Red Bull Theater Reveals Short New Play Festival 2023 Winning Submissions

Red Bull Theater has announced the eight world premieres selected for the company’s 13th annual Short New Play Festival. Six brand new classically inspired ten-minute plays of heightened language and classic themes inspired by this year’s theme, “Forbidden Love,” have been chosen through an open and blind submission process. These selections will premiere alongside commissions from Craig Lucas (Reckless, Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion) and Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire). This year’s selected playwrights are Peter Gray, Delaney Kelly, Rachel Leopold, Maggie Lou Rader, Jaqui Shiel, and Frank Winters.

 
Short New Play Festival 2023 will be held on Monday June 26th at Theater 555 (555 West 42nd Street between 10th & 11th Avenues) as well as Streamed Online.  For tickets and more information visit redbulltheater.com. Casting will be announced shortly.

"It is a thrill to bring our annual Short New Play Festival back to both in person performance AND online livestream access as we complete our 2022-23 season! This year's 'Forbidden Love' theme inspired hundreds of surprising and delightful plays with a wonderful range. The six selected plays together with our two established playwright commissions offer a terrific panoply of romance, drama, tragedy, and satire – all in conversation with the classics – enriching the boundaries of what that word can encompass. The eight plays brim with theatricality and not so forbidden fun – Join us!" said Artistic Director Jesse Berger.

 
The 2023 winning selections are:

Forbidding Love

by Peter Gray

In a slightly dystopian future, two passionate censors fall in love as they collaborate to excise any objectionable content from Romeo & Juliet.

 
As a playwright, Peter Gray considers himself an equal cross of Oscar Wilde, Henry David Thoreau, and the entire cast of The Muppets. His work has been recognized by institutions such as the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and d’arts et de reves. As a MacDowell Fellow, Peter is creating a series of modern day closet dramas designed to be read aloud at home. His play Salem: Post-Mortem was begun in residence at Monson Arts then broadcast virtually with the Muse Collective in October 2020 to raise money for the Audre Lorde Project. Raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Peter’s projects and studies have taken him all over the world. With performer Joana Knezevic, he has created a bubble gum fantasia of body positivity, I Am Not Your Barbie, which premiered in Belgrade last May. He recently completed a Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany and is a member of The Orchard Project's Audio Lab this summer.

 
 

One Moment Please

by Delaney Kelly

Based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo, one man falls in love with his hyper-curated, people-pleasing Amazon Alexa device.

Delaney Kelly is an emerging writer and playwright from Cleveland, OH, currently based in New Haven, CT. Previous works include The Size of a Fist, which premiered at the Oberlin College New Works Festival and was Runner-Up for the 2020 KCACTF National Undergraduate Playwriting Award, and Before the Flood, which received a staged reading at the Kraine Theater in 2022. Their fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Glass Mountain, and Blood & Bourbon, among others. BA: Oberlin College, 2020.

 
  

Of Love of God of Love

by Rachel Leopold

Psyche loves Cupid. Psyche does not know Cupid. Cupid asks for 24 hours' notice if you have to cancel or else he has to bill you in full. Based on the myth of Cupid and Psyche from The Metamorphoses, Of Love of God of Love explores the magic and the tragedy of the relationship between therapist and client.

Rachel Leopold writes and works in education technology in Brooklyn. Her 10-minute play The Son was selected and read as part of the Red Bull Theater’s 7th Annual Short New Play Festival in 2017. Her full-length plays include Dog People and Shiva, which was selected for the 2014 Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayLabs series. She has a BA in literature from Columbia University.

 
 

Conferring By the Parlor Fire

by Maggie Lou Rader

 Kate the shrew, Bianca, and the Widow sit by the parlor fire while their husbands enjoy the wedding. But what happened around that fire that led to Kate's famous tamed speech? These three ladies are up to something that Shakespeare left out of his famous play.

Maggie Lou Rader (she/her/hers), an award-winning playwright, member of the Dramatist’s Guild and AEA, tells epic stories of epic women. Her work has been published and seen regionally, Off-Broadway, and on Tony Award winning stages. She obtained degrees from William Jewell College in Kansas City and the Birmingham School of Acting in the UK and has called Cincinnati home for nearly 10 years. She has been the winner of The Theater J Patty Abramson Jewish Play Prize and the Notre Dame College New Play festival and was selected for Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Words Cubed Program. She has also been a finalist for the Henley Rose Playwrighting Award for Women, Central Florida Community Arts TYA New Play and Musical Festival, a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival, Dayton Playhouse’s Future Fest, and UP Theater's Renewal Reading Series. She has had the privilege of having her work developed at DePaul University, Inkwell Theatre, Skeleton Rep, and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Her plays have been seen at Know Theatre of Cincinnati, InBocca Performance, Commonwealth Theatre Center, The Marsh, Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare, Urban Stages, Theatre Pro Rata, and colleges from coast to coast. She’s also been published with Smith and Kraus and Madwomen in the Attic. 

 
Taboo is the Thing

by Jaqui Shiel

Nurse is tired of nursing everyone- in every classical play where there ever has been a nurse. She is also tired of being dictated to by the god Dionysus who rules with an iron fist and takes exception to anytime she has a forbidden affair with any other character- or anyone really. She finds herself being placed in theatrical purgatory where she meets other characters with their own struggles and convinces them to stand up to the tyrant god.

Jaqui Shiel is an actor, singer and writer. Born and raised in South Africa to Irish parents- she trained as an actor in S.Africa at TUT School of Drama and in the UK at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. After a varied theatre career in London playing roles in, amongst other things, The Libertine, Rainshark, Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nights, Playboy of the Western World, and A Month in the Country, Jaqui moved to NYC where she has also been seen in Elektra at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre and in industry readings for new plays including Craig Lucas's play Change Agent as Jackie Kennedy.

 
 

The Whole Entire Life of Iphigenia

by Frank Winters

The night before her death, Iphigenia reckons with what remains of the rest of her life. 

Frank Winters (he/them) is a writer, director, and actor based out of New York. He is the co-artistic director of Catastrophe Playlist, LLC and was a founding member of The Strangemen Theatre Company. His plays have been workshopped and produced Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, at The Wild Project, The Flea, 59E59 Theaters, independently at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, and in colleges and high schools across the country. He was recipient of the Clifford Odets New Play Commission and Marquette University's first-ever new play commission; selections from his work have been featured in multiple editions of Lawrence Harbison’s The Best Women’s Stage Monologues. He has served as a guest educator or adjunct professor at New York University, Manhattanville College, Catawba College, and the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College. His work has been published by Broadway Play Publishing. He received a BFA in Acting from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at SUNY Purchase. 

In addition, the two commissioned world premieres will be:

 
The Western Canon

by Craig Lucas

The Western Canon means to gravely wound the patriarchy. Naturally, it fails. But these things take time. The defeat of fascism would help.

 
Craig Lucas wrote the plays Blue Window, Change Agent, The Dying Gaul, God’s Heart, I Was Most Alive With You, The Lying Lesson, Missing Persons, Reckless, Prayer for My Enemy, Ode to Joy, Prelude to a Kiss, The Singing Forest, Small Tragedy, Stranger; the books for the musicals Amélie, An American in Paris, The Light in the Piazza, Marry Me A Little, Three Postcards; the screenplays for Blue Window, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, The Dying Gaul, Secret Lives of Dentists; the opera libretti for Orpheus in Love and Two Boys; and the ballet libretto for Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella. He directed the world premieres of The Light in the Piazza, I Was Most Alive With You, Ode to Joy, Change Agent & This Thing of Darkness (co-authored with David Schulner) as well as Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed and Play Yourself, and the movies The Dying Gaul and Birds of America. He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Drama Desk, Obie, L.A. Drama Critics, Laura Pels/PEN Mid-career, LAMBDA Literary, Hull-Warriner, Sundance Audience, Flora Roberts, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley & the Steinberg/ACTA Best Play & the Hermitage Greenfield Prize among many other awards and honors.

  
The Coronation

by Heather Raffo

A woman confronts the legacy of empire, while under anesthesia.

 
Heather Raffo is the solo performer and writer of the Off-Broadway hit, 9 Parts of Desire which details the lives of nine Iraqi women. For her creation and performance of 9 Parts and its national and international tour, Heather garnered many awards including a Lucille Lortel Award, and the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn and Marian Seldes-Garson Kanin playwriting awards, as well as Helen Hayes, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League nominations, for outstanding performance. Heather first performed 9 Parts of Desire in August 2003 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. It later moved to the Bush Theatre in London’s Off-West End where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London in late 2003. Its Off Broadway premiere was at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, where the show ran for nine months and was a critics pick (of the New York Times, Time Out and Village Voice) for over twenty four weeks in a row. In 2009, Heather created a concert version of the play for The Kennedy Center with renowned Iraqi maqam musician, Amir ElSaffar. 9 Parts of Desire has been performed all over the U.S. and was one of the top five produced plays of the 2007-2008 American theater season. It has had international productions/translations in Brazil, Greece, Sweden, Turkey, Malta, France, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Scotland, England and Canada. Publications are by Northwestern University Press and Dramatists Play Service as well as a number of anthologies. Currently, Heather is developing a libretto for an opera commissioned by the Annenberg Foundation and City Opera Vancouver. The opera details the life of a US Marine who served in Fallujah in 2004 and relates the haunting experiences of identity and belonging for both veterans and their families as well as Iraqis.

 
The premieres will be directed by Nadia Guevara and Ibi Owolabi. Drama League Stage Directing Fellows Nadia Guevara and Ibi Owolabi’s participation in our annual Short New Play Festival is made possible by the Drama League Directors Project. Red Bull Theater is pleased to continue its ongoing partnership with the Drama League Directors Project.

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Nadia Guevara

(she/her) Directing credits include: Fefu and Her Friends (American University Guest Director), N (Keegan Theatre), Palabras de encanto: Tales of Borikén (The Academy for Classical Acting at Shakespeare Theatre and George Washington University), Little Women (Johns Hopkins University Barnstormers), Guadalupe in the Guest Room and Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairy Tale (NVA), El encuentro (Old Globe Arts Engagement). Readings: Madre de Dios (Round House Theatre National Capital New Play Fest), L’HÔTEL (Fulton Theatre Stories in Diversity Playwriting Fest), Azul (San Diego Repertory Theatre Latinx New Play Festival). Associate/Assistant Director: Show Way (Kennedy Center, dir. Schele Williams), Daphne’s Dive (Signature Theatre, dir. Paige Hernandez), Acoustic Rooster’s Barnyard Boogie: Starring Indigo Blume (Kennedy Center, dir. Lili-Anne Brown), Put Your House In Order (La Jolla Playhouse, dir. Lili-Anne Brown). Proud recipient of the 2022-2024 Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship.

 
Ibi Owolabi

(she/her) is an Atlanta-based director. Her work has been seen at 7 Stages, Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre, Theatre Emory, The Weird Sisters Theatre Project, and the DC Black Theatre Festival. Ibi graduated from Georgia Southern with a degree in theatre, and was awarded the SDC Fellowship her sophomore year. Post-graduation, she moved to Actor’s Express for a directing internship, and then went on to become the Kenny Leon Fellow at the Alliance Theatre. Ibi directed several Zoom productions, including Well-Intentioned White People, Good Bad People, White-Ish, Stew, and Faith. Ibi’s recent in-person productions include These Shining Lives at USC, The Bluest Eye at Synchronicity Theatre, and Intimate Apparel at Actor’s Express. She is also a producer for Weird Sisters Theatre Project, a mixed media production company by women, for everyone. 

 
ABOUT RED BULL THEATER’S SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL

Over the Short New Play Festival’s thirteen-year history, Red Bull Theater has cultivated over 4,000 new short plays of classic themes and heightened language, presenting nearly 100 of them in a one-night-only Festival performance with some of New York’s finest actors and directors. The commissioned playwrights have included Larissa FastHorse, Marcus Gardley, John Guare, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jeremy O. Harris, David Ives, Ellen McLaughlin, Dael Orlandersmith, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, Anne Washburn, Doug Wright, and winning entries by writers such as Anchuli Felicia King, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Lynn Rosen, and Jen Silverman. Stage Rights has published a 5-volume collection of the plays from the first 10 years of Red Bull Theater’s annual Short New Play Festival as Red Bull Shorts. 

 
 

ABOUT RED BULL THEATER

Red Bull Theater brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull Theater is New York City’s home for dynamic performances of great plays that stand the test of time. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. A home for artists, scholars, and students, Red Bull Theater delights and engages the intellect and imagination of audiences, and strives to make its work accessible, diverse, and welcoming to all. We value and practice inclusiveness, equity, and diversity in all of our activities, and are committed to antiracist action. Red Bull Theater believes in the power of great classic stories and plays of heightened language to deepen our understanding of the human condition, in the special ability of live theater to create unique, collective experiences, and in the timeless capacity of classical theater to illuminate the events of our times. Variety agreed, hailing Red Bull’s work as: “Proof that classical theater can still be surprising after hundreds of years.”

Since its debut in 2003 with a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles starring Daniel Breaker, Red Bull Theater has served adventurous theatergoers with Off-Broadway productions, Revelation Readings, and the annual Short New Play Festival. The company also offers outreach programs including Shakespeare in Schools bringing professional actors and teaching artists into public school classrooms; Bull Sessions, free post-play discussions with top scholars; and Classical Acting Intensives led by veteran theater professionals. During the pandemic, Red Bull created several new and ongoing programs to serve audiences and artists with our mission: RemarkaBULL Podversations, Online Readings, Seminars, and more.

Red Bull Theater has presented 23 Off-Broadway productions and over 200 Revelation Readings of rarely seen classics, serving a community of more than 5,000 artists and providing quality artistic programming to an audience of over 65,000. The company’s unique programming has received ongoing critical acclaim and has been recognized with Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Off-Broadway Alliance, and OBIE nominations and Awards.

For more information about the Short New Play Festival, or any of Red Bull Theater's programs, visit www.redbulltheater.com.