March 3, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Documents also attached
CONTACT: Quinn Metal Corbin, She/Her
Great Plains Theatre Commons Manager
Great Plains Theatre Commons Announces 2025 New Play Festival Playwrights
The annual festival will invite 10 playwrights to develop new works this spring for their 20th anniversary featuring Pulitzer and Tony Award-winner, Doug Wright as the keynote speaker.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA: Great Plains Theatre Commons (GPTC) has selected 10 playwrights to participate in the 20th annual festival’s 2025 PlayLab program. Hosted by Metropolitan Community College, this year’s convening will take place Sunday, May 25 – Saturday, May 31. The selected playwrights were chosen from a pool of more than 700 anonymous submissions. Each of the playwrights will work on their projects with a creative team, including a director, designer, dramaturg and cast composed of local and national talent. The labs will culminate in a free staged reading, after which the playwrights will receive feedback from other top national playwrights, dramaturgs, designers, and public audiences. All public events at the festival are free and open to the public. This year’s selected playwrights and projects include:
Benjamin Benne, Wave After Wave (f.k.a. this man i call mi primo)
Lori Goodman, Escape to New York
DJ Hills, come straight home
Leroy Hood, Every Living Thing
Xiaoyan Kang, The Words of Ants
Chad Kaydo, #’s
Olivia Matthews, The Nativity Starring Keisha Taylor
a.k. payne, where pathways meet
Baylee Shlichtman, You’ll be Made of Ashes Too
Skyler Tarnas, Nobody Dies In This Play
The 2025 New Play Festival Final Selection Panel was composed of Martine Kei Green-Rogers, Ph.D., Samuel Yates, Ph.D., and Khalid Y. Long, Ph.D.
Founded in 2006, GPTC offers community and artist development programs year-round, a full season of premiere productions, and brings national and local playwrights and theatre artists together to develop new works at the New Play Festival each spring. Current festival funders include National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Cultural Endowment and Mutual of Omaha. The mission of the Great Plains Theatre Commons is to strengthen community by supporting the creation and sharing of diverse new stories
See you at the curtain call,
Quinn
Quinn Metal Corbin
She | Her
GPTC Manager
The mission of the Great Plains Theatre Commons is to strengthen community by supporting the creation and sharing of diverse new stories.
