AboutFACE Ireland Announces Selected Plays for 9th Annual NEWvember New Plays Festival

AboutFACE Ireland has announced the final selections for the 2020 NEWvember New Plays Festival Dublin - a showcase of original plays to be streamed online November 5-8 2020 with the Civic, where AboutFACE are Theatre Company in Residence. The announcement was made by AboutFACE Co-Artistic Directors Anna Nugent and Paul Nugent. NEWvember Dublin will feature five plays over a four-day weekend, presented via rehearsed readings, streamed live. After 5 years of NEWvember Festivals in New York, this is the 4th year the event will be held in Dublin. The spirit of NEWvember is to provide a dynamic, interactive and welcoming place where writers can hear their plays read by professional actors, discuss their work and creative process, and receive audience feedback on developing their scripts.

The NEWvember Dublin 2020 plays and events are (all Irish time):

Playwrights Roundtable

A panel discussion with this year's NEWvember playwrights, discussing their writing life and the process of creating a play, in conversation with dramaturg Krystal Sweedman and AboutFACE Co-Artistic Director Paul Nugent.

- Thursday 5th November at 7pm (free event)

Tracks by John Patrick Bray

It's 1998, upstate New York, and five young misfits seek sanctuary from the world at their makeshift boat dock on the wrong side of the tracks, but danger and disaster is never far away in this magical tale of the crossover between myth and reality. In association with New York's Tangent Theatre.

- Friday 6th November at 7pm + post-show Q&A with the writer

Strange Time by Kieran McGowan

A TV executive pitches his new sci-fi movie to a scientist (and his old flame); meanwhile two astronauts ready themselves for their return to Earth, in this mind-bending story of space, time and the place of love in a big universe.

- Saturday 7th November at 3pm + post-show Q&A with the writer

Haste Ye Back by Conor Patrick Carroll

Life in a Scottish island village is shaken up (particularly for the local tramp) when a Syrian refugee and her new baby move into a war-widow's bungalow, a house still haunted by the ghosts of the past, in this heartwarming and powerful tale of loss and love.

- Saturday 7th November at 7pm + post-show Q&A with the writer

Hitch by James McLindon

When a middle-aged nerd picks up a hitch-hiker, he gets much more than he bargains for in a feisty, rock-throwing, norm-challenging teen girl, in this hilarious and moving road-trip tale about prejudices, broken families and new connections.

- Sunday 8th November at 3pm + post-show Q&A with the writer

Beachfront by Cohen Ambrose

On the weather-beaten coast of Clare, a cartographer searches for her long-lost sister, amidst the pressures of family, new love and property development, in this thought-provoking story of the clash between old and new Ireland.

- Sunday 8th November at 7pm + post-show Q&A with the writer

Tickets €5 via the Civic theatre.

AboutFACE are very grateful to be supported for NEWvember 2020 by Dublin City Arts Office and FRINGE LAB at Dublin Fringe Festival, and to be partnering with their long-time colleagues at New York's Tangent Theatre.

The outstanding plays were selected based on originality, range, production potential, storytelling quality and emotional resonance. AboutFACE Ireland Co-Artistic Director Paul Nugent reflects on the wide variety of stories selected: "It feels very much of the moment that we will be featuring a range of terrific new plays, that while they are set in varied locations, from the Clare coastline to outer space, examine deeply topical themes of being trapped closely together, of the delicacy of life and of our responsibility to community. All are engrossing, imaginative and full of heart, and I can't wait for audiences to dive into these stories - and help us develop them." He adds, "This year is the first time we have ended up with five male writers at NEWvember through our blind reading process, so as a counter-balance this year, we are very excited to have all five readings directed by women."

AboutFACE co-created and co-produced NEWvember at the Carpenter Shop Theatre in the village of Tivoli in upstate New York, with partners Tangent Theatre, from 2011 to 2015. During this time, NEWvember was highly successful - drawing large audiences, including breaking the box office record for the venue on successive nights; and finding massive interest from writers - by its fifth year, submissions reached nearly 500 plays a year and rehearsed readings of new work by over 30 playwrights had been presented, while several plays developed at the festival have gone on to win awards and to Off-Broadway, Irish, European and regional American productions.

In 2017 NEWvember moved to Dublin, Ireland, where the festival was held at Belvedere House, in 2018 at the New Theatre and in 2019 cross-city at two venues, Smock Alley and the Civic. Already from NEWvember Dublin, many plays have gone on to further success, including Extremophiles by Fergal O'Byrne which has since been awarded the prestigious Eamon Keane Playwriting Award at the 2018 Listowel Writers' Week and a world premiere in Denmark in 2020, The Barber of Moville by Ronan Carr which has gone on to full production including a 10-venue Irish tour, and The Gods of the Ozarks by Matthew Cole Kelly which was given its World Premiere by AboutFACE in August 2019 at the Civic, a production the Irish Independent called "a rich theatrical experience."

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