Nashville Rep's Ingram New Works Fest to Kick Off 5/6

Nashville Repertory Theatre's Ingram New Works Festival will feature staged readings of five new plays, including the debut of a new work-in-progress from Pulitzer Prize-winner and Ingram New Works Fellow Donald Margulies. The Festival runs May 6-16, 2015.

The Ingram New Works Project gives playwrights an opportunity to develop new theatre works while in residency at Nashville Rep. Each year, the Project selects a Fellow and three Lab playwrights who all work together with Nashville Rep's Playwright in Residence to develop their new works. For Nashville Rep's 2014-15 season, the Ingram New Works Fellow is Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Marguiles, the Lab playwrights are Tori Keenan-Zelt, Bianca Sams and Gabreille Sinclair, and Nashville Rep's Playwright in Residence is Nate Eppler.

Readings of the new works will be held May 6 - 16, 2015, at 7 P.M. each evening. A talkback will immediately follow each reading. The complete Festival schedule is listed below, along with brief descriptions of each show. Each reading is $10 per person, or a Festival Pass to see one reading of each play is available for $35. Reservations can be made online at NashvilleRep.org.

The Ingram New Works Festival is proudly supported by Media Sponsor Nashville Arts Magazine. Nashville Rep's 2014-15 season sponsors include The HCA Foundation of behalf of HCA Tristar, Ingram Charitable Fund, Metro Nashville Arts Commission, The Shubert Foundation and Tennessee Arts Commission. 2014-15 media sponsors include Nashville Scene, Lightning 100, News Channel 5 Network and NowPlayingNashville.com.

Nashville Rep is a non-profit theatre bringing classic and contemporary theatre to Nashville that inspires empathy and prods intellectual and emotional engagement in audiences. Nashville Rep's upcoming 2015-16 season will include productions of Rapture, Blister, Burn; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Good Monsters; Chicago; and A Christmas Story.

The Ingram New Works Festival will be held in Nashville Rep's rehearsal hall: Studio A at Nashville Public Television, located at 161 Rains Avenue in Nashville.

The Ice Treatment by Nate Eppler
Readings: May 6 & 16

Left behind on the garbage heap of history and misremembered by everyone (herself included), the world's most infamous Olympic figure skater struggles to reinvent herself as a screenwriter. By pitching the blockbuster screenplay of her own amazing and unbelievable life story. It's definitely not the facts, but it's all true.

Showing by Gabrielle Sinclair
Readings: May 7 & 11

Today is the gender reveal party for Tracy's baby, but when she discovers there may be something wrong with her pregnancy, this cute and fun event with a cake filled with blue or pink frosting becomes for her a ritual with the power to reveal the future, to cleanse her past, to make her a good mother and to keep her child safe.

Simply Bess by Bianca Sams
Readings: May 8 & 12

Simply Bess follows a young African American actress trying to make a name for herself. We see her backstage trials and tribulations on the 1950s European tour of Porgy and Bess, sponsored by the American State Department as a way to combat communist propaganda about racial problems in the United States.

Air Space by Tori Keenan-Zelt
Readings: May 9 & 15

30 years ago, Babs and Mack built a house in a small Rust Belt city. One year ago, they lost it to foreclosure. With no place to go, they packed up and moved into the crawl space - secretly. Six months ago, Glory and Kyle bought a foreclosure for $500. As they struggle to flip the falling-down house, two strangers show up to help. A surreal comedy about inventing home, managing family and what we hold onto when nothing that we do is enough.

A Work-in-Progress by Donald Margulies
Readings: May 13 & 14

We have an exclusive and exciting opportunity to look inside the process of Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies and to be a part of his play that is still under construction. We can't wait to see what unfolds! Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and professor of English at Yale University. He served as Playwright-in-Residence at Sundance Playwright Conference for three summers, and has won a Lucille Lortel Award, an American Theatre Critics Award, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two OBIE Awards, two Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Awards, five Drama Desk Award nominations, two Pulitzer Prize nominations and one Pulitzer Prize.