 |
 |
GARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY THEATER NEW PLAYS FESTIVAL 2003 was the inaugural year for the New Plays Festival, which will be staged each spring on the Gardner-Webb campus. Plays for this festival are chosen by a reading committee that considers plays from emerging playwrights around the nation. Indeed, the express purpose of the festival is to encourage developing dramatists by staging their short plays and providing feedback during and after the production process. This five-day festival also encourages our theater students at Gardner-Webb, since it is an exciting venture to stage a previously untested work. It also generates much excitement among our audiences, who have come to enjoy the freshness and excitement of new works. Gardner-Webb University Theater also sponsors two additional programs encouraging new plays: 24 HOURS and the Playwrights' Workshop. The first of these two programs challenges our own students to write, rehearse, stage, build, and perform six new ten-minute plays in a single twenty-four-hour period. It is an exciting program that has generated some very interesting scripts. While each fall, our Playwrights' Workshop stages a new full-length play with the playwright present on campus to assist with rewrites and development. A play entitled Dogfall (a play exploring the ethical questions surrounding doctor-assisted suicide and the right to die movement), written by our Director, Scot Lahaie, was the 2003 selection for this workshop. Established playwrights interested in developing their work in a workshop format should make contact with us to discuss their projects. |
