PlayFest 2026 has come and gone. In less than a week, four plays-in-progress burned brightly. Three new works and one that dates back 25 years received staged readings in the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College.
Playgoers sat in the 284-seat orchestra section, so the cavernous hall didn’t overwhelm actors or audience. Thanks to LeAnn Brubaker, assistant director for production and operations, amplification worked, especially after first-night jitters and a spotty talkback.
Talkback facilitator Catherine Boyle helped the audience focus. She asked specific questions about what resonated and what didn’t. She also encouraged actors, directors and playwrights to contribute. In earlier years, talkbacks overflowed with sugary praise and little constructive feedback. The festival is finally living up to its goal of audience engagement on behalf of works-in-progress.
Stand-up readings with scripts have also moved further toward staged readings with light, sound, movement and in two plays – costume changes. All four plays ran without intermission, which could be debated. By most measures, the festival succeeded, and Managing Director Mandy Mikulencak reported ticket sales were up 44% over last year. Here’s a summary of the four plays:
“A Deal Picked Just for You,” by John Farmanesh-Bocca, unspooled a surrealist mystery about two women shut in an apartment piling up boxes of delivered goods. Billed as an absurdist comedy, the ghost of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” hovered over the tale except for mysterious characters who appeared as figments of imagination or not. Constructed in 11 scenes, the work layered one astonishing element after another.
At the June 24 playwright’s panel, PlayFest co-founder Dan Lauria predicted: “The future of theater is going back to the Absurd – Beckett, Pirandello, Ionesco.”
“Hazel & Bea in the In-Between,” by Zoe Stanton-Savitz, focused on two elderly women in a nursing home who become roommates only to discover a real or imagined shared history. Bea is warmly joyful; Hazel is difficult and begins to believe Bea was her Beatrice from adolescence. After the Dante quotation emerges, a youthful lesbian subtext echoes through to the end. With an unclear dream sequence and a secondary plot line carried intermittently by a nurse, Stanton-Savit’s play seemed the most in need of development.
“The Henry Clyde Canning Murder House,” by Christian Missonak, delivered a dark commentary on American culture. Adult children of a serial killer debate whether to turn the family home, where bodies were buried, into a tourist attraction. Sibling frictions grate against American greed and our thirst for sensationalism, not unlike Erik Larson’s historical fiction: “The Devil in the White City,” which the playwright cited as inspiration. A crackling staged reading, directed by Melissa Firlit, and Missonak’s suspenseful dialogue suggest the work has already had a rich developmental history.
“Last Day,” by Richard Vetere, the most polished work on the playbill, was a last-minute substitute for “The German,” by Lyle Kessler, withdrawn because of illness. “Last Day” takes place overnight in a Queens cemetery where three people confront a threat involving murder and tangled loyalties. It’s a dark, tightly written drama that unspools in linear time.
The work surfaced in an unusual manner. Rather than delve into the cache of 200 submitted plays, organizers decided to find a quick substitute. At the playwright’s panel, Lauria said he called his friend, Vetere, and asked if he had something. Vetere did, a play from 25 years back. Lauria organized the rest.
While not a “new American play,” the work gave PlayFest a path to solve an imminent problem. The reading featured Lauria, Ray Abruzzo, and Maja Wampuszyc in a taut performance that needed little further development.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.