Levi Franklin at The Nomad Playhouse

Local Lab is Boulder’s premier new play festival.

3 Staged Readings of New Plays
Post-Show Conversations, Playwrights Panel, Parties, and a Community Hike

Local Lab 15 is sponsored in part by Jane Butcher and the Prickly Pear Fund.

Faster Horses

Playwright Alex Riad

Director Heidi Schmidt

ABOUT THE PLAY

Two women, sick of working at male-dominated tech companies, decide to start their own app together, but the collaboration exposes the cracks in their friendship and threatens to turn their venture into one of the soulless start-ups they’re rebelling against.

ABOUT PLAYWRIGHT ALEX RIAD

Alex Riad is an Egyptian-American playwright based in New York City. He has been a part of The Lark's Middle Eastern Writers Lab, a Literary Fellow at The Farm Theater, a member of The Actor's Studio Playwright Unit, a three year Lila Acheson Wallace American playwriting fellow at The Juilliard School, and a Judith Champion Launch Commission recipient at the Atlantic Theater Company.  NY Theatre Credits: The Wild Parrots of Campbell (Cherry Lane Theater), The Floor is Lava (LaMama Experimental Theatre, 2017 Planet Connections Festival Best Play), If You Ever Come by Here (The Tank), and When You Go (The Tank). His plays have also been workshopped at The New Group, Atlantic Theater Company, Signature Theater, Labyrinth Theater Company, Durango Playfest, and the Juilliard School

ABOUT THE PLAY
Set two days after the 1963 March on Washington, John Malachi Curtis, and his best friend, William Cochise Brown, return home to Mississippi to unpack all of the emotions left over from the March, only to find John's son, Ezekiel, has been attacked during a sit-in protest. Betty, John's wife, wants to leave Mississippi for good but the promise of land and remnants of love makes John unwilling to do so. Only Some of God's Children or Mississippi Magnolias is a story of five different flowers just waiting to bloom. 

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Paris Crayton III is an award winning playwright, actor, and director whose work explores the intersections of trauma, resilience, and the queer Black experience. He was a member of the Spring 2023 cohort of Mara Brock Akil’s The Writer’s Colony and the 23/24 Writers Room cohort with Geffen Playhouse.

He is the creator of The Black Faith Plays, a three play cycle examining the role of Christianity in the Black community. The first installment, Chasing Gods, received a workshop production at the University of Kansas and a reading at the Geffen Playhouse. Only Some of God’s Children or Mississippi Magnolias is the second play of the cycle. It is currently having its world premiere at The Sigpro Studio Theatre in the Villages, Florida.

Critics have called him “a powerful dramatist” and praised him as “one of the most important playwrights of our time.” His plays have been presented and developed by Geffen Playhouse, Orlando Shakes, Classical Theatre of Harlem, New York Rep, Aurora Theatre, Congo Square Theatre Company, Rising Sage Theatre, and others.

For more information, visit www.ParisCrayton3.com.

Fierce Satire and Mediocre Sex

Playwright Edith Weiss

ABOUT THE PLAY

"Fierce Satire and Mediocre Sex" finds the humor in religion and its loopholes, trying to speak truth to power, suicide, overpowering sexual urges, female empowerment, and the frustration and occasional absurdity of political correctness. It’s about the tragicomedy of being human, emphasis on the comedy.
 

ABOUT EDITH WEISS

Edith Weiss has been involved in Colorado theater for about 50 years, writing, acting, improvisation, or directing. Her 30 published plays include children's plays, funny murder mysteries, the playwright writes children's plays, and funny murder mysteries. Her work has been produced on every continent except Antarctica. Her  plays  have been in juried competitions in NYC, California, Chicago, Boston, among others.  Backstage Breckenridge, And Toto Too, and the Denver Center have produced her work.  She has an adaptation of Moliere's "The Miser", called "The Tightwad"; hopefully it will be produced  before she kicks the bucket.  Actor wise, she's worked for the Denver Center, Arvada Center, Miner's Alley, Square Product Theater, Benchmark, Colorado College, Catamounts, Country Dinner Playhouse, Backstage Breckenridge, Littleton Town Hall, and other theaters that regretfully no longer exist.