Our Season
This March 25 and 26, we look forward to producing the first ever workshop and public reading of Side Effects May Include…, a new play by Lisa Loomer. Lisa’s incredible new piece explores the pills we need to keep chasing the American Dream, at what can sometimes be an unfathomable cost.
"An unflinching look at pharma, consent, and motherhood, I found the early draft of this play harrowing and heartbreaking," says ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca. "It’s a necessary exploration of and for our times."
Tickets will go on sale starting in February.
April 29 and 30, we welcome back ANPF New Voices playwright Carlos-Zenen Trujillo. Oregon is home to its share of idealistic dreamers, communes, and... well... cults. Trujillo’s immersive new play, Our Utopia, asks what we are willing to give up so that we can belong. This workshop is being co-produced by Bag&Baggage Productions and for those that want to follow the piece into fruition, Our Utopia will have its world premiere at Bag&Baggage in Fall of 2023!
Finally, we return again to ANPF’s flagship event, our annual Fall Festival this October 18-22.
"This will be my third Fall Festival as artistic director," says Apodaca, "and I remain inspired by our readers and their dedication to our intensive process. I look forward to reading the finalists and programming what I hope will be your favorite season yet."
All 2023 readings will be performed at the Main Stage Theatre at Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. We are thrilled to be continuing this special partnership and once again welcoming eager students to our audiences.
Finally, this year ANPF is proud to welcome two-time ANPF winning playwright Victor Lesniewski to the cohort of Associate Artists. He will be joining nationally renowned playwright Octavio Solis and Kyle Haden, Senior Associate Head of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. Outgoing Associate Artist Sarah Cho completes her appointment after a successful ANPF presentation of her coming-of-age play, stains, last year.
Past Events
Ready to write and connect with the playwrights around the writers' table?
Sign up for our annual playwriting workshop - open to all writers!
When: Tuesday, September 27, at 6:30 pm
Where: Oregon Cabaret Theatre, 241 Hargadine St, Ashland
Tickets: $10
Note: Masks are required. We can provide you with one if you do not have it at the door.
Inside ANPF: A conversation with ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca
Join us on Tuesday, September 27, at the nationally recognized and celebrated Oregon Cabaret Theatre for an in-depth conversation with ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca, interviewed by John Rose.
Jackie took over the helm during the unprecedented global pandemic and kept the focus on creating new work, nourishing both the creative process and the writers to create it. She was able to pivot productions to be online, thereby keeping our regular audience engaged and reaching new fans who hadn’t had access to the Fall Festival before.
Jackie will share her thoughts about Ashland New Plays Festival: the history, the luminaries who have had work produced here, and what her vision is for the future. There will be an overview of the upcoming Fall Festival and the opportunity for you to ask questions about the curation of a season, what it takes to build a play, and where works can go from here.
Inside ANPF is a community engagement opportunity for fans, friends, members, readers and donors to connect more deeply with the art we collectively create. It is a forum for hearing about big ideas from inspiring artists. We look forward to welcoming you into the ever-evolving dialogue.
The doors will open at 6:15 for seating; the talk will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $10.
stains
By Sarah Cho
Directed by Lava Alapai
Dramaturg Paul Adolphsen
Featuring: Nina Pamintuan, Annie Yim, Janet Song, Leta Dolores Marcellus, and Nicole Villavicencio Gonzalez
stains is a coming-of-age comedy about a teenage girl whose family sees her first period as a burden. An autobiographical play about growing up poor, female, and Korean American in Los Angeles, stains is in development as part of Moving Arts Theatre’s 2021 MADlab Playwriting Development Program and was selected to participate at the 2022 Great Plains Theatre Commons New Play Conference.
Saturday, July 9, at 7:30 pm & Sunday, July 10, at 1:30 pm
We launched our 30th anniversary season with the return of the New Voices Emerging Playwrights Retreat June 2–5. Hailing from Ashland, Portland, Rainier, and Banks, this year’s retreat cohort features Oregon playwrights Mikki Gillette, Lindsay Partain, Lorenz Qatava, Leslie Slape, and Ken Yoshikawa.
ANPF 2021: Special Encore On-Demand Streaming Week
On-demand presentations of the readings will be available October 26 through 31.
We also have Festival Passes that give you access to all four shows with one ticket purchase.
ANPF 2021: Live Virtual Festival
We are excited to announce the full Festival schedule of performances and events!
Wednesday, October 20, at 6 pm PT
First, we hope you'll join us for the Launch Party and Playwright Panel. Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca and Host Playwright Beth Kander will be leading a discussion with the winning playwrights in a Zoom room where guests can mingle and hear directly from the playwrights. It is free for members with registration and $10 for the general public.
Opening Night Performance
Thursday, October 21, at 6 pm PT
Pocket Universe by Thomas Brandon
On a picnic at the park where they had their first date, a husband and wife share happy disagreements about what counts as a “first date,” revealing troubling memory gaps that lead to a dark discovery.
Friday, October 21, at 6 pm PT
Certain Aspects of Conflict in the Negro Family by TyLie Shider
In the long hot summer of 1967, a disintegrated American family tries to repair and re-migrate south, but racial tensions erupt in the city and threaten to thwart the family’s dreams for the future.
Saturday, October 22, at 10 am PT
Writing Across the Distance
Join ANPF Host Playwright Beth Kander and the 2021 winning playwrights for a writing workshop that will help you find the inspiration to write even when the world around us is unpredictable at best. All writers are welcome—poetry, non-fiction, fiction—all will find information of interest. Free for members, $10 for the general public.
Saturday, October 22, at 6 pm PT
What Happened While Hero Was Dead by Meghan Brown
Hero, of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, finds herself embroiled in false rumors and discovers that being dead might be the best thing that could’ve happened to her life.
Sunday, October 24, at 2 pm PT
An Afternoon with the ANPF New Voices Playwrights
Join us as we welcome the five emerging playwrights from our inaugural New Voices Retreat for a free panel discussion. Don’t miss a chance to gain new perspectives about theatre from this talented group of playwrights, including Kathryn de la Rosa, Ty Greenwood, Heesun Hwang, Jasmine Sharma, and Carlos-Zenen Trujillo.
Closing Night Performance
Sunday, October 24, at 6 pm PT
Last Drive to Dodge by Andrew Lee Creech
Set at the tail end of the Cowboy Golden Age, Last Drive to Dodge is an examination of race, love, and legacy in a time when everyone is scrambling for their piece of the American Dream.
Emerging playwrights Kathryn de la Rosa, Ty Greenwood, Heesun Hwang, Jasmine Sharma, and Carlos-Zenen Trujillo are the inaugural cohort of ANPF's New Voices Retreat 2021. The virtual retreat, running August 1-7, will allow the artists to fully engage with the writing process. They are paired with established theatre professionals as mentors who will assist with the development of a script in progress, and special guest artists will meet with them to share their experiences and insight.
Mentors for the week include: comedy writer and playwright Sarah Cho; playwright and TV writer Inda Craig-Galván; theatre director, adapter, and activist Lavina Jadhwani; Senior Cultural Strategist and Dramaturg for Play On Shakespeare Amrita Ramanan; and, Artist Repertory Theatre’s Director of New Play Development and Dramaturgy Luan Schooler.
The guest artists include: Octavio Solis, nationally renowned playwright and ANPF associate artist; Oregon Shakespeare Festival Literary Manager Paul Adolphsen; Dana Lynn Formby, playwright and faculty member at Chicago Dramatists; actor, director, and cofounder of UNIVERSES Steven Sapp; and ANPF Host Playwright Beth Kander, a Chicago-based playwright and author.
The playwrights also receive a $500 stipend and will return to ANPF for a live virtual conversation during the Fall Festival. The retreat is funded in part by a grant from the Kinsman Foundation.
"These young playwrights are passionate, generous, and original artists poised to make big waves in the future of theatre,” says ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca. “We are thrilled to be able to support them as they develop new works for the stage."
Click below to read each playwright's Q&A playwright profile to learn more about them and their work.
Berth Breach/Breech Birth
By Inda Craig-Galván
Directed by Kyle Haden
Lead sponsor: Donna Ritchie
Featuring: Christiana Clark, Desean K. Terry, Shaun Heard, Josie Seid, and Samantha Wynette Miller
During a house call for a pregnant mare, a veterinarian discovers an entire ship filled with enslaved people, inside the horse’s uterus. And one enslaved man sees her, too. Is she imagining it all? Can she get them out? And if she can, what happens to them then? What has happened to any of us? This play explores the world of a Black farming community in America and examines how cycles of birth, life, and death look much different to those of the African Diaspora.
Berth Breach/Breech Birth was performed on Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25, 2021.
Lonesomes: Conrado and Paisley Blue
Two New Pieces Written In and For Isolation
By Octavio Solis
Directed by Jackie Apodaca
By popular demand, we are bringing back Lonesomes by Octavio Solis for an encore with the release of a newly recorded performance, available to stream this March 16 through 21! After a successful two-day run of the play in February where hundreds of audience members were able to see this powerful new work, we received many requests to make it available on demand.
“Lonesomes was such a special event,” says the show’s director and ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca, “I've done some virtual readings and Zoom theatre, sure, but getting to work on a script written expressly for our remote world was freeing. I hope this release gives a wider audience the chance to see Octavio's work, and the brave, personal performances given by Armando Durán and Isabel Pask.”
NOTE: This play features mature themes and may not be appropriate for younger audiences.
Explore Our Events
Fall Festival
A celebratory week-long festival featuring public readings, talkbacks, a playwriting workshop, and more.
New Play Workshops
New play development intensives culminating in public readings and talkbacks
New Voices
An annual retreat for emerging playwrights, with a focus on craft and community building.
Inside ANPF
Inspiring conversations with theatre artists about the process and productions that make up ANPF.