A celebration of new works for the american stage
may 2025
Join us this summer for a series of trailblazing new plays! In addition to attending the performances, you’re also invited to hear from the playwrights about their process and share your own thoughts with the creative team—and help shape new works from the ground up.
Performances will be held at TheatreSquared, at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, and at the Medium in Springdale.
The 2025 Arkansas New Play Festival is presented in part with The American Theatre Wing.
get $50 ALL-ACCESS PASSES & $15 single PASSES NOW
CALL 479-777-7477
New Play Passes grant entry to all events. Seating is very limited.
2025 Schedule
Friday, may 16th (at The Medium)
Saturday, may 17th (at the medium)
5pm. Play on Jody by Candrice Jones
Sunday, may 18th (at crystal bridges)
2pm. Cowboys and East Indians by Nina McConigley and Matthew Spangler
Thursday, may 22nd (at Theatresquared)
Friday, MAY 23rd (at Theatresquared)
7pm. Sherlock Holmes: The Timber Family File by LatinX Theatre Project
Saturday, may 24th (at Theatresquared)
11:00am. Playwrights Panel
12:30pm. Young Playwrights Showcase
2:00pm. Side by Side by Basil Parnell (APPRENTICE SHOWCASE)
5:00pm. Cowboys and East Indians by Nina McConigley and Matthew Spangler
Sunday, may 25th (at Theatresquared)
2pm. The Winking Place by Connor Johnson (APPRENTICE SHOWCASE)
5pm. Play on Jody by Candrice Jones
2025 Lineup
play on jody
by candrice jones
Saturday, May 17 at 5pm (at The Medium)
Sunday, May 25 at 5pm (at TheatreSquared)
Jody is an old Bluesman with a black cough. Is it because of COPD? Is it because of a curse placed on his bloodline during the Civil War? Either way, his daughters, Jodayuh and Jody 5, will have to wrestle with the spiritual and financial complications of a family legacy etched in lust, music, and blood.
cowboys and east indians
by nina mcconigley and matthew spangler
Sunday, May 18 at 2pm (at Crystal Bridges)
Saturday, May 24 at 5pm (at TheatreSquared)
Based on McConigley’s short story collection of the same name and adapted in collaboration with Spangler, Cowboys and East Indians weaves together threads of culture clash, grief, and intergenerational assimilation to tell the story of the Sen family, immigrants who settle in mostly-white Casper, Wyoming and learn what it means to be “the wrong kind of Indian” in the American West.
tectonic play project
Friday, May 16 at 7pm (at The Medium)
Thursday, May 22 at 7pm (at TheatreSquared)
Discover what happens when the next generation of theatre makers team up with one of the country’s most celebrated creators of original performance. In this unique collaboration, the University of Arkansas graduate theatre cohort joins T2 and the New York-based Tectonic Theater Project (The Laramie Project, Here There Are Blueberries) to create a documentary theatre experience that confronts the shadowy lines between truth and fiction. This project consists of short works in progress, inspired by visits to Dickson Street Bookstore and by Arkansas music and lore.
Sherlock Holmes: The Timber Family File
by THE LATINX THEATRE PROJECT
Friday, May 23 at 7pm (at TheatreSquared)
Sherlock Holmes: The Timber Family File is the latest production from the LatinX Theatre Project (LXTP). The first half of this full-length play premiered at the 2024 Arkansas New Play Festival. Over the past year, Sherlock Holmes: The Timber Family File has continued to evolve and had a limited run in April at The Medium in Springdale. This play started as an exploration of the relationship between our community and the larger institutions that overlook us in our quest for justice. We discovered that in times of need, when everything else seems to falter, we tap into our inner Sherlock to uncover the truth. Tell the neighbors, tell the homies, tell the ops, we got a new detective on the block. No bad guys too big, and no case is too small for the homie.
SIDE BY SIDE
by BASIL PARNELL
Saturday, May 24 at 2pm (at TheatreSquared)
“How was school today?” “Did you do anything fun?” Francis and Mom are in a car. It’s moving. Through a series of routine after-school pick-ups and highway driving lessons, Side by Side shifts through time, growing up, finding yourself, and the relationship between mother and child as they map out the road ahead.
THE WINKING PLACE
by CONNOR JOHNSON
Sunday, May 25 at 2pm (at TheatreSquared)
Comatose after a car crash, Eileen wakes in a strange land to the even stranger sight of Darling Tom, a curious and cryptic creature. Meanwhile, Simon mourns at his unconscious partner’s bedside, wracked by an awful guilt. Along with Eileen’s best friend, May, and her mother, Gwen, he awaits the visit of a neurointensivist who will determine whether her brain is recoverable. Taking place in a single, spotless hospital room, The Winking Place entwines, tangles, and ultimately unravels the lines of reality, memory, and fantasy as Eileen tries to find her way back to the land of the waking.