POP-UP LAB
Directly Impact the Future of American Theater
Local Theater Company discovers and develops world-premiere plays, small-cast musicals and devised theater pieces through the Local Lab New Play Festival. Week-long workshops culminate in publicly-presented staged readings where you, the audience, participate in conversations that move the material toward full productions. Parties and workshops round out the festival programming and provide audiences the opportunity to casually engage with each other and the creative teams.
We know that plays are created and developed all year long and pop up labs give us (and you!) the opportunity to be a part of the new play process and meet a play exactly where it is. In addition to our traditional Spring Lab, we will be hosting a Fall Pop-Up Lab in conjunction with our production of You Enjoy Myself. The Pop-Up Lab will culminate in a presentation of Kori Alston’s A Case for Black Girls Setting Central Park on Fire, where we will invite audience members to ask questions and give the playwright direct feedback to help move their play toward full production.
A Case For Black Girls Setting Central Park On Fire
written by Kori Alston
Saturday, October 14 | 2 PM (doors open at 1:30)
Grace Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center
Run time: 45 minutes
Post-show conversation: 20 minutes
ABOUT THE SHOW
The genre-bending A CASE FOR BLACK GIRLS SETTING CENTRAL PARK ON FIRE is a poetic hero's journey that follows a brilliant pre-teen speeding from Brooklyn to Central Park as she processes her own pain while shouldering the weight of a world burdened by collective trauma. Aided in her journey by a rottweiler, Nat Turner and an alley-dwelling oracle, she questions what she’s running from, and what she’s running toward. In the end, the audience is invited to decipher the layers and meaning and draw connections to their own experiences.
Content warning: A CASE FOR BLACK GIRLS SETTING CENTRAL PARK ON FIRE is recommended for ages 16+ for mature content including discussions of racism and sexual abuse.
Tickets
$15
MEET THE TEAM
Appearing through an Agreement between Local Theater Company and Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
“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!”
PAST pop-up labS
Stockade
Written by Andrew Rosendorf
Directed by Pesha Rudnick
Dramaturgy by Carlyn Aquiline
Date + Location TBA
Playwright sponsors: Lari & Tom Abraham
ABOUT Stockade
Before they’re deployed overseas to fight in World War II, six Americans from different backgrounds, cultures, hometowns, and races meet and become fast friends, drawn together by the one thing they have in common: they’re all gay. Despite fighting for freedom and human rights abroad, back home they’re viewed as a danger to society and as closet Communists, forcing them to live in the shadows to avoid anti-gay discrimination. Now, five years after the war has ended, the sister of their fallen buddy has gathered them for a reunion and a surprise that causes them to question whether history is best left in the past. At a time when “security risk” was code for “homosexual,” on the eve of the launch of Sputnik, it will take courage to step out of the shadows and launch something equally historic: a movement for gay rights.
Maybe the Saddest Thing*
presented in partnership with Roundabout Theatre Company
Written by Harrison David Rivers
Directed by Josiah Davis
Friday, February 18, 2022 | 4 pm ET
Location: Roundabout Theatre Company
ABOUT Maybe the Saddest Thing
In a city in the South, Deshaun sells drugs, Frankie cleans hotel rooms and Noble makes sandwiches. They’re smart. Black. And stuck. Maybe the Saddest Thing is a play about that most American of phenomena – the rut – and what it takes to get out.
The Lady M Project
Conceived by Anne Penner and Mare Trevathan
Written by Hadley Kamminga-Peck, Anne Penner and Mare Trevathan
Directed by Mare Trevathan
Sunday, March 13, 2022 | 2 pm MT
Live Streaming
(In-person tickets sold out!)
GET TICKETS
ABOUT The Lady M Project
The Lady M Project tells Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the passionate, complex, loving and disturbed point of view of Lady Macbeth.
Need a refresher on Macbeth before experiencing The Lady M Project? Join us at 1:15 pm for coffee, mimosas, and a preshow presentation on the plot and characters of Macbeth, as well as the various interpretations of one of the play's most important figures—and inspiration for The Lady M Project—Lady Macbeth.
12:45pm—Doors open
1:15pm—Macbeth & Mimosas
2pm—Play begins
237 Virginia Avenue
presented in collaboration with UCLA
Written by David Myers
Directed by Pesha Rudnick
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Location: Los Angeles
Invitation-only event
ABOUT 237 Virginia Avenue
Starting in 1654 and traveling all the way to 2022, the play reckons with 400 years of history on one piece of property in Virginia. The story is told via an intimate relationship between a father and his son.
Clown Lung
Written by Steven San Luis (he/him)
Directed by Meghan Frank
Saturday, December 4, 2021 | 4pm MT
Location: Deviant Spirits (live, in-person) + live stream
ABOUT Clown Lung
Loosely based off the time he cried on a stage and people thought it was a performance, Clown Lung by Steven San Luis is a full length comedy that tells the story of a pizza delivery Boy who can't stop crying to save his life. The Boy journeys from his hometown by the sea to a depressing circus, and then to a lively funeral, and then to wherever else the train will take him, in search of an antidote that will dry his tears. Clown Lung is a drag show in which all of the wigs are two-thirds of a size too small. It’s the cotton candy crust on an all-American humble pie that reminds us that the real clown lung is the friends we make along the way.
Shells
Created by Nick Chase + Roslyn Hart
Writer/Director: Nick Chase
Shells: Roslyn Hart
Sunday, December 5, 2021 | 6pm MT
Location: Deviant Spirits (live, in-person) + live stream
ABOUT Shells
Michelle “Shells” Hoffman has had a revelation. In the midst of the pandemic, this JP Morgan Senior Analyst vowed to live her truth and become a cabaret sensation. Now, she’s hitting the road, weaving pop songs with tales of her life as a fabulously single NY woman-about-town. But when Scott, a man with whom she shared a night of intimacy and passion, is mentioned, the evening takes a much different course. Armed with a glass of shiraz and a penchant for drunk dialing, Shells is hell-bent on proving that she is living her best life.
Abuelas
A Bilingual Play
Written by Stephanie Alison Walker (she/her)
Translation by Paula Pizzi-Black
Directed by Gabriella Cavallero
Monday, December 6, 2021 | 6pm MT
Location: live stream
ABOUT Abuelas
Gabriela is an Argentine concert cellist living in Chicago with her American husband and adjusting to life as a new mom. Life is good - normal life worries - but good, until a visit from two strangers upends everything. This play, about the long and devastating repercussions of Argentina’s military dictatorship from 1976-1983, asks how one goes on after discovering their life is a lie? Does the restoration of truth bring freedom or suffering? Is it possible to integrate two identities into one life? The Abuelas explores these questions as well as the heart’s capacity for forgiveness even in the face of the harshest betrayal. Written as a companion play to THE MADRES, ABUELAS is a bilingual play in both English and Spanish.
“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.”
