What to Know About Denver's New Play Summit This Weekend

Encouraging new plays has always been central to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and since 2005, it has given playwrights a platform to fully develop their work through the annual Colorado New Play Summit.

When the summit started, the goal was to uplift new voices and become a top organization in new play development. Grady Soapes, producer and director of casting for the summit, believes the program has reached that level. “It’s really become a destination,” he says.

Playwrights "workshop their pieces with actors, directors and dramaturges in a low-stakes environment mainly focusing on development of the play itself,” says Soapes. “From there, they get to hear their words out loud…to determine what resonates, what changes can be made and what direction they would like to move forward with.”

That all happens on Saturday, February 25, and Sunday, February 26, in a two-day event (down from the usual two-weekend event) that will draw hundreds of local artists, community members and industry professionals from across the country. Soapes estimates that the crowd is generally a fifty-fifty split between local and national attendees

At the summit's heart are the four new play readings. The DCPA’s literary department works with its artistic team to decide which plays will be showcased, and they’re always excited to find stories with a local lens.

Jake Brasch’s play, the reservoir one of this year's feature readings — has that local lens. Brasch, who grew up in Denver, writes about a character who is also from the Mile High City and returns home to get his life together while building new connections with his grandparents.

Joan Dark, by playwright Christina Pumariega, is about a Latina who longs to become a Catholic priest and makes waves in a small Connecticut community when she’s allowed to serve as a deacon. Soapes discovered this play himself through a reading over Zoom, and pitched it to the rest of the team.

Vincent Terrell Durham’s Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids is set at a cocktail party, where intellectual conversations about race become personal after the arrival of a guest whose twelve-year-old Black son has been killed by the police.

And finally, The Suffragette’s Murder, by Sandy Rustin, has all the hijinks of a period murder mystery with an ensemble cast, but also explores the women’s suffrage movement in 1857 and what it meant for women then — and now.

According to Soapes, while these readings don't have the costumes or props that full productions do, that doesn't diminish the experience of the plays. “In some ways, it’s the most exciting part of the process,” he explains. There’s an energy in the room when the magic — and the plot twists — come through the words alone.

“When you hear a reading at the summit, you are creating the stage, the lighting, the costume design — everything that would be seen in a full production — in your imagination,” says Soapes. “There is beauty in hearing it read to you raw, and then, in future seasons, [watching] it come to life to [see] if it became what you imagined.”

And sometimes, being there at the start of a play's journey fosters a sense of ownership. When Matthew Lopez's play The Legend of Georgia McBride premiered at the DCPA in 2014, a local couple became so invested in tracking its development into a full production that they followed it across the country to watch other cities' productions.

Not every new work's trajectory ends at the stage, however. For example, 2022 Academy Award nominee The Whale started out as a play by Samuel D. Hunter that premiered at the 2012 New Play Summit.

But what makes it all possible, says Soapes, is a local audience that's excited about new work, whether at the DCPA or other local organizations that incubate new play development, such as Curious Theatre, the Catamounts, the Arvada Center for the Performing Arts and Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado.

“Denverites have a deep love and appreciation for arts and culture,” says Soapes, “and having their input in the development of the work will help breathe new life into the future of the play.”

General admission packages for the New Play Summit are sold out, but $10 à la carte tickets to some of the readings are still available.

Other Summit events this weekend include full productions of current DCPA Theatre Company plays Hotter Than Egypt, which was named an audience favorite at the 2020 Summit, and Laughs in Spanish, as well as the free events, Playwrights’ Slam and the High School Playwriting Competition Readings.

The New Play Summit is at the Denver Performing Arts Complex on Saturday, February 25, and Sunday, February 26. Find tickets for the New Play Summit and more information here.