Occidental’s annual New Works Festival will take place in the Keck Theater Feb. 24–25. According to an email sent by the Occidental College Theater Department, the festival pairs student playwrights with professional directors and actors, providing a real-world experience of play development.
Festival producer Laural Meade said that she has been producing the New Works Festival for 26 years and that there will be five student-written plays showcased this year. According to Meade, working with a professional director is a game-changer for student playwrights.
“When it comes to the festival, it’s all about focusing on the playwright and what is going to serve the playwright’s needs the most,” Meade said. “Often that’s an off-campus director who’s directed new plays before, who knows actors off campus and just has experience under their belt.”
According to Meade, the New Works Festival is a revamp of a completely student-run festival that showcased student-written plays. Meade said that as a producer, her responsibilities include choosing the plays, hiring the directors and actors as well giving feedback during rehearsals and working with the student producers.
“All of the plays, they’re very different. They’re all compelling and deep and funny and weird and it’s just great to watch a student writer collaborate with professionals and hold their own,” Meade said. “We have some seasoned actors who come in on these shows and they love it. They’re happy to collaborate because the plays are well written and actors want to act good parts.”
Meade said that she tries to match playwrights with directors and actors who have the qualities and life experiences that the writers want. According to Meade, her favorite thing about producing the festival is supporting and watching the students grow as artists.
“I give the playwrights the prompt ‘My ideal director is…’ and I let them finish the sentence and then I try to find a director that meets those qualities,” Meade said. “Sometimes writers have requests about life experiences they want the director to have or who has a speciality in a certain genre, so I try really hard to find that person.”
Haowen Luo (senior) has worked as a student producer at the New Works Festival for the past two years. According to Luo, student producers communicate with stage managers, work on scheduling and advertise the festival.
“You don’t have to have any experience to be a stage manager for the festival because it’s a very lovely community where everybody’s trying to learn together,” Luo said. “It’s a really good thing for students to try out what they want to do, and students really support each other.”
Luo said that he is looking forward to seeing the final results of the students’ work and that working on the festival has helped him practice scheduling, problem solving and working with professionals.
“I definitely see that it gave me more confidence and more experience towards maybe a career for a producer in the future,” Luo said.
Gianna Nguyen (sophomore) is one of the five playwrights for this year’s festival. Nguyen said that their play, “A Slight Disruption” was written during their senior year of high school. According to Nguyen, their play is about a young Vietnamese teenager who processes the loss of her great uncle through Vietnamese folktales that he wrote. Nguyen said that they wrote this play after their grandfather passed away.
“My play is very much me in real time dealing with that loss and my complex feelings surrounding it,” Nguyen said. “It was also a way for me to connect with my Vietnamese culture because in writing this play, I had to research Vietnamese folk tales and how I would integrate that into the storyline.”
Nguyen said that the intended audience for their play is anyone who can connect with it in some way, whether it be to the overarching theme of grief or to one of the characters.
“Something I really appreciated in the process of doing table reads with actors and my director is that everyone connected to some aspect of the play in a way that made me feel really happy,” Nguyen said.
According to Nguyen, the day their play was originally going to be showcased in high school, the lead actor contracted COVID-19. Nguyen said that when they saw the New Works Festival being advertised, they thought it was their shot at redemption.
“Because of how playwright-centered the New Works Festival is, and the fact that there’s so much professional guidance, I really feel like I’m being challenged as a writer and it feels like I have a more mature way to look at my play,” Nguyen said.
Luo said that he thinks that anyone who loves theater can value the experience that the New Works Festival gives student playwrights.
“It’s really a festival for the students, that’s the core of it — for the student to grow, to know what it’s like to make and produce your own work,” Luo said. “It’s a great chance for students to promote their work and have a great collaboration with professionals, which is a very valuable opportunity for students at this stage.”
New Works Festival Performance Schedule:
Saturday, February 24
2:00 p.m.
A Slight Disruption by Gianna Nguyen ’26
7:00 p.m.
Bridges Freeze First by Jonah Matso ’24
Sunday, February 25
2:00 p.m.
Homecoming by Jiahui Ji ’25
7:00 p.m., a double-bill
Juniper by Riley Polaner ’26
Waiting for Godot to Leave by Ethan Remez-Cott ’24
Contact Jameela Bowo at bowo@oxy.edu
