Bishop Arts Theatre Center is pleased to announce our First Move Playwrights Lab, led by Cain Rodriguez and Playwright-in-Residence Franky Gonzalez. This eight-month long play incubation and development program for DFW-based playwrights will culminate in a public staged reading over four days in July 2022.
PLAYWRIGHTS LAB FESTIVAL
The First Move Playwrights Lab was created as a response to the needs of local playwrights to find spaces to develop new plays with other artists in monthly meetings over an eight-month period of time.
The festival is a culmination of eight months’ worth of new play development by the First Move Playwrights Lab cohort of local DFW playwrights.
Witness these compelling stories by a group of talented emerging playwrights in the DFW.
ENTRY FEE: ‘Pay What You Can’
This Festival is pay-what-you-can. Click the button below, and you will be directed to our Givelively Donation page; any donated amount will support the First Move Playwrights Lab Festival. On the night of the show, arrive at the box office, and we will process a ticket(s) for you.
ABOUT THE PLAYS
The Secret Keepers
byErin Malone Turner
July 16th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST
Trudging through their last semester at The Right Path Academy is a group of silly, intense, thoughtful, difficult high school seniors. During their last semester at the run-down boarding school, things get stranger than ever. This Southern gothic/coming-of-age play explores how we are responsible for each other, the messiness of growing up, the price of shouldering burdens alone, & learning how to accept what we’ve never truly had.
El Amor in the Time of COVID
by Aaron Zilbermann
July 17th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST
An undocumented Colombian immigrant navigates love, abuse, exploitation, trauma and family in a new country, a new culture and a new language during the summer of COVID. With the constant threat of deportation looming, she is forced to make uncomfortable decisions and deal with the challenges of raising a teenage daughter in a society whose government labels her basic existence as illegal.
Ursa Major
by Zoe Kerr
July 23rd, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST
When his best friend goes missing in a national park under mysterious circumstances, a teenage boy must confront his small town’s politics as he pursues the truth of how his best friend went missing and why no one is trying to find him. This play is about complicity, adolescence, and what we owe our communities and ourselves when the absolute worst thing that could happen happens.
Red Bird Lane
by Terrance Brooks Boykin
July 24th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST
A woman struggles for the survival of her business in an urban neighborhood immersed in change, memories, old friendships, and dreams.
The Playwrights
Aaron Zilbermann
Erin Malone Turner
Aaron Zilbermann is a Dallas-based playwright, poet, director, and educator. He founded the social justice theater company, Metamorphosis, in 2017 and uses his art as a catalyst to spark social change, dialogue, and understanding within and between his various communities.
Erin Malone Turner is a NOLA-born/DFW-based playwright, poet, & actor. Her plays featured across DFW include “how to catch a ghost” (Kitchen Dog Theater), “THE BRIDGE” (Imprint Theatreworks), and “the way it was/the way it is” (Soul Repertory Theatre). Her plays are on NPX.
Terrance Brooks Boykins
Zoe Kerr
Terrance Brooks Boykin is an American playwright and poet. His plays include Rebirth in the Garden, Wrestling with Untitled, and The Private Life. As a filmmaker, he earned a screenwriting credit for the children’s action-adventure, the Black Cougar. He currently supports playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists in Dallas/Fort Worth as the Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild.
Zoe Kerr is a director and writer. Zoe has received a D-FW Critics Forum Award for her play Everything Will Be Fine, a Dallas Film Alliance Critics Choice Award for her short film Out of Hand, and was a semi-finalist at the Austin Film Festival with her play Heartless Bitch.
