Local Theater Company Announces Local Lab '21

Local Theater Company (Local) announces selections for its annual festival of new American plays, Local Lab. In honor of the theater's 10th season, Local has expanded the festival and will now support the development of 10 new works including four scripted plays, three artist-devised works, two original commissions and a new musical.

In a year consumed by the cancellation or postponement of thousands of productions nationwide, Local Lab 2021 will enlist approximately 150 theater artists. In addition to the 10 selected theater-makers, Lab development workshops engage actors, dramaturges, directors, stage managers and creative advisors-many of whom are facing hardship due to the COVID-19 crisis. The decision to expand from three to 10 works was deliberate. Founding Artistic Director Pesha Rudnick says, "This season, we're guided by a 'go big and stay home' philosophy. Creativity is thriving and we believe this incubation period is going to yield incredible art. We're proud to play a part in that anticipated renaissance."

Jane Butcher, Board Chair of Local Theater Company, added, "We owe a debt of gratitude to our Season 10 Members, Sponsors, Patrons and the members of the Fierce Fund who rallied to support new plays even amidst a global pandemic. Their commitment to the performing arts demonstrates a contribution to, and faith in, American storytellers."

In addition to Local Lab, which will feature artist-driven invited readings, workshops and rehearsals all year long, Local Theater Company's Season 10 includes Writing For Stage and Screen, a series of free playwriting lectures, LocalWRITES, a creative writing program for teen writers and Living Room Local, a monthly virtual gathering with special guests like award- winning actor John Lithgow, Tony-nominated actor and educator Forrest McClendon and visual and text-based artist Alexandra Grant.

THE ARTISTS OF LOCAL LAB 2021

Mare Trevathan & Anne Penner
Project title: The LADY M PROJECT
THE LADY M PROJECT tells Shakespeare's Macbeth from the passionate, complex, loving and disturbed point of view of Lady Macbeth.

Susan Pak
Project title: Miguk Saram
A highly ambitious Korean American teen will stop at nothing to get into his dream university. However, his plans are suddenly derailed when he is seduced by a social justice warrior, as well as an alt-right extremist. Will he make the right choice?

Eryc Eyl & Jeff Campbell
Project title: The Immunes
In a near future, the world is in a state of permanent pandemic,
and society has been reduced to just two kinds of people: those
who are immune, and those who are not. When an everyday
hero attempts to visit their dying parent, they're forced to
examine, confront, and subvert the realities of a system that doesn't want them to thrive. Oh, and it's a comedy.

C.A. Johnson
Project title: i know, i know, i know
When Zoe's wife goes missing (again), her lifelong best friends join her on the island off the coast of Virginia where they spent childhood summers. A play about women, friendship, wild ponies, and love that lasts forever. (Which is to say it is also a play about betrayal...betrayal again and again and again).

Steven San Luis
Project title: Angler Light
Angler Light is a comedy/drama about a salmon with a broken tail who needs to migrate back to his natal stream in Canada so he can fulfill his destiny. The only person he can find to help him is a suicidal teenager who is pretty sure destiny doesn't exist.

Pang Yuan Yuan
Project title: Say My Name
Say My Name is about Sheung Min, a Korean immigrant who is haunted by ghosts day and night asking her to release their souls while she is preparing for her citizenship test. Sheung Min subsequently realizes these ghosts were pioneer women immigrants who made a contribution to Asian American history but were not recognized as American citizens.

Jennifer Barclay
Project title: Yellowstone
Yellowstone is a land-grabbing dark comedy about five working-class, rural,
conservative white men who live in Wyoming, at the border of Yellowstone
National Park. However, all the men are played by women. The tone is kind of
a love child between Cloud 9, True West and Killer Joe. In Yellowstone, there
are two plays happening simultaneously and feeding off of each other. What
happens in one reality bleeds into the other until in the end they become indistinguishable, giving us a theatrical lens through which we can view both sides of the national political divide. Yellowstone is part of Jennifer Barclay's National Parks trilogy, which includes This Profound Abyss (set in Yosemite) and an untitled play set in Glacier.

Harrison David Rivers
Project title: TBD
Local Theater Company has commissioned Rivers to write a new play. Information about this work will be provided when available.

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