FLINT, Mich.–Flint Rep’s New Works Festival is a three-day event presenting staged readings and workshops of new plays and musicals. Audience members will get a chance to see this new work before anyone else and participate in post-show discussions with the playwrights and composers.

FREE ADMISSION
CALL 810-237-1530 to reserve your seats
Recommended for teens and adults

Friday, January 18
7:00pm
The Wayward Bunny
By Greg Kotis
A mystery writer lives through a night of terror after returning to his boyhood home.

GREG KOTIS is the Tony Award-winning author of many plays and musicals including Urinetown (Book/Lyrics), The Truth About Santa, The Sting (Lyrics), Lunchtime, Give the People What They Want, Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards, Yeast Nation (Book/Lyrics), Pig Farm, Eat the Taste, and Jobey and Katherine. Future projects include ZM, an original musical about teenaged fast-food workers trying to survive a zombie plague. Greg co-founded Theater of The Apes with his wife Ayun Halliday, and is a member of the Neo-Futurists, the Cardiff Giant Theater Company, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild. He grew up in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and now lives in New York City.

Opening reception to follow

Saturday, January 19
2:00pm
It’s A Small World (or The Robot Play)
By Amber Palmer
Anne, a recovering drug addict, is back in contact with her childhood best friend after he abandons his robot son/coffeemaker at Disney World and asks her to send it back to him. Instead, this contact leads to a long road trip from Orlando, Florida to Canandaigua, New York, where the duo meet other people and small kitchen appliances who are just as lost as they are. Through their journey, they are reminded of what it means to be human and, as E. E. Cummings put it, that ‘love is the every only god.’

AMBER PALMER is a playwright currently based out of Kalamazoo Michigan. Her work has been read at Activate Midwest: New Play Festival (“It’s a Small World” 2018) and will be read at Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival February 2019 (“Baby Dyke Whisperer”). Her play “The Speedy Gonzales Memorial Turtle Sanctuary” was presented at Region 3 of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, where it placed as a regional finalist. She will graduate with her M.F.A. in Playwriting from Western Michigan University in Spring 2020.

Saturday, January 19
5:00pm
Tower: The Album
By Abbie Spallen
Two couples, one song. Four people connected by a piece of music. Set in the height of the Celtic tiger in Ireland, Dublin has been fast-forwarded into a city of the cool people. With the youngest population in Europe and money in the banks, the place is mad with confidence and the hubris that follows. Just like one song doesn’t make an album, every boom must be followed by a bust.

ABBIE SPALLEN: Awards as writer include the Stewart Parker major award, The Tony Doyle award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Clare McIntyre Bursary from The Royal Court, the Peggy Ramsay Award, the Dublin City Council Bursary for Literature, the HALMA Foundation award for excellence in the European arts and The Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Plays include ABEYANCE (Druid Debut, Druid Theatre Co), PUMPGIRL (Bush, London/Traverse Edinburgh/Manhattan Theatre Club), STRANDLINE (Fishamble, Dublin/A Red Orchid, Chicago) BOGWOG (NPC) O’Neill Centre Connecticut, LALLY THE SCUT (Tinderbox, Belfast) and POENA 5X1 (Underbelly, Edinburgh Festival) Short plays include THIRTEEN (Women in Power and Politics, Tricycle Theatre), SHAVING THE PICKLE (59E59 NYC) and RUBBERFOOT (Pentabus) Abbie’s work is published by Faber and Faber and has been translated into many languages and produced across Europe and the USA. She has completed one attachment to the Royal National Theatre and two to The Royal Court and in 2014 was writer in residence in the Lyric Theatre Belfast. Work for radio includes RAPTURE FREQUENCY (The Wire R3) LIVE FROM THE PALACE (R4) and SNAKE OIL (R4). Film and Television include PUMPGIRL (PG Films/NI Screen) and SEACHT (Stirling Productions). She is currently under commission to The Lyric Belfast, The Abbey Dublin, The Traverse and Working Title Television, and in 2016 was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize for literature from Yale.

Sunday, January 20
2:00pm
Panel Discussion
Writers Greg Kotis, Gordon Leary, Julia Meinwald, Amber Palmer & Abbie Spallen discuss the craft of playwriting in a conversation with Producing Artistic Director Michael Lluberes.

Sunday, January 20
7:00pm
The Magnificent Seven
Book and Lyrics by Gordon Leary
Music by Julia Meinwald
Closing Reception to follow
Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Jaycie Phelps, and Kerri Strug made up the first U.S. women’s gymnastics team to win Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta games. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN imagines their inner lives on the two days of team competition, as they reach for their young dreams and their faces on the Wheaties box, all leading up to a star-making (and ankle breaking) vault heard ’round the world.

JULIA MEINWALD & GORDON LEARY write aggressively empathetic musical theatre. Their work includes THE LONELIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD (2018 Diversionary Theatre premiere, 2016 NAMT Festival, 2015 Polyphone Festival, 2014 Ars Nova OutLoud Series), PREGNANCY PACT (2012 Weston Playhouse premiere, 2011 NAMT Festival, 2011 Yale Institute, 2011 Weston Playhouse New Musical Award), REB+VoDKa+ME (2017 NYU Tisch New Musical Theatre Workshop, 2017 Yale Institute, 2016 Civilians’ FINDINGS Series), SOMETHING BLUE (2019 Chicago Musical Theatre Festival), DISAPPEARED (2009 Lincoln Center Directors Lab), and the short film GALAXY COMICS (2014 United Airlines in-flight programming.) They have developed work with the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Ars Nova’s Uncharted, The Civilians’ R&D Group, Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup, the Musical Theatre Factory, the 92Y Musical Theatre Development Lab, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Page 73’s Interstate 73. Julia was a participant in the New Dramatists Composer Librettist Development Program, a resident with American Lyric Theatre, and received the 2018 Discovery Grant from OPERA America. Her other musicals include ELEVATOR HEART (2019 THML Theatre Co, 2016 Tisch New Musical Theatre Workshop) and JACK PERRY IS ALIVE AND DATING (2011 NYMF Next Link selection.) Gordon’s other musicals include ACROSS THE RIVER (2013 Seoul Musical Festival, 2009 Daegu International Musical Festival) and CHEER WARS (2015 York Theatre, 2009 Richard Rodgers Award.) Both are 2007 alumni of the NYU/Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. gordonandjulia.com

CLOSING RECEPTION TO FOLLOW

Elgood Theatre

Recommended for teens and adults
New Works Festival is sponsored by

Mr. and Mrs. David E. Wood
Ginanne Brownell
Dr. Daniel and Donna Anbe
The Whiting Foundation