Avalanche Theatre Reveals Fall 2024 Next Draft Series Of New Plays In Development

Avalanche Theatre Artistic Director Alexander Attea announced the selections for the Fall 2024 Next Draft Series, which will be presented September 21 - October 7 at the Little Studio in the Fine Arts Building. In line with Avalanche Theatre's mission to foster the development of new plays and playwrights in the Chicago theatre community, the Next Draft Series features workshop

performances of two plays by Chicago playwrights. The Next Draft Series creates an opportunity for writers to fully develop their scripts through internal company readings as well as the staged workshop performances in front of an audience.

The workshop performances will take place September 21 - October 7, 2024 at the Little Studio in the Fine Arts Building. This fall's workshops feature new plays by three Chicago playwrights: BATSHIT by Olivia Lindsay, directed by Avalanche Theatre Executive Director Zoe Sjogerman and dramaturged by Martina Logan; They Broke Up by Skyler Tarnas, directed by Spencer Diedrick and dramaturged by Owen Hickle-Edwards; and Monkey by Shail Modi, directed by Mantra Radhakrishnan and dramaturged by Karina Patel.

"This is our biggest Next Draft Series to date, and we're thrilled to be developing these three amazing plays," says Attea. "We're also building bridges with the wider Chicago theatre community by partnering with organizations like Silk Road Cultural Center, to help these plays reach bigger audiences. We're excited to continue building this resource for playwrights to have their work developed and seen."

In BATSHIT, June comes home after graduating college to find her drug-addled brother headed straight for rock bottom and her hoarder mother in complete denial. June must forgo her idealistic future and overstep her mother's boundaries in order to save her brother's life. Set in a house full of inherited trash, BATSHIT explores how a family's individual baggage continues the insatiable cycle of trauma and dysfunction.

In Monkey, presented in partnership with Silk Road Cultural Center, a young poet named Kai has a monkey on his back. He thinks completing his late mother's final rites might lift that weight, and figures returning to India for his father's remarriage to a nice man named Mike is a meaningful and proper time to do so. But things get complicated when his mom's ashes get lost in transit.

In They Broke Up, it's a Happy New Year! But when Amy and Brett break up and their entire friend group crumbles at three little words, who can even remember that the world is ending?