Being a commoner in American society can sometimes feel like a single voice doesn’t really count for much.
For instance, when it comes to voting in the general election, or asking for extra cream cheese on your bagel, or telling the technician at the car dealership that you don’t need a new air filter with your oil change, various situations can sometimes make it feel like you’re shouting aimlessly into a void.
However, a couple of sacred places that provide a listening ear still exist — places that allow the commoner to feel important, heard, valued.
Boulder’s Local Theater Company is one such haven, where every kind of person — from curious spectators, budding playwrights, theater critics, professional actors and Pulitzer-prize winners — are invited to take part in a years-long tradition of celebrating new American plays. Local Lab, a favorite of artists and audiences alike, is the Local Theater’s annual New Play Festival where audience members can participate in — and possibly influence or shape — a piece of theater.
Taking the stage at the Dairy Arts Center’s Grace Gamm Theatre Friday through Sunday, Local Lab will showcase three staged readings of works-in-progress by prominent theater artists and playwrights nationwide. At the festival, the audience has a chance to participate in post-show discussions and special workshops, fostering a symbiotic relationship between those who create theater and those who consume it.
When finding a location for Local Lab in 2011, Local Theater Company co-founder and artistic director Pesha Rudnick found that Boulder was a town whose population included a perfect cross-section of intelligent and creative theatergoers.
“The reason why Boulder felt like the right place to launch this 13 years ago is that we have incredible audiences, very smart audiences who are interested in seeing work and responding to work,” Rudnick said. “We don’t really attract people who are there to flex their literary muscles. We tend to attract people who are interested in theater, and interested in the process.”
Having an audience where members are engaged, thoughtful and enthusiastic is essential when showcasing new plays, Rudnick said — no matter the viewer’s experience with or knowledge of theater.
“Plays are predicated on a relationship with the audience when they go into full production,” Rudnick said. It’s very different from film or television. The experience of a play can only really happen when fellow humans are experiencing it.”
Local Lab was founded with the intent to provide selected playwrights the chance to collaborate with actors, directors and dramaturges in a low-pressure setting primarily focused on refining a play. The plays are then presented to live audiences, where playwrights can listen to their words spoken aloud, allowing them to assess what resonates, consider suggested revisions and determine how to move the play forward.
Approaching the production of new plays in this format is not an idea unique to Local Lab, with other events in Colorado — such as the Colorado New Play Festival in Steamboat, or The Colorado New Play Summit in Denver — that also take place annually. However, Local Lab stays true to its name, with a focus on highlighting playwrights that are local (or somewhat local).
This year, more than 150 playwrights from across the country submitted entries to Local Lab. According to Local Theater Company co-artistic director Nick Chase, each year, Local Lab first opens up applications specifically for playwrights living in Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, before opening up applications to playwrights living outside of the Mountain West.
“This is a region where the traditional new play development world sometimes overlooks the great wealth of material that’s within this area,” Chase said. “There are a lot of writers who are working in this area who don’t have representation — like agents and managers — and we want them to feel like, if you’re living or working in this region, it is an open door at Local Theater Company, and you can share your story with us.”
Chase is the director of one of three finalists featured in Local Lab’s festival. “Stockade,” written by Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Award winner Andrew Rosendorf and Carlyn Aquiline, follows a group of gay soldiers as they return to Fire Island five years post-World War II, during the Lavender Scare era — a historically painful moment in time when the government still chose to persecute individuals for their sexual identity, even those who risked their lives for their country. The play is a moving — at times comical — portrait of a complex moment in United States history with themes that remain deeply relevant today.
“We’ve seen a lot of experiences where U.S. veterans have returned to American soil after conflict, and not been met with open arms,” Chase said. “We saw it in the Vietnam war, and this is a very important time in which LGBTQ+ veterans returned to the United States and were not treated with the care, respect and honor that they should have been afforded.”
Also featured in the Local Lab lineup is “The Unbuttoning,” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley and directed by Rudnick. The play unfolds on a stormy night in a remote mountain cabin set in Appalachia, where a chance encounter between a traveling button salesman and a young woman results in an unexpected relationship. Inspired by Henley’s experiences in the Blue Ridge Mountains, “The Unbuttoning” is a dark fantasy that explores themes of mystery and connection amongst the complexities of womanhood.
According to Rudnick, Henley’s play is a commentary on healthcare inequities in the U.S., but the message is elegantly woven into the intricate layers of the character’s experiences.
“It’s definitely an American play about American history,” Rudnick said. “And unlike plays that can be very heavy-handed in terms of the themes — like poverty, justice, access to healthcare — this play stays very much true to the central theme: a relationship. Beth Henley has a history of writing southern gothic plays that really take these big issues and bring them to life via the characters and their relationships.”
The third play highlighted at Local Lab 13 is “Chasing Breadcrumbs,” brought to the stage by Michelle Tyrene Johnson, an award-winning radio journalist who moonlights as a playwright. “Chasing Breadcrumbs” is a comedy about a Black female playwright who is commissioned by an organization of entitled white women to write a play about one of their founders. What follows is a funny, absurd, yet painfully authentic story about what it means to be a Black creative in a world of “Karens.” “Chasing Breadcrumbs” is directed by Local Theater Company co-artistic director Betty Hart.
“It’s a lot of fun, and [Tyrene Johnson] is also really looking at what’s happening in our country when you think about racial divides,” Hart said. “She takes a fun and searing look at what we will call ‘Karen culture,’ and what’s happening with people who say they’re allies, but might not actually be, and what’s true and what’s not.”
Hart said of the dozens upon dozens of plays that she read for Local Lab, she knew she was holding a winner when she read “Chasing Breadcrumbs” and it had her bursting with laughter.
“Every play we read doesn’t cause a visceral response, so that’s a sign — If a play makes you cry, if a play makes you mad, if it makes you laugh, something is happening — and this play made me respond audibly while reading it,” Hart said.
Local Lab 13 will open with “The Unbuttoning” at 8 p.m. Friday, followed by a reading of “Stockade” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. It will close with “Chasing Breadcrumbs” at 2 p.m. Sunday. Each play will be followed by a post-show conversation, in which audience members will be able to engage with the work, allowing playwrights to gather and process information about the play’s reception.
Beyond the three staged readings, Local Lab 13 will feature an opening night kick-off party at 7 p.m. Friday, a Saturday night soirée, a Creative Non-Fiction Solo Performance Workshop with Rachel Fowler, a playwrights panel and a Democracy Cycle gathering.
Democracy Cycle is a collaboration, supported by the Arts in Society grant, between Local Theater Company, Denver’s Curious Theatre Company and Gunnison Valley Theatre Festival that gathers community members for story circles. Playwrights will observe these circles and create short plays inspired by the conversations, where the finished plays will then be presented in the summer of 2024 in Boulder, Denver and Gunnison, along with community gatherings in each area.
“As a festival that celebrates the new and new American theatrical work, this is an opportunity for our audience to participate directly in the participation of a work without having to sit down with a pen and paper and write a play themselves,” Chase said. “They may hear something that they have said onstage later this summer. It gives them agency in the creation of the play.”
Local Lab is meant to create community and connection between audiences and playwrights, and it helps playwrights evolve their work into the best possible version it can be. None of that would be possible, said Hart, without conversation.
“Playwrights write in isolation. So all of that creativity, all of that wit, all of that genius happens alone,” Hart said. “It isn’t until the words are breathed into by others does the playwright get to experience the fullness of what they’ve created.”
To purchase tickets, access the schedule of events and find more information on Local Lab 13, visit localtheaterco.org/lab13.
