FutureFest 2021

FutureFest for 2021 is an entirely online event. All six finalist plays will be produced either on the Zoom platform, or staged at the Dayton Playhouse and filmed. All six videos will be made available through the Dayton Playhouse Vimeo Channel starting in early July.

During what would normally be the FutureFest weekend, July 16 through 18, Dayton Playhouse will host live adjudication sessions over our Zoom account. These sessions will include our panel of theatre professionals, our six playwrights and opportunities for the audiences to submit comments and questions through the Zoom Chat feature.

Click here to see a detailed FutureFest 2021 Schedule.

Below are links to the online programs for the six finalist scripts, where you can read synopses, notes from the director, see the cast and production roster, and find a Playwright statement. We hope you enjoy this year’s amazing line up of new scripts.

Thanks

The Board of Directors of The Dayton Playhouse thanks the Montgomery County Arts & Culture District and CultureWorks for grant support of Virtual FutureFest 2021.

FutureFest 2021 Finalist Plays

All the Oxytocin in Your Fingertips, by Cary Simowitz

Otis, by Shanti Reinhardt

Shylock the First, by Andrew R. Heinze

Talk of the Town, by Mike Bencivenga

Tall Woman with Red Fan, by Michael Sloane

Truth Be Told, by William Cameron

FutureFest 2021 Panel of Adjudicators

Our esteemed panel of American Theatre Professionals read and view each play and then use a ranked voting system to select the Festival Winner. This year’s panel of Adjudicators is:

Stephanie Cowan is a producer and dramaturg who curates new work by new voices. She is the Creative Director at Gold/Ross Productions, a Tony Award winning theatrical production company dedicated to bringing unconventional stories to the stage, and Creative Producer at Heredia Vision a women-led multimedia production company.
As a freelance dramaturg, she is currently working on RACE AGAINST TIME, a new musical by Warren Adams and Michael Ogborn. She often produces live events with Broadway Unlocked and is the Line Producer for JoCo Cruise, an annual music, comedy and gaming cruise hosted by singer-songwriter, Jonathan Coulton. She was an Associate Producer on the Broadway production of AMÉLIE, which she helped develop from its early stages at Triptyk Studios, where she was Director of Development from 2008-2017. During her tenure at Triptyk, the company produced many projects, including the NY Times Critic’s Pick MY DAUGHTER KEEPS OUR HAMMER by Brian Watkins, the Broadway and US touring productions of XANADU, 12-time Tony-nominated Broadway, National Tour and West End productions of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, Will Ferrell’s YOU’RE WELCOME AMERICA and the Broadway and Netflix hit comedy, OH, HELLO.
While in quarantine, Stephanie produced “Broadway Does Mother’s Day,” a benefit for BC/EFA, “Curtain Up!,” a 26-episode series devoted to connecting performers with seniors in isolation, and Laura Benanti’s “Sunshine Songs” series, all directed by longtime friend and frequent collaborator, Ashley Rodbro.
Stephanie is often a guest teacher at AMDA and The Growing Studio, has served as an adjudicator at Dayton Playhouse’s FutureFest, was a judge for the New York Musical Festival, and has been a selection committee member for the NAMT Festival of New Musicals from 2012 to 2014, with whom she continues to consult every year. She is an alumna of CTI.

Matt Kagen is a multi-media poet and producer who co-founded softFocus to create a lean producing model for theater that empowers independent artists and artist groups. In addition to softFocus, Kagen has made work for artists ranging from Young Jean Lee and Elevator Repair Service to Thom Yorke and Bright Eyes. Previously, he served as associate artistic director of New York Stage and Film. Recent projects in development include original audio fiction with Audible, Topic Studios and Gilded Audio, as well as Torrey Townsend’s play Off Broadway presented by Jeremy O. Harris. He’s obsessed with dynamics of play, the rhythm of language and the emotional beat.

Eleanore Speert is founder and President of Speert Publishing which offers self-publishing services expressly for playwrights. Her short play, The History of Me, was produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her full-length play, Peripheral Vision, was produced in New York by I.C.A.N.I. productions. Her short play, Quartet Nights or the Last Good Time We Had, has been published by Penguin Books, and Heinemann has published a portion of her play, Madagascar Butterfly.
She served on the Board of Directors of Schoharie Creek Players in Lexington, New York, for seven years, and as a judge for the Princess Grace Playwriting Awards, administered by New Dramatists. She serves as an Adjudicator for FutureFest, a yearly festival of new play highlighting six new writers, sponsored by The Dayton Playhouse, in Dayton, Ohio. She was the Publications Director at Dramatists Play Service for ten years, working with well-known authors as well as soon-to-be discovered authors to publish over 600 acting editions. Prior to her position at Dramatists Play Service, she held production positions with Lifetime Productions, Current Trend Productions, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studio Productions. She is currently the Buyer at The Drama Book Shop, Inc., one of the oldest independent bookshops in the country, and one of a handful of bookshops dedicated to the performing arts. She is also Senior Editor at Broadway Play Publishing.

David Finkle writes regularly about theater and the arts. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, New York and The New York Post. His theater reviews currently appear online at New York Stage Review and The Clyde Fitch Report. He is a member of the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. He is also the author of “People Tell Me Things,” a story collection, “The Man With the Overcoat,” a novel, and the just-released “Humpty Trumpty Hit a Brick Wall,” a book of verse covering Donald J. Trump’s first year in office.

Helen Sneed received a B.A. in Theatre at Tulane University, with additional coursework at Harvard University and the University of London. She worked extensively in presidential and state elections as a political strategist and campaign organizer for Democratic candidates. In 1988, Helen founded Campaign for Oxford in North America, serving as Executive Director of the $400 million development campaign, the first in Oxford University’s 800-year history.
In 1990, Helen began her career in New York theatre as Director of Professional Rights at Dramatists Play Service. Subsequently she served as Senior Vice President of Music Theatre International; Executive Director of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre and producer of its annual international festival of new musicals; and Director, Special Projects, of Walt Disney Theatricals. Clients for her company, Helen Sneed Creative, have included Paramount/Viacom, the Musical Theatre Graduate Writing Program and the Goldberg Dramatic Writing Department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Drama Bookshop and Arthur Seelan Theatre, and the Connections Place.
A member of the Dramatists Guild and on the board of the League of Professional Theatre Women, Helen is the author of a musical, Sally Blane, World’s Greatest Girl Detective (Dramatists Play Service). In November 2013, her play, Fix Me, Jesus, premiered Off-Broadway at the Abingdon Theatre Company. It also is published by Dramatists Play Service, and was nominated for the 2015 Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Helen has just completed a new play, Tornado Nights. For 23 years she has been a judge at FutureFest, the new play festival at the Dayton Playhouse in Dayton, OH. She also judged the first David Merrick Award for The New American Musical and the Darryl Roth Prize at NYU. In Theatre Magazine named Helen one of the national leaders who “will usher the American theatre into the new century.”
A passionate advocate for the rights of the mentally ill, Helen has mentored men and women with severe psychiatric illness for their return to the workplace. She teaches and speaks on behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She has addressed the National Institute of Mental Health, the New School of Social Research, and the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder about the ethics and treatment of those who cannot speak for themselves.

Script Selection Process

The six finalists are selected for the Festival from a slate of twelve semi-finalists by the Second Reading Committee. This volunteer committee read the semi-finalist scripts and met through the Month of April, 2021. The members of this year’s Second Reading Committee were:

Russell Florence Jr. 
Michelle Hayford 
Debra Kent 
Rob Koon 
Terry Morris 
Darlene Spencer 

The First Reading Committee is a committed group of volunteers that took on the herculean task of giving at least three (but often at least five) reads to each of the over 270 plays submitted to The Dayton Playhouse for FutureFest 2021. Under the excellent leadership of Jennifer Lockwood, this amazing group of theater-lovers met from September through March (on Zoom) to discuss and whittle down the submissions to the roster of 12 semi-finalists.

The participants in the First Reading Committee for FutureFest 2021 were:

FutureFest History

Click here to read up on the history of FutureFest, and a complete list of past winners, and audience favorites.