OMAHA, NEBRASKA – Great Plains Theatre Commons (GPTC) has selected twelve playwrights to participate in the eighteenth annual conference’s 2023 PlayLab program. Hosted by Metropolitan Community College, this year’s convening will take place Sunday, May 28 – Saturday, June 3, 2023. The selected playwrights were chosen from a pool of more than 600 anonymous submissions. Each of the playwrights will work on their projects with a creative team and cast composed of local and national talent. The labs will culminate in a free staged reading, after which the playwrights will receive feedback from other top national playwrights, dramaturgs, designers, and public audiences. All public events at the conference are free and open to the public. This year’s selected playwrights and projects include:
 
Nanya Agrawal, Dharma
Oded Gross, Annelies
Surrey Houlker, for the fish
Miles Orduña, Lola
Dave Osmundsen, More of a Heart
Anya Pearson, Without a Formal Declaration of War
Erika Phoebus, witch play
Andrew Rincón, El Mito or The Myth of My Pain
Paul Michael Thomsen, What a Time to Be Alive (You Say That Every Time)
Mallory Jane Weiss, Big Black Sunhats
Pravin Wilkins, Organized Chaos
Bailey Williams, In the Basement
 
The 2023 New Play Conference Selection Panel was comprised of Dr. Khalid Y. Long, Alex Vermillion and Dr. DeRon S. Williams.
 
Founded in 2006, GPTC offers community and artist development programs year-round, a full season of premiere productions, and brings national and local playwrights and theatre artists together to develop new works at the New Play Conference each spring. The conference is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and Humanities Nebraska.
 
The mission of the Great Plains Theatre Commons is to strengthen community by supporting the creation and sharing of diverse new stories.