NNPN's Rolling World Premiere Of BABEL Begins This Week At Kansas City's Unicorn Theatre

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces its 93rd Rolling World Premiere (RWP): Babel by Jacqueline Goldfinger.

Babel was the winner of the 2017-2018 Smith Prize for Political Theater administered by NNPN, received the Generations Award from Boulder Ensemble Theater Company, and appeared on the 2019 Kilroys List. Its Rolling World Premiere will begin in Kansas City, MO at Unicorn Theatre, opening this Saturday and running through February 9. Then Babel will travel to Philadelphia's Theatre Exile (February 13 - March 8), Ogden, UT's Good Company Theatre (March 26 - April 12), the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV (July 10 - August 2), and Trenton, NJ's Passage Theatre (October 10 - 25), before ending its Roll in spring of 2021 at a theater to be named later.

NNPN Rolling World Premiere (RWP) models a process for developing and producing new plays that results in stronger work overall and the momentum needed for a play to join the repertoire of frequently produced new American works. Each Rolling World Premiere connects three or more NNPN Member Theaters that choose to mount the same new play within a 12-month period, allowing the playwright to develop the work with a new creative team in each theater's community. To date, NNPN has championed RWPs with over one million dollars in financial support. Alumni plays have received hundreds of subsequent productions, recognition in markets across the world, been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, won Steinberg/ATCA, Stavis, PEN and Blackburn awards, and been adapted into feature films. Babel playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger

What would you do if you had the power to build your own baby? And a best friend who is a talking Stork? In this version of a near future society, prospective parents learn within the first weeks of conception which genetic traits their child will have, and what behaviors they are likely to exhibit. Based on these test results, the parent(s) are either issued a PRE certification which legally guarantees the baby will be a "good" person or not. Without the certification, the child will be limited in what it is allowed to do. Two couples collide over what to do with their PRE certification test results. With rapid advances in reproductive technology, modern eugenics is science's Wild West. What will we do to "civilize" it and ourselves? How far will we go when playing God? If you like Booker's Black Mirror, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, or Haley's The Nether, but wish they had a few more laughs, then this play is for you.

For more information visit unicorntheatre.org

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