JAW New Play Festival Returns with Pride Themed Weekend

Portland Center Stage’s annual JAW New Play Festival is back July 25–27, 2025, at The Armory. A summer tradition for over two decades, JAW is a vibrant, community-powered celebration of new work, featuring staged readings, workshops, and performances from local musicians, dancers, and creators. All events are free and open to the public.

Each July, playwrights, directors, actors, and dramaturgs come together to develop new scripts in a supportive, collaborative environment. The public is invited to attend music stand readings of these in-progress works, followed by opportunities to provide feedback, participate in post-show conversations, and join in the excitement of new play development.

The 2025 JAW line up lights up the Ellyn Bye Studio Theater during Portland’s PRIDE month with all queer-themed shows this season. The festival weekend features the gorgeous, heart-stopping new musical commission Out There, as well as shining a spotlight on the work of local playwrights Amy Driesler, Virginia Baeta, and Carlos Zenen-Trujillo. Additionally, PCS will partner with venerable queer theater Fuse Theatre Ensemble, for the Say Gay Plays from Voyage Theater, a series of spirited, powerhitting short-plays written in direct response to the “Don’t say gay” bills in Florida.

JAW gives artists and audiences alike an opportunity to get close to the action and allows our community to leave our fingerprint on new and in-progress work! 

JAW PLAYWRIGHTS & PLAYS

The Sugar Hole
By Virginia Baeta and Amy Driesler
Friday, July 25 · 7:30 p.m. · Ellyn Bye Studio
A rent increase for a legendary lesbian bar threatens its existence, and Darcy has a plan to save it. Is the 90's-themed Lesbian Pageant she dreams up as a fundraiser the answer? Or do the lesbians around her have different ideas about what needs to be saved? The Sugar Hole skips through time and space—real and imagined—exploring what it means to be a lesbian in a lesbian community, the importance of spaces for queer people, and what makes someone feel they belong. Part zany comedy, part pageant, and fully heart-filled, The Sugar Hole speaks directly to what makes a community, a community. 

JAW Teen Playwrights Showcase
Saturday, July 26 · 4:00 p.m. · Ellyn Bye Studio
Celebrate the newest generation of theater artists in this high-energy showcase of 8-10 minute plays written by local teens. These young writers are selected from PCS’s year-round education programs and the PCS Teen Council. The playwrights are commissioned to create bold new works that reflect their voices and experiences.

Out There
Created by William Carlos Angulo, Isaac Gómez, and Michelle J. Rodriguez
Music and Lyrics by Michelle J. Rodriguez
Book by Isaac Gómez
Saturday, July 26 · 7:30 p.m. · Ellyn Bye Studio
When MJ, a once-great musician turned recluse, summons his best friends to his beach house with a "code red," old tensions and buried secrets resurface as the characters confront their shared pasts and uncertain futures. A PCS Commission, Out There is a richly layered story about family, love, and redemption told through the intersecting lives of three lifelong best friends—MJ, David, and Lars—and the people bound to them, in this deeply resonant portrait of connection. Set against the Pacific Northwest’s storm-lashed coastlines, and bustling cityscapes, Out There offers breathtaking music and heart-bending harmonies that will leave you on the edge of your seat! Be the first to catch this gem of a new musical before it launches into the world. 

Say Gay Plays
Curated by Wayne Maugans at Voyage Theater
In partnership with Fuse Theatre Ensemble
Sunday, July 27 · 1:00 p.m. · Ellyn Bye Studio
A not to be missed rocking time of new short-plays by top American Playwrights with something to say! Conceived in response to the 2022 passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Voyage Theater Company Founding Artistic Director Wayne Maugans’ SAY GAY PLAYS offers short plays by queer playwrights to for LGBTQ+ communities across America. In a collaboration between Say Gay Plays, Fuse Theatre Ensemble and Portland Center Stage, the JAW lineup includes  a fabulous range of work from searing satire to heartfelt moments, featuring playwrights  Fernanda Coppel,  Marquis D. Gibson, Haruna Lee, Derick Edgren Otero, Harrison David Rivers, SMJ, Doug Wright, and the premiere of a new piece from Portland playwright, Carlos-Zenin Trujillo.