PRESENTS

LOCAL LAB 13

BOULDER’S NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
March 15 - 17, 2023
The Dairy Arts Center | Boulder, CO

WHAT IS LOCAL LAB?
Sparking tomorrow’s stories, today - Local Lab is an annual festival of new theatrical work presented by Local Theater Company. Step into the new play development process with talented and prolific playwrights. Experience staged play readings featuring exceptional actors, and provide valuable feedback through facilitated post-show conversations. Connect with playwrights, directors, actors, and fellow theatergoers eager to explore the most current stories of our evolving world.

LAB 13 readings

A MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, KATE GIPSON

Today’s world is bigger than ever before. What’s trending is surpassed by a new event, a new group, a new conflict from one moment to the next. Online algorithms determine what we hear and who we hear it from. It’s all too easy to disconnect from one another. In the advent of all of this information, we risk losing track of the humans involved and their stories. 

Enter the playwrights. The four playwrights who created the plays you are experiencing this weekend capture a particular moment at “the end of a century” or the end of a war, or the beginning of a new play. They crafted characters based on people that they know, or met at a party, or wanted to ensure aren’t forgotten. 

Enter the directors, actors, designers, and stage managers. They put these characters into their own bodies, they spoke the words aloud and asked questions and shared their own lived experiences. Over a week, new pages were written, new twists surfaced, and some words were lost for others to emerge. 

Enter you, the audience. Now you get to listen, take it in, ask your own questions and answer a few of ours. You bring your own experiences to each play, and you are indelibly inked into its future. 

From here, these plays go on to become the stories that are told tomorrow, that breathe life into the events you hear on the news or in your social media feed. These plays capture a moment or a life. These plays expand perspective, they incite empathy, they connect us to one another. 

When you join an audience, you create a community. Thank you for being Local.

In community, 
Kate Gipson 
Executive Director

LAB 13 SCHEDULE

Your gift makes plays happen.

Land Acknowledgement

Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world that contributed their hopes, dreams and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some of the people from the history of this spot were brought here against their will, some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hope of a better life and some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. 

Local Theater Company acknowledges, with deep respect, that we are on unceded territory of Hinóno'éí (Arapaho), Tsitsistas (Cheyenne), Nuciu (Ute) Nations and this land is home to many Native Peoples today. We pay respect to their elders both past and present. We ask that you consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration and settlement that bring us here today.

This statement was crafted from information found in the #HonorNativeLand Guide from the US Department of Arts and Culture. You can access the guide at https://usdac.us/nativeland/ Thank you to the following organizations that helped deepen our understanding of land acknowledgement and historical truth:

Resources

http://www.nativepartnership.org

https://resourcegeneration.org

https://www.narf.org

https://president.cu.edu/statements/cu-systemwide-lands-recognition-statement