WGCU PBS & NPR for Southwest Florida
Urbanite Theatre's Modern Works Festival showcases three powerhouse female playwrights
By Tom Hall
September 10, 2025 at 3:28 PM EDT
The Urbanite Theatre Modern Works Festival begins Thursday with comedian Phoebe Potts’ tour de force, “Too Fat for China.”
Comedian Phoebe Potts wrote, directs and stars in this one-woman tour de force chronicling her efforts to adopt a baby. (400x315, AR: 1.2698412698412698)
Next week, the festival will present staged readings of new plays by three powerhouse female playwrights.
A panel of readers chose Stacey Isom Campbell, Jenny Stafford and Sarah Cho for this honor. Each playwright has been given a production team that will present her play in two staged readings. The playwrights will also receive guidance from Urbanite’s artistic team and a dramaturge, along with audience feedback.
Several plays from past festivals have gone on to receive world premieres.
This year’s festival also features a kick-off party on Thursday, Sept. 18, a discussion with the Executive Director of National New Play Network Nan Barnett and an audience roundtable.
Several plays from past festivals have gone on to receive world premieres. (1174x807, AR: 1.4547707558859975)
MORE INFORMATION:
Playwright Stacey Isom Campbell
Stacey Isom Campbell is an award-winning Alaska-raised, Southern-rooted playwright. (399x334, AR: 1.1946107784431137)
Stacey Isom Campbell’s play is titled “1999.” It revolves around a college student who protests the inclusion of a film by a disgraced #MeToo-era director in her syllabus, forcing an acclaimed producer and professor named Emma to confront a pivotal moment from her own past. Set against the backdrop of academia and the lasting echoes of the 1990s film industry, this compelling new play weaves together the stories of three women whose lives intersect in the aftermath of trauma. With sharp insight, it interrogates the moral complexities of consuming and teaching controversial art, raising urgent questions about culpability, memory, and power dynamics. Staged readings and talkbacks will take place Friday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 20 at 5 p.m.
Scene from 2024 Urbanite Theatre Modern Works Festival (968x545, AR: 1.7761467889908258)
“1999” was a 2025 O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist, 2025 Carolina Playwrights Lab selection, Florida Rep’s Festival of New Works PlayLab selection, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference semifinalist and Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab selection.
Campbell is an Alaska-raised, Southern-rooted playwright. Her other plays include: “The Loophole” (2019 Barter Theatre LORT-production and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, Great Plains Theatre Conference selection, O’Neill semifinalist); “The Controller” (2024 Henley Rose Playwright Competition finalist, Seven Devils Playwriting Conference finalist); “Buffalo Creek” (Rose Henley Playwriting Competition finalist, The New Harmony Project finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist); “When Mountains Move” (Commission and Production, Lee University); “Memory of Ice” (Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist, Seven Devils Theatre Conference semifinalist, O’Neill semifinalist); “On the 8’s” (Dan I Rodden Jr. award winner, Rose Henley Playwriting Competition finalist, Great Plains Theatre Conference selection); and “Smokin’ Devils” (Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Festival of Plays & Playwrights selection, Plays for the 21st Century 2nd place, Red Clay Theatre Production).
Her short plays include: “Cicadas” (ATHE’s New Play Development Workshop selection) and “Laundry at the Coin & Spin” (The Collective: NY equity-showcase approved production and publication).
Each playwright is assigned a production team that includes the actors who will perform two staged readings of the playwright's new work. (640x480, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
Her work has also been seen at the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, L.A. First Stage, EstroGenius Xtended, and others.
Campbell is a Fellow of Hambidge Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and Trillium Arts.
Playwright Jenny Stafford
Jenny Stafford is an award-winning book writer, lyricist and playwright whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally. (403x334, AR: 1.2065868263473054)
Jenny Stafford submitted “Ahoy-Hoy” for this year’s Modern Works Festival. Stafford’s tagline for her submission is “A Play About That Relatable Feeling When Someone Else Invents the Telephone Three Hours Before You Do.” It’s 1876 and also, right now. Elisha Gray is this close to inventing the telephone. He’s brilliant, anxious, and ready to make history… if Alexander Graham Bell doesn’t beat him to it. Spoiler: He kind of does. Two oversized egos. One telephone. A battle of beards and bell tones. “Ahoy-Hoy” is a deliriously unhinged, unapologetic sprint through American ambition, innovation, and the absurd quest for legacy. History has never been this ridiculous or this fun. Stage readings are Friday, Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Stafford is an award-winning book writer, lyricist, and playwright whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Her work has been featured at the Lincoln Center Songbook Series (“The Lyrics of Jennifer Stafford”), Prospect Theatre Company, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre Songwriter Salon, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, 54 Below, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, and numerous other NYC venues, including multiple inclusions in William Finn’s “Ridiculously Talented” concert series.
Stafford is a prolific teaching artist, teaching with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the New York City Children's Theatre, Trinity Music NYC and Colorado Christian University. (1000x667, AR: 1.4992503748125936)
Among Stafford’s awards and accolades include winning the Capital Repertory Theatre’s New Works Festival, ASCAP Plus Awards (2020, 2021), Best Solo Show (“Color Inside the Lines”), the 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award and the Paulette Goddard Award, two-time finalist for the Kleban Prize, finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference, and the Ronald M. Ruble New Play Competition. She also took second place in the McLean Drama Company Playwriting Competition.
Stafford has been an artist in residence at the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Village Theatre, the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed, the Catwalk Institute, Hypatia in the Woods, Barn Arts, Goodspeed Musicals, CAP 21, the Ross Ragland Theatre and the Berkshire Playwrights Theatre. She is a Dramatists Guild member who holds an MFA, in the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Playwright Jenny Stafford (750x750, AR: 1.0)
She is also a prolific teaching artist, teaching with the Metropolitan Opera Guild (where she was awarded the title of "Master Teaching Artist"), the New York City Children's Theatre, Trinity Music NYC, and Colorado Christian University. She has been a guest lecturer/artist at New York University, Baruch College, Indiana University, Santa Clara University, SUNY New Paltz, and Fordham University. She also spent two summers teaching theatre and songwriting at Shanti Bhavan in Bangalore, India, with Artists Striving to End Poverty.
Playwright Sarah Cho
In comedy, Cho has performed at Green Gravel Comedy Festival, Laugh Riot Grrrl Festival, and written sketch comedy for LA Scripted Comedy Festival and house teams at the Pack Theater. (403x334, AR: 1.2065868263473054)
Sarah Cho’s submission is “Screen Time.” It is centered on Ben and Julia, who are overjoyed to be expecting their first child. But are they actually ready for the realities of parenting? Luckily, there’s an app for that. As they navigate the chaos of modern life, the couple turns to the ultimate parenting tool to guide them through sleepless nights and existential panic. But with every push notification, the line between helpful and horrifying starts to blur. “Screen Time” is a sharp, unsettling comedy about raising children in a world ruled by screens and the creeping anxiety that maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it all wrong. Stage readings are Saturday, Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 21 at 2 p.m.
Cho currently teaches theater at South Mountain Community College and Ventura Community College.
Of benefit to the playwrights are the talkbacks with the audience following each staged reading. (408x545, AR: 0.7486238532110092)
In theater, Cho's work has been developed/presented by Moving Arts Theatre, IAMA Theatre Company, The Vagrancy, Jungle Theater, South Mountain Community College, Ashland New Play Festival, Great Plains Theatre Conference, and Iowa New Play Festival.
Most recently, her play “Stains” was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Jane Chambers Award. She is a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship, the Richard Maibaum Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center’s Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, and was named Associate Artist for the Ashland New Plays Festival. She also co-hosts the “very interesting” playwriting podcast “Beckett’s Babies” with fellow playwright Sam Collier. [For more, visit www.beckettsbabies.com.]
In comedy, Cho has performed at Green Gravel Comedy Festival, Laugh Riot Grrrl Festival, and written sketch comedy for LA Scripted Comedy Festival and house teams at the Pack Theater. Her work has been featured on ComedyCake, WhoHaHa, and Funny or Die. She currently writes and co-produces the late-night-style podcast The Dump. You can sometimes catch her doing stand-up at open mics in the most random places, but she will never be caught dead shopping in an Erewhon.
Photo of staged reading from 2024 Modern Works Festival. (726x545, AR: 1.3321100917431192)
Cho grew up in Los Angeles and lived by the beaches of Santa Barbara. She earned her BA in Film and Theater at UC Santa Barbara, where she excelled in eating tons of burritos, and holds her MFA from Iowa Playwrights Workshop, where she excelled in drinking pie shakes. She currently resides in Ventura with her professional writer husband, Nik Frank-Lehrer, and her very unprofessional cat, Butters Cho. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Modern Works Guest Speaker Nan Barnett
Modern Works Festival guest speaker Nan Barnett is a new play developer and producer and an advocate for theater-makers and the theater they make. (425x558, AR: 0.7616487455197133)
Nan Barnett is this year’s Modern Works Festival’s featured guest speaker. The Executive Director of the National New Play Network (NNPN), Barnett is a new play developer and producer and an advocate for theater-makers and the theater they make.
While on NNPN’s executive committee, she worked to create the organization’s revolutionary Rolling World Premiere and residency programs and, after joining NNPN full time in 2013, guided it through the development and launch of its field-altering New Play Exchange. The planning process resulted in the organization’s much-lauded new governance and membership structure designed to lead the field towards a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive new play ecosystem.
NNPN is an alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the lives of new plays. Founded in 1998, NNPN continues to revolutionize the new play landscape through the strength of its member theaters, collaborative efforts, and its nationally recognized programs and services for artists and organizations.
Barnett speaks at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19.
The festival concludes with the audience roundtable at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 21.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
Comedian Phoebe Potts wrote, directs and stars in this one-woman tour de force chronicling her efforts to adopt a baby. (400x315, AR: 1.2698412698412698)
Next week, the festival will present staged readings of new plays by three powerhouse female playwrights.
A panel of readers chose Stacey Isom Campbell, Jenny Stafford and Sarah Cho for this honor. Each playwright has been given a production team that will present her play in two staged readings. The playwrights will also receive guidance from Urbanite’s artistic team and a dramaturge, along with audience feedback.
Several plays from past festivals have gone on to receive world premieres.
This year’s festival also features a kick-off party on Thursday, Sept. 18, a discussion with the Executive Director of National New Play Network Nan Barnett and an audience roundtable.
Several plays from past festivals have gone on to receive world premieres. (1174x807, AR: 1.4547707558859975)
MORE INFORMATION:
Playwright Stacey Isom Campbell
Stacey Isom Campbell is an award-winning Alaska-raised, Southern-rooted playwright. (399x334, AR: 1.1946107784431137)
Stacey Isom Campbell’s play is titled “1999.” It revolves around a college student who protests the inclusion of a film by a disgraced #MeToo-era director in her syllabus, forcing an acclaimed producer and professor named Emma to confront a pivotal moment from her own past. Set against the backdrop of academia and the lasting echoes of the 1990s film industry, this compelling new play weaves together the stories of three women whose lives intersect in the aftermath of trauma. With sharp insight, it interrogates the moral complexities of consuming and teaching controversial art, raising urgent questions about culpability, memory, and power dynamics. Staged readings and talkbacks will take place Friday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 20 at 5 p.m.
Scene from 2024 Urbanite Theatre Modern Works Festival (968x545, AR: 1.7761467889908258)
“1999” was a 2025 O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist, 2025 Carolina Playwrights Lab selection, Florida Rep’s Festival of New Works PlayLab selection, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference semifinalist and Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab selection.
Campbell is an Alaska-raised, Southern-rooted playwright. Her other plays include: “The Loophole” (2019 Barter Theatre LORT-production and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, Great Plains Theatre Conference selection, O’Neill semifinalist); “The Controller” (2024 Henley Rose Playwright Competition finalist, Seven Devils Playwriting Conference finalist); “Buffalo Creek” (Rose Henley Playwriting Competition finalist, The New Harmony Project finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist); “When Mountains Move” (Commission and Production, Lee University); “Memory of Ice” (Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist, Seven Devils Theatre Conference semifinalist, O’Neill semifinalist); “On the 8’s” (Dan I Rodden Jr. award winner, Rose Henley Playwriting Competition finalist, Great Plains Theatre Conference selection); and “Smokin’ Devils” (Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Festival of Plays & Playwrights selection, Plays for the 21st Century 2nd place, Red Clay Theatre Production).
Her short plays include: “Cicadas” (ATHE’s New Play Development Workshop selection) and “Laundry at the Coin & Spin” (The Collective: NY equity-showcase approved production and publication).
Each playwright is assigned a production team that includes the actors who will perform two staged readings of the playwright's new work. (640x480, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
Her work has also been seen at the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, L.A. First Stage, EstroGenius Xtended, and others.
Campbell is a Fellow of Hambidge Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and Trillium Arts.
Playwright Jenny Stafford
Jenny Stafford is an award-winning book writer, lyricist and playwright whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally. (403x334, AR: 1.2065868263473054)
Jenny Stafford submitted “Ahoy-Hoy” for this year’s Modern Works Festival. Stafford’s tagline for her submission is “A Play About That Relatable Feeling When Someone Else Invents the Telephone Three Hours Before You Do.” It’s 1876 and also, right now. Elisha Gray is this close to inventing the telephone. He’s brilliant, anxious, and ready to make history… if Alexander Graham Bell doesn’t beat him to it. Spoiler: He kind of does. Two oversized egos. One telephone. A battle of beards and bell tones. “Ahoy-Hoy” is a deliriously unhinged, unapologetic sprint through American ambition, innovation, and the absurd quest for legacy. History has never been this ridiculous or this fun. Stage readings are Friday, Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Stafford is an award-winning book writer, lyricist, and playwright whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Her work has been featured at the Lincoln Center Songbook Series (“The Lyrics of Jennifer Stafford”), Prospect Theatre Company, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre Songwriter Salon, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, 54 Below, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, and numerous other NYC venues, including multiple inclusions in William Finn’s “Ridiculously Talented” concert series.
Stafford is a prolific teaching artist, teaching with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the New York City Children's Theatre, Trinity Music NYC and Colorado Christian University. (1000x667, AR: 1.4992503748125936)
Among Stafford’s awards and accolades include winning the Capital Repertory Theatre’s New Works Festival, ASCAP Plus Awards (2020, 2021), Best Solo Show (“Color Inside the Lines”), the 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award and the Paulette Goddard Award, two-time finalist for the Kleban Prize, finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference, and the Ronald M. Ruble New Play Competition. She also took second place in the McLean Drama Company Playwriting Competition.
Stafford has been an artist in residence at the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Village Theatre, the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed, the Catwalk Institute, Hypatia in the Woods, Barn Arts, Goodspeed Musicals, CAP 21, the Ross Ragland Theatre and the Berkshire Playwrights Theatre. She is a Dramatists Guild member who holds an MFA, in the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Playwright Jenny Stafford (750x750, AR: 1.0)
She is also a prolific teaching artist, teaching with the Metropolitan Opera Guild (where she was awarded the title of "Master Teaching Artist"), the New York City Children's Theatre, Trinity Music NYC, and Colorado Christian University. She has been a guest lecturer/artist at New York University, Baruch College, Indiana University, Santa Clara University, SUNY New Paltz, and Fordham University. She also spent two summers teaching theatre and songwriting at Shanti Bhavan in Bangalore, India, with Artists Striving to End Poverty.
Playwright Sarah Cho
In comedy, Cho has performed at Green Gravel Comedy Festival, Laugh Riot Grrrl Festival, and written sketch comedy for LA Scripted Comedy Festival and house teams at the Pack Theater. (403x334, AR: 1.2065868263473054)
Sarah Cho’s submission is “Screen Time.” It is centered on Ben and Julia, who are overjoyed to be expecting their first child. But are they actually ready for the realities of parenting? Luckily, there’s an app for that. As they navigate the chaos of modern life, the couple turns to the ultimate parenting tool to guide them through sleepless nights and existential panic. But with every push notification, the line between helpful and horrifying starts to blur. “Screen Time” is a sharp, unsettling comedy about raising children in a world ruled by screens and the creeping anxiety that maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it all wrong. Stage readings are Saturday, Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 21 at 2 p.m.
Cho currently teaches theater at South Mountain Community College and Ventura Community College.
Of benefit to the playwrights are the talkbacks with the audience following each staged reading. (408x545, AR: 0.7486238532110092)
In theater, Cho's work has been developed/presented by Moving Arts Theatre, IAMA Theatre Company, The Vagrancy, Jungle Theater, South Mountain Community College, Ashland New Play Festival, Great Plains Theatre Conference, and Iowa New Play Festival.
Most recently, her play “Stains” was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Jane Chambers Award. She is a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship, the Richard Maibaum Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center’s Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, and was named Associate Artist for the Ashland New Plays Festival. She also co-hosts the “very interesting” playwriting podcast “Beckett’s Babies” with fellow playwright Sam Collier. [For more, visit www.beckettsbabies.com.]
In comedy, Cho has performed at Green Gravel Comedy Festival, Laugh Riot Grrrl Festival, and written sketch comedy for LA Scripted Comedy Festival and house teams at the Pack Theater. Her work has been featured on ComedyCake, WhoHaHa, and Funny or Die. She currently writes and co-produces the late-night-style podcast The Dump. You can sometimes catch her doing stand-up at open mics in the most random places, but she will never be caught dead shopping in an Erewhon.
Photo of staged reading from 2024 Modern Works Festival. (726x545, AR: 1.3321100917431192)
Cho grew up in Los Angeles and lived by the beaches of Santa Barbara. She earned her BA in Film and Theater at UC Santa Barbara, where she excelled in eating tons of burritos, and holds her MFA from Iowa Playwrights Workshop, where she excelled in drinking pie shakes. She currently resides in Ventura with her professional writer husband, Nik Frank-Lehrer, and her very unprofessional cat, Butters Cho. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Modern Works Guest Speaker Nan Barnett
Modern Works Festival guest speaker Nan Barnett is a new play developer and producer and an advocate for theater-makers and the theater they make. (425x558, AR: 0.7616487455197133)
Nan Barnett is this year’s Modern Works Festival’s featured guest speaker. The Executive Director of the National New Play Network (NNPN), Barnett is a new play developer and producer and an advocate for theater-makers and the theater they make.
While on NNPN’s executive committee, she worked to create the organization’s revolutionary Rolling World Premiere and residency programs and, after joining NNPN full time in 2013, guided it through the development and launch of its field-altering New Play Exchange. The planning process resulted in the organization’s much-lauded new governance and membership structure designed to lead the field towards a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive new play ecosystem.
NNPN is an alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the lives of new plays. Founded in 1998, NNPN continues to revolutionize the new play landscape through the strength of its member theaters, collaborative efforts, and its nationally recognized programs and services for artists and organizations.
Barnett speaks at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19.
The festival concludes with the audience roundtable at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 21.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.