welcome to Local Lab 2021!
Boulder’s premier festival of new American plays
Local Theater Company discovers and develops world premiere plays through Local Lab, Boulder’s premier festival of new American plays. Local Lab is a development program that offers playwrights and audiences the chance to participate in conversations that help move new plays toward full productions.
In honor of our 10th season, we have expanded the festival and will now support the development of 10 new works including four scripted plays, three artist-devised works, two original commissions and a new musical. Local Lab will feature artist-driven invited readings, workshops and rehearsals all year long.
MEET THE ARTISTS OF LOCAL LAB 2021!
The LADY M PROJECT
Conceived by Mare Trevathan & Anne Penner
Script by Mare Trevathan, Anne Penner and Hadley Kamminga-Peck
Director: Mare Trevathan
THE LADY M PROJECT tells Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the passionate, complex, loving and disturbed point of view of Lady Macbeth.
Invited-Presentation Program HERE
Mare Trevathan has extensive experience performing Shakespeare, but also loves new and unconventional theater. In recent years, she performed in the immersive show “Blind Date”-- pairing one audience member to one actor as they wandered the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art; directed “microtheater” in a bookstore; and worked with architects in Ahmedabad, India to create “site-specific” performance drawing focus to built-environments. Mare has narrated over 650 audiobooks and teaches Voice Acting at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. She is a founding member of Local Theater Company. maretrevathan.com
Anne Penner is thrilled to work with Local Theater Company. She is an Associate Professor in the University of Denver Theatre Department, where she teaches acting, directing, and movement courses. She performs professionally with various Colorado theater companies, most recently with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline), Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company (The Wolves), and Stories on Stage (Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking). She directs and produces professionally and at DU, and she also is co-host of the popular acting/psychology podcast, The Actor's Mind. She received an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Amherst College.
Mare Trevathan
Anne Penner
The Immunes
Playwrights: Eryc Eyl & Jeff Campbell
Director: Christy Montour-Larson
Invited-Presentation Program HERE
In a near future, the world is in a state of permanent pandemic, and society has been reduced to just two kinds of people: those who are immune, and those who are not. When an everyday hero attempts to visit their dying parent, they're forced to examine, confront, and subvert the realities of a system that doesn't want them to thrive. Oh, and it's a comedy.
Jeff Campbell, a guerrilla storyteller, has been a part of Denver’s creative community for over two decades, as a pioneering Hip Hop and spoken word artist, as well as a facilitator of arts in education programs for Colorado’s youth in public schools. In 2015, He was named one of Westword’s 100 Colorado Creative’s. He is also the writer of the critically acclaimed “Who Killed Jigaboo Jones?” a One Man Mockumentary on the Hip Hop Industrial Complex, “Honorable Disorder” the story of an Iraq war veteran from 5 Points, battling PTSD, and readjusting to civilian life, and also “Fish Fries and Poetry, an installment of the immersive theatrical performance “Recipe” the history of Denver’s 5 Points neighborhood, and the food that held the community together. His production company Emancipation Theater, is a performance art social enterprise dedicated to gathering the community to share stories and inspire action.
Eryc Eyl is a business philosopher, keynote speaker, author, consultant, coach, storyteller, and DJ whose mission is to make work and business more human-centric. He holds an MA in Education from the University of Colorado, and a BA in English Literature and Film Studies from Vassar College, as well as accreditations and certifications in corporate culture, change management, and customer experience. As a DJ, Eryc has collaborated with Local Theater Company, And Toto Too Theater Company, Curious Theater Company, and Boulder Ensemble Theater Company. He believes work can be more than just another four-letter word, and that words can change the world. The Immunes is his first play.
eryceyl.com
Jeff Campbell
Eryc Eyl
Miguk Saram
Playwright: Susan H. Pak
Director: Desdemona Chiang
Invited-Presentation Program HERE
A highly ambitious Korean American teen will stop at nothing to get into his dream university. However, his plans are suddenly derailed when he is seduced by a social justice warrior, as well as an alt-right extremist. Will he make the right choice?
Susan H. Pak is a Chicago Dramatists Resident playwright, who received her MFA in writing for the screen and stage at Northwestern University, and her JD from the University of Illinois College of Law. Susan's work centers on the myriad ways in which Asian Americans, and in particular Korean American women, resist the seduction of protection through assimilation. Her works have been produced in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and include: Election at the Goodman Theater, The Fixer at the Steppenwolf Theater, Ghost Girl at the Workshop Theater, T.A.B. at New York’s Downtown Urban Theater Festival; and Incredible Invisible at Chicago’s Bailiwick Director’s Fest. Her play Miguk Saram was a finalist at the 2020 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference.
Susan H. Pak website
Susan H. Pak
C.A. Johnson
i know i know I know
Playwright: C.A. Johnson
Director: Kate Sullivan
Invited-Presentation Program HERE
When Zoe’s wife goes missing (again), her lifelong best friends join her on the island off the coast of Virginia where they spent childhood summers. A play about women, friendship, wild ponies, and love that lasts forever. (Which is to say it is also a play about betrayal…betrayal again and again and again).
C.A. Johnson is a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Metairie, Louisiana. Her plays include ALL THE NATALIE PORTMANS (MCC Theater), THIRST (2017 Kilroys List, CATF), THE CLIMB (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), AN AMERICAN FEAST (NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School), and I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. Most recently she was the Tow Playwright in Residence at MCC Theater. She was previously the 2018 P73 Playwriting Fellow, The Lark's 2016-17 Van Lier Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a member of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, A Core Writer at The Playwrights Center, a member of The Civilians R&D Group, , a Sundance/Ucross Fellow and a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow. Her work has been developed with The Lark, PlayPenn, Luna Stage, Open Bar Theatricals, The Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation, and The Fire This Time Festival. BA: Smith College MFA: NYU. cajohnson.info
Steven San Luis
Angler Light
Playwright: Steven San Luis
Director: Cole Alvis
Invited-Presentation Program HERE
Angler Light is a comedy/drama about a salmon with a broken tail who needs to migrate back to his natal stream in Canada so he can fulfill his destiny. The only person he can find to help him is a suicidal teenager who is pretty sure destiny doesn't exist.
Steven San Luis (he/him) is a queer writer from southern Georgia who studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. His short plays have been produced in festivals by Boxfest Detroit, Hand to Mouth Players, the North Park Playwrights Festival, and The Road Theatre. Steven has been published in the 2020 Stage It! book and he is the inaugural winner of Avalonia 7's Best Comedic One Act award. He also worked on Local Theater Company's productions of Faith, Firestorm, and The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias. Steven San Luis website
Say My Name
Playwright, Director: Pang Yuan Yuan
Composer, Music Director: David Nehls
Say My Name is about Sheung Min, a Korean immigrant who is haunted by ghosts day and night asking her to release their souls while she is preparing for her citizenship test. Sheung Min subsequently realizes these ghosts were pioneer women immigrants who made a contribution to Asian American history but were not recognized as American citizens.
Digital Program HERE
Pang Yuan Yuan
David Nehls
Pang Yuan Yuan, Ph.D. Pang Yuan Yuan is a director, actress and playwright whose 60 plus directing credits range from classical Greek tragedies to contemporary comedies to Broadway musicals to new play development. Born and raised in Hong Kong, educated in Canada and America, Pang Yuan Yuan brings to her work an East-West fusion aesthetics. But she never forsakes her Chinese roots. She is an Artistic Associate of the New York-based Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company, and a founding board member of IN[sight] CO[lab] Theatre in Colorado. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Pang Yuan Yuan website
David Nehls As a composer/lyricist, David has supplied music and lyrics for the following: THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL (Dodger Stages/ 2007 National Tour/ 2004 NYMF Festival/2008 Edinburgh Festival/ Produced Regionally), BROADWAY BARES 19 &20 (Opening Numbers for both years) as well as the 2016 opening number for BROADWAY BARES FIRE ISLAND, I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS (World Premiere 2016 at the Arvada Center For The Arts And Humanities), THE WATERCOOLERS (2002 Off Broadway Production/ 2007 National Tour/ Continuing Industrials) BREACH (Evolution Theatre Company), A MIDNIGHT CLEAR, PANTO SLEEPING BEAUTY (both 2009 and a special 2020 edition online), PANTO MOTHER GOOSE (All at Stages Repertory Theatre), IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1993 National Tour/Produced Regionally), KILLER WIGS FROM OUTER SPACE (2017 NYMF, Benefit concert for Denver Actor's Fund 2018, workshop production 2016 CU Boulder and Short Animation Project, GenCon Selection- 2013, Terror Film Festival, Philadelphia-2013), THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK CHRISTMAS MUSICAL (Premiere at Stages Rep, Houston, Produced Regionally)and the new musical MOMMIE DEAREST which he has collaborated with Christina Crawford.
LOCAL LAB Public Presentation
Sunday, September 19
6pm
The Loft Theater, CU Boulder
$10
NOTE
This presentation will be followed by a 20-minute talkback moderated by Associate Artist Betty Hart.
Jennifer Barclay
Yellowstone
Playwright: Jennifer Barclay
Director: Pesha Rudnick
Yellowstone is a dark comedy set in Wyoming, at the border of Yellowstone National Park, and is the first in Jennifer Barclay’s national parks trilogy. We are thrust into the middle of a land-grabbing, fracking fight between a group of working-class, rural, conservative white male characters—played by a multiracial company of women. Yellowstone is a multileveled wild ride, giving us a theatrical lens through which we can view both sides of the national political divide.
Jennifer Barclay is a DC-based and Chicago-bred actor-turned-playwright. Her play Ripe Frenzy won the NNPN 2016 Smith Prize for Political Theatre and the 2018 Dramatists Guild Fund Writers Alliance Grant, and had a 2018 NNPN Rolling World Premiere. Jennifer’s plays have been produced and developed by Steppenwolf, Woolly Mammoth, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, RedCat, The Kennedy Center, Center Stage, BETC, PlayPenn, The International Theatre of Vienna and The Edinburgh Fringe. Fellowships / Residencies: MacDowell Colony, VCCA, Hawthornden International Writers Retreat, Ojai Playwrights Conference, New Harmony, South Coast Rep, Center Stage and Arena Stage. Education: Northwestern University and UC San Diego (MFA with Naomi Iizuka) and is proud to be an NNPN Affiliated Artist, a member of the Dramatists Guild, and an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. Jennifer Barclay website
Public Presentation presented by LAUNCH PAD at UCSB in partnership with Local Theater Company
Friday, September 24
5pm
Theater/Dance West Courtyard, UC Santa Barbara
FREE
NOTE
This presentation will be followed by a Q&A.
Maybe the Saddest Thing
Playwright: Harrison David Rivers
Local Theater Company has commissioned Rivers to write a new play. Information about this work will be provided when available.
Harrison David Rivers is the winner of the 2018 Relentless Award for THE BANDAGED PLACE. His other plays include WHEN LAST WE FLEW (GLAAD Media Award), SWEET (AUDELCO nom), WHERE STORMS ARE BORN (Berkshire Theatre Award nom), THIS BITTER EARTH (Jeff nom, MN Theatre Award for Exceptional New Work), FIVE POINTS (BroadwayWorld Minneapolis Award for Best New Work) and BROADBEND, ARKANSAS (Antonyo Award nom). He is the recipient of McKnight, Jerome, and Van Lier Fellowships and residencies with NYS&F, NYTW, Duke University and the Williamstown Theater Festival. Harrison is a member of the Playwrights’ Center's Board of Directors. harrisondavidrivers.com
Harrison David Rivers
“I had a wonderful time in Boulder. It was valuable to hear recent rewrites of the play aloud for the first time, and it was especially helpful to work with Rachel on the play prior to the Lab and get her insights.”
“I loved seeing how involved and engaged the community was and how the company has built such a strong base of support and interest in challenging theater. Super inspiring!”
