2025 Next Act! New Play Summit 14

2025 Next Act Program

The Next Act New Play Summit, a joint venture between Capital Repertory Theatre and Proctors, is an annual showcase of new plays designed to shed light on new play development. The summit brings playwrights, directors, actors, and audience members together for a series of workshops and readings, where multiple new full-length plays are given readings.

The Summit was founded on the goal to find a play that theREP wants to produce–furthering the theatre’s commitment to the development of new work. To date, theREP has selected one play to produce as a world premiere from every single Next Act New Play Summit.

This year, we’re excited to align the Next Act week-long festival a few weeks before the world premiere of the 2023 Summit-winning play “Rosie Is Red And Everybody Is Blue” by John Spellos!

NEXT ACT! NEW PLAY SUMMIT 14 Schedule

Monday, March 31
Presented by the UAlbany Theatre Program and the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute
—New York State Writers Institute at UAlbany, 27th Annual Burian Lecture with Lynn Nottage
—Free to attend at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 31 at the University of Albany’s Studio Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center (1400 Washington Ave. Albany, NY 12222)

Wednesday, April 2
7 p.m. MainStage Reading – “The Last American Newspaper” by Ken Tingley. Directed by Marcus Kyd.
Adapted from Tingley’s memoir and commissioned by Adirondack Theatre Festival with the support of the John E. Herlihy Literary Fellowship, this is story about Glens Falls itself! Revisit unforgettable moments, from the triumphant 2009 Pulitzer Prize win, to dramatic exposés about environmental disasters and the opioid epidemic. The feisty members of a small-town newsroom discover the power of the press to make a difference… and to change their own lives. 

Saturday, April 5
1 p.m. First 15 Readings. Directed by Yvonne Perry.
—”The Ancestry Dot Com Play” by Alyssa Haddad-Chin
Samia never knew her father, and her secretive Lebanese mother is more interested in watching Wheel of Fortune than providing answers. While she’s proud of her Arab American heritage, Samia wishes she knew more about her family history — until her friend does her DNA test without her consent, making Samia confront just how much knowledge about her ancestry she can handle, and how much her friends all really know one another. In the end, Samia opens her test, her results meant just for her.

—”Mrs. Whitman’s Words for Women” by Shayne Kennedy 
In the fall of 1918, three young women meet when they move into the recently built Martha Cook Building, one of the first female dormitories on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Grace is there to find a husband, Lillian, a professor’s daughter, is taking the place that was meant to be filled by her brother, and Ida, who arrives with trunks of clothing, has an unusual amount of street smarts for a young woman raised in wealth and culture. Against the backdrop of world war, a pandemic, and women’s fight for autonomy, these three navigate a system designed more to develop them into gracious wives and competent hostesses than successful career women. They begin to see and rebel and an effort to illegally distribute information about birth control to factory girls in Detroit, brings heartbreaking results none of them could have anticipated.

—”The Judge and His Daughter” by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta
The story of a fictional conservative Supreme Court Justice and his environmental-radicalist 16- year-old daughter. After his daughter is suspended for destroying her school’s air conditioning system with a sledgehammer, the Judge whisks her to a camp in the Adirondacks where they will attempt to live in the wilderness alone for three months, and they submit to the family psychologist’s rules designed to help them get along: He can’t talk about God or banish her to her room. She can’t blame him for everything and must relinquish her phone. Her reward is that she will get to go to public school rather than the all-girls Catholic school she despises. The plan begins to work: the two are starting to enjoy each other’s company, fishing, hunting, searching for an elusive moose, and discussing the Supreme Court docket. But, when his daughter discovers that her mother has been banished by the Judge for having an abortion, well, things take a turn. Will the Judge and his daughter find a way forward?

—And featuring Jill Twiss’ “Good Vibes Only” – Emmy, WGA and Peaboy Award-winning comedy writer and author of “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” a New York Times #1 bestseller, and several other children’s books.
The story of a (real!) nineteen year old Kansas girl named Madison Smith, who found a law from the 1800s that she could use prosecute her own rape.** Unfortunately, that law required Madi and her mom to get the signatures of two-percent of the voting population of her county – which meant that she spent countless hours in a strip mall parking lot describing her rape to a bunch of strangers. (Believe it or not, the play is a comedy.) Will Madi succeed? **This play has been written with the full permission of Madison Smith and her family.

Monday, April 7
7 p.m. Second Look MainStage Reading – “Castling” by Anthony T. Goss. Directed by Daniel Boisrond.
“Castling” was in the 2024 Summit’s First 15 Event and is getting a Second Look (full) reading this year. The play explores the lives of workers at a tire shop in Newark who incorporate chess into their morning routine. As their familiar workplace faces a business takeover, the employees must navigate the challenges that threaten their livelihoods.