Nashville Repertory Theatre Unveils 2024-2025 Ingram New Works Playwrights And New Play Series

Nashville Repertory Theatre has revealed the four playwrights selected for the 2024/2025 Ingram New Works Project: Amy Tofte, River Timms, Cameron L. Mitchell, and Sarah Michele Bailey. Now in its 15th year, the Ingram New Works Project continues to support playwrights both locally and nationally in creating powerful, necessary, and impactful plays.

“The Ingram New Works Project is an exciting opportunity for new voices and new work,” says Artistic Director Micah-Shane Brewer. “We are thrilled to support these four new plays and playwrights. At one time, every play we know and love was a new work. I'm glad we offer support to foster new plays. It's a thrilling opportunity to be a part of a new creation, and it's necessary to empower playwrights to create new, important, meaningful stories that need to be told.”

The Ingram New Works Project inspires exceptional new voices to write the stories they are most passionate about. Nashville Rep provides playwrights with developmental support, hospitality, networking, and audiences, allowing them to focus on what they do best: creating new plays. Since 2009, the Ingram New Works Project has supported the development of over 70 new plays, making Nashville a home away from home for playwrights, powered by our city's authentic and radical hospitality. Tickets for Ingram New Works readings are completely free to the public for more information, visit nashvillerep.org.

This year's Ingram New Works plays include:

• Bloodsucking Leech by Amy Tofte World Premiere Reading: November 23, 2024
  A woman struggles to protect her aging mother from cat-fishers and con-artists. A dark comedy about depression, anxiety, and never feeling alone.

 

• This is Just a Box by River Timms World Premiere Reading: January 11, 2025
  Meg has finally cracked it; she's finally built the machine of her dreams called ‘The Box', a device that induces painless death, and she's ready to bring it to her city cluster en masse. As the success of ‘The Box' takes off, Meg's original vision for her invention becomes twisted by her business partners who are only looking at the bottom line.

 

• Regicide: To Kill a King by Cameron L. Mitchell World Premiere Reading: April 26, 2025
  A captivating blend of rap and spoken word, where five college students research how to kill a king and its impact on society. The impact of this project sparks psychological tension, rivalry, and a race against time to graduate.

 

• Bad Queen Good by Sarah Michele Bailey, World Premiere Reading: May 10, 2025
  The night of a lavish ball to celebrate the 10th year of her reign, Queen Aranea is taken by The Vanished, sinister, beautiful creatures who punish corrupt royalty.  The Vanished spirit Aranea away to The Mirror Realm, where a series of trials will either change or destroy her.  She will either transform into a just, worthy ruler, or dissolve into the shards and edges of The Mirror Realm.  The audience will decide.

About the Playwrights:

AMY TOFTE

is a Los Angeles-based playwright and screenwriter who won a Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her play Righteous Among Us (2020 Todd McNerney Award) had a staged reading at Urban Stages (off-Broadway) in 2023. She was recently a playwright with the Evolving Playwrights Group at Circle X Theatre where she completed a new “impossible play” about the climate crisis called Rain Dog War. She has been in residence at the Autry Museum of the American West, Brush Creek, Monson Arts, The Kennedy Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Yaddo with work produced and developed throughout the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and twice at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. MFA, CalArts.
 

RIVER TIMMS

was born in Alabama and raised in the sticks. They graduated from Belmont University with a B.A in Theatre in 2018 after years of trying to find their "thing". Their plays Opus and Tall Tales were both produced with Woven Theatre, and their work has been seen all around Nashville ever since. River was part of the 2020-2021 New Works 615 cohort, a local playwriting cohort under the umbrella of Nashville Rep's Ingram New Works project, where they collaborated and wrote material for Little Hollow, TN, a multimedia theatrical adventure. River's other theatrical work involves adapting classics such as the Garden of Eden tale (The Naughty Tree, Kindling Arts) and A Christmas Carol (Christmas Carol Circuit Party, Woven Theatre) for queer-inspired club settings. The Naughty Tree was written in collaboration with Kindling Arts Festival, and it was selected as the Best Local Theatre Performance by The Nashville Scene in 2022. River currently lives in Nashville, acting as the Resident Playwright and Literary Manager of Woven Theatre.

CAMERON L. MITCHELL

is an internationally acclaimed artist renowned for his transformative storytelling. As a playwright, he has produced notable works such as Blackbird, a powerful one-man show exploring Black men's mental health, which has been showcased at Middle Tennessee State University, the Kindling Arts Festival, and the Shades of Black Festival. His work Love Yourz, a unique love story intertwining Rap and Poetry, also earned recognition at the Shades of Black Festival. An award-winning actor, Cameron is celebrated for his portrayal of Corey Maxson in the critically acclaimed Broadway play Fences (Nashville Rep), which won the Best Contemporary Drama award. His other distinguished roles include Sunny and Brandon in the world premiere of Ghost at the Nashville Children's Theatre, and Subject 1 in Project Awake. As a Tennessee-based teaching artist, Cameron has collaborated with prominent organizations such as Disney, PBS, Metro Arts, Oz Arts, the National Civil Rights Museum, the Jazz Museum in Harlem, 21c Chicago, the Stax Museum, The Bobby Jones Show, Vanderbilt University, Meharry Medical College, and many more. Through his spoken word poetry, Cameron raises awareness about mental health and ignites important conversations, performing and conducting creative writing workshops across the globe, including in Japan, Tanzania, and Germany. He was honored as the 2021 Actor Laureate and the 2022 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Cameron is also the founder of Free Fyre, a 501(c)(3) arts organization committed to arts advocacy and community engagement.
 

SARAH MICHELE BAILEY

is a make-it-happen creative. She is a singer, composer/songwriter, actress, audio engineer, music producer, music director, and she makes a mean bicycle horn noise. She is so excited to be back at Nashville Rep after music directing the opener to the 40th anniversary season, Waitress! Other favorite music directing credits include Finding Nemo and Pippi. A member of Actor's Equity, she's performed across the spectrum of musical theatre, from brand new musical workshops (Fairy Goddaughter, Hip Hop Cinderella, Auntie Clause) to well-known works The Little Mermaid, My Fair Lady, and The Phantom of the Opera. You can find her musical creations on the music platform of your choice, including the soundtrack to her award-winning superhero musical web series, Incognita's Infamous Adventures, now streaming on Amazon Prime! She is deeply honored and unspeakably excited for this opportunity. Follow her on socials @sarahmichelemusic. Love to Christopher and Cass. Non nobis.

Nashville Repertory Theatre's 40th anniversary season continues with the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town, Nashville Rep's original adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the drama The Mountaintop by Tennessee native Katori Hall, and Sunday in the Park with George, one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize. For tickets and information, visit www.nashvillerep.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.