Photo Flash: First Look at Goodman Theatre's 10th Annual NEW STAGES Festival

Now in its 10th year, Goodman Theatre's 2013 New Stages festival features five free new plays-two fully staged workshop productions performed in repertory plus three staged readings-in the Owen Theatre, now through December 22. All five plays celebrate Latino playwrights: The Upstairs Concierge, a contemporary farce about celebrity and baseball by Pulitzer Prize finalist (for The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity) Kristoffer Diaz; and The Solid Sand Below, an examination of the intoxicating nature of war which Martín Zimmerman developed during his time as a member of the Goodman's Playwrights Unit, and which was selected for the 2013 National Playwrights Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the workshop productions below!

The Solid Sand Below

By Martín Zimmerman | Directed by Jonathan Berry

The Solid Sand Below tracks the radical transformation of Private Julian Flores from decidedly reluctant recruit to enthusiastic and disciplined soldier. Inspired by a news story about a soldier who continued to reenlist because his tour of duty in Iraq had given his life a sense of purpose he'd never experienced before, the play investigates why certain people find meaning in chaos and violence. Beginning with Flores' arrival in Diyala province in 2007 at the height of insurgent violence in Iraq, the play offers us a fascinating window into the experience of combat, capturing the boredom, anxiety and camaraderie that comes from waiting for inevitable danger. In addition to its development at the Goodman, The Solid Sand Below had a reading at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, and was recently included in the prestigious National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.

Martín Zimmerman's plays include White Tie Ball, part of the 2013/2014 Season at Teatro Vista where Zimmerman is a newly-named resident playwright; The Making of Modern Folk Hero and Seven Spots on the Sun, which premieres at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park this fall. His work has been produced or developed at The Kennedy Center, The Playwrights' Center, Victory Gardens Theater, ACT (Seattle), Chicago Dramatists, American Theater Company, PlayPenn, Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, the ALLIANCE THEATRE, Primary Stages, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Theatre Row, Borderlands Theater, the Source Festival, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, The Gift Theatre, Red Tape Theatre, The University of Texas at Austin and Duke University. He is a recipient of the Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, the Jerome Fellowship, the Carl Djerassi Playwriting Fellowship, the National New Play Network's Smith Prize and a Core Apprenticeship at The Playwrights' Center.

The Upstairs Concierge

By Kristoffer Diaz |Directed by Eric Ting

Fresh out of grad school, Ella takes on a new job as the upstairs concierge at a hotel that caters to celebrities, and finds that it's hard to keep track of who's in what room, who's famous for doing what and who has a tendency to strip naked. The play examines how new media can make a celebrity out of anyone-and the resulting frenzy, combined with the all-too-human desire to make a quick buck, can result in "farcical" behavior.

Kristoffer Diaz's full-length plays include The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (2011 New York Times Outstanding Playwright recipient, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lucielle Lortel Award, Obie Award, Drama Desk nominee and Jeff Award winner for Best Production and Best New Work), Welcome to Arroyo's and #therevolution. He is a playwright-in- residence at Teatro Vista; a recipient of the Jerome Fellowship, the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant and the Van Lier Fellowship (New Dramatists); and a former member of the Ars Nova Play Group.

Visit the Goodman online to catch the latest news and more at GoodmanTheatre.org.

Photo Credit: Liz Lauren

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