The Old Globe Announces Eighth Annual Powers New Voices Festival

The Old Globe announced it will present the eighth annual Powers New Voices Festival, a weekend of readings of new American plays by some of the most exciting playwrights writing for the American theatre today. The free festival returns live and in person from January 14 to 16, 2022 in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, part of the Globe's Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. New works to be featured include readings of two Globe-commissioned plays: Crime and Punishment, a Comedyadapted by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen and directed by Greenberg, and Regular by Ngozi Anyanwu and directed by Patricia McGregor. The festival will also present readings of Exotic Deadly: or The MSG Play by Keiko Green and directed by Jesca Prudencio, and The Red and the Black by Keelay Gipson and directed by Steve H. Broadnax III.

The Powers New Voices Festival kicks off with Celebrating Community Voices, an evening of short works created by San Diego playwrights through the Globe's arts engagement programs Community Voices and coLAB. In collaboration with SoulKiss Theatre, this evening will feature the one-act readings of Game Night by Queen Kandi Cole and directed by Bibi Mama and And We Danced by Miki Vale and directed by Jacole Kitchen. For Celebrating Community Voices, playwrights Ngozi Anyanwu and Liza Jesse Peterson served as mentors to Vale and Cole, respectively.

"It's a genuine thrill to return to the Powers New Voices Festival live and in person," said Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. "It's an even bigger thrill to announce a lineup of plays that celebrate our art form with energy, vision, diversity, and joy. Each of the four plays we will present in readings is fascinating in its own right, and taken together they present a remarkable view of the vitality of today's American stage. Two of the plays are Globe commissions that we are delighted to hear aloud for the first time. The four works share in common a bracing commitment to the idea that the theatre is a powerful place to examine big questions, from the deeply personal to the most public. They also demonstrate a certain joy in the expressive powers of language onstage, and a sense of how entertaining and vibrant the theatre can be. And they represent a range of voices and perspectives that reflect the Globe's vision of an inclusive American theatre. It's an added thrill to see these works alongside great new writing that's emerging from San Diego-based playwrights who've come through the Globe's arts engagement programming. I'm looking forward to bringing it all to a Globe audience that's hungry for a glimpse of the new."