Urbanite Theatre’s Modern Works Festival takes place in Sarasota September 4 to 8 and according to Producing Artistic Director Summer Wallace, the event is a celebration of female playwrights and theater-makers, who are still vastly under-represented in the theater industry.
“We use the festival to kind of showcase female work, as a whole,” Wallace said. “So it’s all female playwrights, female screeners who are reading the plays …. There’s a female director, female stage manager. It’s not necessarily all female actors because the playwrights write about a whole lot of diverse subject matters.”
This year, Urbanite received over 300 submissions for the festival. The three finalists will be performed as staged readings on three separate days, with a talk-back following each performance.
“If you’ve never been to a staged reading before, it is highly acted,” Wallace observed. “It is an opportunity to really hear the play in a different way and experience the play in a different way.”
Since the playwrights are still perfecting the plays, patrons have the unparalleled opportunity to influence the final product by their reactions during the readings and their dialogue during the talk-backs.
“The playwright being in the room and just hearing somebody laugh at a particular joke or gasp or something resonating with them, that might affect kind of how the script changes in the future ‘cause these plays are hot off the presses, so they haven’t had a full production yet, not even a workshop yet,” Wallace commented.
In addition to the staged readings, Urbanite hosts other panel discussions and events. There’s also a keynote speaker.
“This year, we’ve got Lauren Gunderson,” said Wallace. “She’s been the most produced playwright in the country since 2015. I’m really excited to …. One, I’m a big fan of her work. But I’m really excited to kind of learn about her journey and what that’s been like for her.”
The festival affords more than a novel date-night or girl’s-night-out destination. Patrons might even make some new, like-minded friends.
“You, as an audience member, you’re kind of going through this experience together,” said Wallace. “So the festival really lends itself for you to meet your fellow art lovers around you. My favorite part of the festival is all the side conversations.”
The festival will culminate in an audience roundtable discussion, and festival passholders will have the opportunity to cast a vote for their favorite of the three works, awarding the winner a prize of $3,200.
THE BACKGROUND:
Finalist Lia Romeo’s entry is titled “A Nice Motherly Person.” In this piece, Romeo spins a darkly comedic tale in which the absurdity of new motherhood meets the relentless pressure to be perfect. Wendy’s world is a whirlwind of breastfeeding, sleepless nights, and impossible standards, all while she’s haunted by her own ticking Crocodile. Romeo's script is a laugh-out-loud yet painfully relatable journey that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever felt overwhelmed by the societal roles they are demanded to play.
Lia Romeo is a recent graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program. Her plays have been developed at the O’Neill, La Jolla Playhouse, the Lark, and elsewhere, and have been produced at companies such as Colt Coeur, Dorset Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Unicorn Theatre, Project Y Theatre, and New Jersey Repertory Theatre. Four of her plays have been recognized by the Kilroys List. Her plays are published by TRW, Broadway Licensing, and Broadway Play Publishing. She is the associate artistic director of Project Y Theatre Company and the co-founder of the Parent-Caregiver Playwrights Group, and she teaches in the M.A. program in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Finalist Baylee Shlichtman’s work is titled “In the Mouth of the Beast.” In it, a father-daughter caving team enters the treacherous Maw, a cave of unknown origin where the laws of physics and reality bend. Their goal is to retrieve an object theorized to possess properties that could be a game changer in clean energy research and the fight against climate change. But the Maw has an agenda of its own, one that will put their relationship to the test.
Baylee Shlichtman writes weird and magical plays about navigating relationships and autonomy. She is on the board of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance, the facilitator for the Wayward Artist's EMBARK New Play Cohort, and a part of the Flamboyan Emerging Writers Project. She has had her work read or developed with AlterTheatre Ensemble, Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble, Curtis Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre/ LA, The Larking House, Long Beach Shakespeare Company, OC-Centric New Play Festival, Playground-LA, South Texas College Latinx New Play Festival, The Vagrancy Theatre, The Wayward Artist, and The Workshop Theatre among others. She graduated from USC with a B.A. in Journalism.
Finalist Sarah Elizabeth Grace’s submission is “I’m Saving You a Seat.” The story revolves around Sam who, years into her sobriety, moves to a small Hudson Valley town to restart her life and randomly reconnects with Mark, her ex-stepfather whom she hasn’t seen since she was a child. Mark is dating Jamie, a newly sober much younger woman who asks Sam to be her A.A. sponsor. As everyone grows closer, complications arise at the intersection of “found family” and discovering personal authenticity.
Sarah Elizabeth Grace is a New York City-based performer, producer and writer whose work focuses on gender dynamics and imperfect people. Recently her play “Dead Girls Club” was a finalist at the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival. Produced off-off-Broadway plays include “Crush,” “More,” “Implicit Consent,” “The Regime Is Female,” “And Mental Nudity.” Short Films: “Period Piece” (Sick N’ Wrong film festival, Bridgeport Film Festival), “The Process.” Publications: “I Won’t Be That Person” (Chaotic Merge Magazine). Fictional Podcasts: “Nora’s Dragon” (all podcast platforms). Grace publishes short literary pieces via her Substack “Grace and Storms.” BFA: NYU. Upcoming: a new adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” at Brooklyn Music School.
This year’s keynote speaker, Lauren Gunderson, is one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping that list thrice including 2022/23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for “I and You” and “The Book of Will,” and the winner of the William Inge Distinguished Achievement in Theatre Award, the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award. She was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Weisberger Award, and John Gassner Award for Playwriting and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company.
Gunderson studied Southern literature and drama at Emory University, and dramatic writing at NYU’s Tisch School, where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.
Gunderson’s play “The Catastrophist,” about her husband virologist, Nathan Wolfe, premiered digitally in January 2021. She co-authored the “Miss Bennet” plays with Margot Melcon, and “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” premiered off-Broadway and is now at Audible.com. Her work is published at Bloomsbury (“Revolutionary Women: A Lauren Gunderson Anthology," "Anthropology," "I and You”), Playscripts (“I and You;” “Exit Pursued By A Bear;” “The Taming” and “Toil And Trouble”), Dramatists Play Service (“The Revolutionists;” “The Book of Will;” “Silent Sky;” “Bauer,” “Natural Shocks,” “The Wickhams” and “Miss Bennet”) and Samuel French (“Emilie”).
Her picture book, “Dr. Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon,” is available from Two Lions/Amazon. She is the book writer for musicals with Ari Afsar (“Jeannette”), Dave Stewart and Joss Stone (“The Time Traveler’s Wife”), Joriah Kwamé (“Sinister”), Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk (“Justice and Earthrise”), and Kira Stone (“Built for This”). She is a board member of The Playwrights Foundation. For more information, see LaurenGunderson.com.
Urbanite Theatre is located on 2nd Street in Sarasota’s quaint Rosemary District.
When you go, use the second and third levels of the Whole Foods lot located directly across the street from Urbanite Theatre, where parking is free and open to the public. Other parking in the immediate area does not belong to the theater.
All performances at Urbanite Theatre are open seating and there are no assigned seats. The house will open 30 minutes prior to curtain.
Evening performances begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. with matinees starting promptly at 2 p.m. Due to the intimate size of the theater, Urbanite does not offer late seating to performances under any circumstances as that would disturb audience members and interrupt the performance.
For more information, visit www.urbanitetheatre.com.
To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida, visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.