Illuminating New Voices Festival at Vanguard Theater

Illuminating New Voices Festival celebrates new work and the artists shaping the future of storytelling. Rooted in a commitment to amplifying diverse voices and expanding access to the arts, it creates space for emerging playwrights and multidisciplinary artists to develop and share original stories that reflect the world we live in and the one we hope to build.

A cornerstone of the season, the festival features a curated lineup of short performances. This year spans two weekends across four nights, showcasing eight original works with fresh perspectives, inventive forms, and deeply human storytelling.

May 2nd - 8pm:

The Habit

THERESA

The Milk of Human Kindness

Airborne: The Bessie Coleman Musical

May 3rd- 2pm (Panel following show):

The Captives

Airborne: The Bessie Coleman Musical

BREATHE

In Emily's Words

May 8th- 8pm (Panel following show):

The Habit

THERESA

The Milk of Human Kindness

RED

May 9th - 8pm: 

The Captives

In Emily's Words

BREATHE

RED

The Milk of Human Kindness by J Thalia Cunningham

Getting through airport security is frustrating for everyone involved, including Ariana, a single mother who’s recently been promoted to TSA supervisor. What should she do when a passenger wants to bring more than three ounces of frozen breast milk on a British Airways flight? And the passenger is male . . .and doesn’t have a baby with him. And his name is Abdullah Farooq. Ariana doesn’t want to profile someone on the basis of gender and religion . . .or should she?

In Emily's Words by Jessy Tomsko

In Emily’s Words tells the story of novelist Emily Brontë as she creates her magnum opus:  Wuthering Heights.  This musical explores the creative process and the world of imagination, with Emily's beloved novel at the center.  Her characters leap forth from her pen, trying to inspire while also fighting for agency and immortality.  Additionally, this piece follows Emily's own journey, making it neither a full Wuthering Heights adaptation, nor a Brontë biography.  Rather, it explores where ideas come from, how they become realized in the world, and how they can go on living after their human creator is gone.

THE CAPTIVES by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich

Professor, a closeted artist at a conservative Midwestern college, has built an unlikely career painting death-row inmates’ last meals on fine china — fascinated by the idea of choice in lives otherwise stripped of options. Pressured by her tenure committee to deepen the work, she travels to Texas to meet Trevor Monroe, the next inmate scheduled to die. But Trevor wants a stay of execution, not a final meal. His demand ignites a media frenzy and traps the artist, the prison warden, and the condemned man in a volatile triangle where power, identity, and survival collide.

Airborne: The Bessie Coleman Musical

Book by Beau Dixon 

Lyrics by Jewelle Blackman

AIRBORNE is a musical play about Bessie Coleman (1892 - 1926) who was the first African American aviator—and female—to receive her international pilot’s license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in 1921.  Bessie astonished audiences with her daring aeronautical tricks and is known as a pioneer of flight who paved the way for future pilots.  AIRBORNE is a play about perseverance, passion and the importance of the imagination.

RED by Lawrence Dandridge

RED follows a group of teenagers who, brought together by a web of life-altering circumstances, try to stop their neighborhood community center from being closed by the new Mayor. Inspired by Brothers Grimm tales, RED takes us on a journey of friendship, bravery, and just how many colors life can bring us.  RED explores a plethora of intense topics that are relevant and relatable not only on a personal level but mirrored throughout the makeup of our society. From domestic violence and corruption to the effects of absentee parents and rape, RED discusses topics that most urban communities experience but rarely speak on.

THERESA by Naomi Lorrain

Nia's parents strongly disagree with how she and her new partner, Theresa, desire to raise Nia's son. THERESA is a comedic look at what happens when the child rearing methods of a toddler’s intergenerational “village” clash. There’s old school, there’s new school and then there’s just Theresa.

BREATHE by Cynthia Grace Robinson

On Juneteenth, two women, brought together by grief, guilt, and loss, find emotional refuge in a yoga studio after each experiences a tragedy that wreaks havoc on their lives. As they move their bodies, they discover that life is a practice, and as long as they are breathing, their breath holds the opportunity for hope, healing and freedom.

The Habit by Cynthia Cleto

In “The Habit,” Selena is visited by her ward Lauren, whom she helped raise, in the nunnery she has been living in for a few years.  Selena has doubts about her and humankind’s beliefs in a God.  Lauren has doubts about a human relationship.  Although doubt surfaces repeatedly in this play, it is only the catalyst for what is really at stake here, the relationship between the two women.  The play explores how our habits can separate us from our true compass, and how doubt can lead to profound examination, and hopefully in eventually living a more authentic life.