Local Lab is Boulder, Colorado's premier 3-day new play festival of new works. We offer fully-staged concert readings, workshops, parties, and the opportunity for playwrights and attendees to participate in conversations that help move new plays toward full productions. Local Lab plays have gone on to be fully-produced all across the country.
Festival Schedule
Friday, March 17
2-5pm
@ 311 Mapleton Ave
Workshop 1: "Pain Management"
Viewpoints and Ensemble Work
The deserted hospital on Boulder's Mapleton Avenue is part ghost town, part playground. Stories of hope and pain lurk around every corner, in every empty hallway, in each abandoned examination room. Join a diverse team of Local-affiliated theater artists known as the “Theatricians Collective” to create a devised piece of theater, in which the architecture of the building itself is a creative partner.
This is part 1 of our 3-part community workshop that will culminate in a short live performance. No experience necessary. Bring a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, and clothes you can move in. Please plan to attend all three days.
*Available only to All-Access Festival + Workshops Passholders
Friday, March 17
5:30-6:30pm
@ Lobby
Dairy Arts Center
Festival Kickoff Party
Meet festival-goers and guest artists as we kick off our 2017 Local Lab weekend. There will be cocktails. There will be food. And there will be fun. Music provided by Irish band Take Down the Door.
*Available only to All-Access Festival Passholders
Friday, March 17
7pm
@ Grace Gamm Theatre
Dairy Arts Center
Mainstage Reading: Wisdom From Everything
By Mia McCullough
Directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh
“People are uncomfortable when women are powerful.”
19-year-old Syrian refugee Farsana is stuck. Once the top student in her school, she’s now educating girls while they wait for the war to end. But when an older Jordanian doctor offers Farsana an education in exchange for marriage, she takes the chance—and finds herself embroiled in her new husband’s bizarre plot to redeem himself. Wisdom From Everything is the story of one young woman trying to better herself in a world where she has very little agency, few rights, no country, and very little support. Is there hope?
Saturday, March 18
12-4pm
@ 311 Mapleton Ave
Workshop 2: “Pain Management”
Devising Original Theater Pieces
This is part 2 of our 3-part community workshop that will culminate in a short live performance. No experience necessary. Bring a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, and clothes you can move in. Please plan to attend all three days.
*Available only to All-Access Festival + Workshops Passholders
Saturday, March 18
4:30pm-5:30pm
@ McMahon Gallery
Dairy Arts Center
Playwrights Panel moderated by Megan Mathews
One role of the theater is to hold up a mirror to society and say, “This is how you are. If you don’t like it, change it.” In this conversation with Mia McCullough, Jason Grote and Elise Thoron, we’ll explore what provoked these playwrights to tell the stories we are presenting at Local Lab.
*Available only to All-Access Festival Passholders
Saturday, March 18
6pm
@ Grace Gamm Theatre
Dairy Arts Center
Mainstage Reading: Shostakovich, or Silence
By Jason Grote
Directed by Pesha Rudnick
“I am a worse monster than any of them. All artists are.”
Sometimes the things an artist must do to keep creating aren’t pretty, even if the art sometimes is. In Jason Grote’s riveting biographical play with music about the prolific Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Great Terror is imprisoning and murdering writers and artists—and unfortunately for him, Shostakovich is out of favor with Stalin. But the human spirit is more powerful than any kind of artillery. And a composer must contemplate whether to use the power of art to change things, or remain silent.
Saturday, March 18
8-10pm
@ Grace Gamm Theatre
Dairy Arts Center
After Party
Let your hair loose and your freak fly. DJ Savior Breath returns for our festival party. There will be free food and booze, and an opportunity to spend time with our festival artists and special guests.
*Available only to All-Access Festival Passholders
Saturday, March 18
10-10:30pm
@ Grace Gamm Theatre
Dairy Arts Center
Laugh Lab
Before we wind down the party, we're winding up the laughs, turning our Saturday After Party into a Comedy Club. Five comedians, including our very own Megan Mathews and Dairy Arts Center's James Goldmill, will grab the mic and make you laugh your pants off.
*Free to all attendees.
Sunday, March 19
10:30am-1pm
@ 311 Mapleton Ave
Workshop 3: “Pain Management”
Preparing for the Performance
This is part 3 of our 3-part community workshop that will culminate in a short live performance. No experience necessary. Bring a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, and clothes you can move in. Please plan to attend all three days.
*Available only to All-Access Festival + Workshops Passholders
Sunday, March 19
12-1pm
@ 311 Mapleton Ave
Performance: “Pain Management”
The 3-day workshop culminates in a devised theater performance, "Pain Management," presented by Local Theater Company's “Theatricians Collective” and participants in the Local Lab workshops.
*Available only to All-Access Festival Passholders
Sunday, March 19
2pm
@ Grace Gamm Theatre
Dairy Arts Center
Mainstage Reading: The Merchant of Venice
By William Shakespeare
Modern Verse Translation by Elise Thoron
Directed by Rachel Fowler
“He has disgraced me, and hindered me a half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked my gains, scorned my Nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies, and what’s the reason? I am…”
What happens when you take a controversial Shakespearean masterpiece and update the language in modern contemporary English? Something totally new (and equally controversial). In Elise Thoron’s modern verse translation of The Merchant of Venice, a loan granted by Shylock turns the town a frenzy, thrusting it into a debate about intolerance and justice. Presented in partnership with Hitz Foundation, a sponsor of Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On!, this will be the first public reading of the new work that begs to ask the question: Why translate Shakespeare’s work now?
Special thank you to Boedecker Foundation, Boulder Arts Commission, The Community Foundation Boulder County, PosterBrain, Hazel's Beverage World, Todd Reed Gallery, Awesome Boulder, and Hitz Foundation for their support of Local Lab 2017.
