadway in SUFFS (Outer Critic Circle Award nomination), Beebo Brinker Chronicles, Lucky Guy, Slut and Closer Than Ever. Jenn's select regional credits include Come From Away (La Jolla Playhouse, Ford's Theatre, Toronto), Peter Pan (Sacramento Music Circus and PCLO), and Side Show (Kennedy Center). TV credits include Feed the Beast, Elementary, All My Children, Rescue Me, The Good Wife, The Code, Madam Secretary, FBI: Most Wanted, and Evil. She has been seen on film in Uncertainty with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and stars in the live capture film Come From Away on Apple Plus, streaming now. She has taught master classes all over the world, and she is currently teaching graduate actors at Columbia University. Jenn Colella is an MFA Acting graduate of UC Irvine.
Graeme Gillis is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Ensemble Studio Theatre with Estefanía Fadul. Previously at EST, he co-led two programs: EST/Youngblood, fostering early-career playwrights (Obie Award winner); and the EST/Sloan Project, fostering plays about science and technology (over $3 million in grants awarded nationwide). As a Canadian, he proudly bears a US green card for playwriting. He is a member of the Actors Studio and EST. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Gregory Graham (he/his) is a Chicago three-time Jeff nominated costume designer and milliner. His credits include: Coronation (Refracted Theatre Company) The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice (Court Theatre); Short Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet, Dream: A Community Reimaging of A Midsummer’s Night Dream (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); Mothers (Gift Theater) The Writer (Steep Theatre); Blues for an Alabama Sky, Anna in the Tropics, Routes (Remy Bumppo Theatre); The Porch on Windyhill, Garbologist, Fireflies (Northlight Theatre); Once (Writers Theatre); Is God Is (A Red Orchid Theatre); From the Mississippi Delta (Lifeline Theatre); A Mile in the Dark (Interronbang Theatre Project); The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre); 1919 (Steppenwolf Theatre); Enough to Let The Light In (Teatro Vista); The Prodigal Daughter, Private Lives (Raven Theatre); Ernest Shackleton Loves Me, Rent, Porchlight Revisits: Passing Strange (Porchlight Music Theatre); On the Greenbelt, Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins (Strawdog Theatre); The Facts of Life: Satan’s School for Girls, The Drag Seed (Hell in a Handbag Productions). Regional: The Children, The Treasurer (Next Act Theatre); The Wiz (Children’s Theatre of Madison); Raisin (Skylight Music Theatre); Blood at the Root ( Millikin University, School of Theatre and Dance). Education: BA in Theatre Design, University of Illinois at Chicago. Gregory Graham Website
Full-Length Finalists
-in-chief by Ally Duvak
1st Degree by Garry Michael Kluger
Another Reason Not to Go by Jessica Marie Fisher
Big Money by Lauren Ferebee
bloody noses by Malinda Corley Schulman
By The Time We Got to Woodstock John Spellos
Deconstruction by Tom Smith
Driving Us Forward by Walter Dodd
Gore is for Girls by Leo Laya Díaz
Haters Gonna Hate by Justin Borak
I Was Unbecoming Then by Lyndsey Bourne
Lockdown Girls by Bella Anaya Hathorne
Mask Play by John Morogiello
Night Class by Sally Domet
Pageant Play by Jen Diamond
Price Watch by Barbara Pease Webber
Protect the Protectors by Elena Freck
Reps by Matthew Chong
slowburn by Rosemary Pearl Moore
Somebody Told Me There's a Monster in the Lake by D.A. Mindell
SPIDER by Madeleine Adriance
The Beholden by Gillian Britt
The Ella Elliott Fan Club of Southeast Wisconsin by Lauren Wimmer
The German Party by Bess Frankel
The In-Betweens by Blake Hackler
The Outliers by Kemari Bryant
The Projectionist by August Nigro
The Third March, or Beth by Dawn Branch
The Would-Be Lovers App by Maripat Allen
Throuples Counseling by Lily Boulard
Tug on the Line by Dana Hall
Victorian Psychedelic Sleepover Play by Mak Shealy
Waiting by Donna Kaz
Warmth in The Place of Ice and Snow by Joshua W. Brewer
We the People of These Fifty Acre Woods by Andrew Michael Reeid
WHERE??? By Mark Eisman
Winter People by Laura Neill
Festival Sponsors
Southeast Missouri State University Office of Residential Life
Century Casino Cape Girardeau
Beacon 53 Restaurant
Port Cape Girardeau Restaurant & Lounge
Scooters Coffee
Festival Staff
| Position | Staff Member |
| Artistic Director | Kitt Lavoie |
| Executive Director | Kenneth L. Stilson |
| Associate Artistic Director | Grace Schofield |
| Associate Executive Director | Reese Simken |
| Volunteer Staff Manager | Grace Fisher |
| Volunteer Staff Coordinator | Abbie Van Pelt |
| Events Manager | Evelyn Bunce |
| Events Coordinator | Garret Langley |
| Guest Artist Liaison | Josh Neighbors |
| Conference Manager | Kennedee Nash |
| Conference Coordinator | Sam Bottini |
| Education Programs Manager | Reagan Snyder |
| Education Programs Coordinator | Ethan Courter |
| Social Media Manager | Ava Marcus |
| Media Team | Jaleacia Evans Andrew Hand Jacob Rivera |
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701