ASHLAND, ORE.: Ashland New Plays Festival (ANPF) has announced the winning playwrights for its 2015 festival, with readings taking place Oct. 21–25 in Ashland. Meridith Friedman, Beth Kander, Brian Mulholland, and Skye Robinson Hillis will participate in a weeklong workshop with two staged readings of their plays featuring actors and directors from Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the community.
“This year’s record-shattering submission total of 572 scripts yielded the strongest list of finalists that ANPF has ever seen,” said Gray McKee, co-chair of the ANPF reading committee, in a statement. “With the quality of the finalists so consistently high, artistic director Kyle Haden has quite a job ahead as he plans the ANPF 2015 season.”
The festival will feature Friedman’s The Luckiest People, Kander’s The Bottle Tree, Mulholland’s The Return of Tartuffe, and Skye Robinson Hillis’s And Vaster.
In addition to two staged readings of each selected play, the festival will also include a playwriting workshop (Oct. 24), taught by the ANPF 2015 winning playwrights and moderated by E.M. Lewis.
ANPF, founded in 1992, is a nonprofit organization that encourages playwrights to create new works. A group of volunteer readers selects four playwrights to participate in a week of readings, talkbacks, and workshops to further the development of their work. Stipends of $1,000 are provided to winning playwrights to defray travel expenses.
