Stay tuned for information about our upcoming 2024 season
Tune in! ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca talks about the 2023 Fall Festival on JPR's The Jefferson Exchange: Ashland New Plays Festival features a play about here: Ashland
Past Events
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.
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.
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.