All weekend long, take in brand new plays at the Confluence New Play Festival. The festival features staged readings of three new works written by last year’s class of the Confluence Writers Project.
Friday’s play is Saving Grace by Charlie Meyers, Saturday’s is American Spirit/American Spiral by Maiya Corral, and Sunday’s is The Black Paradox by Cameron S. Noel. Showtime is at 7 p.m. all three nights, and the readings happen in St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s rehearsal space at 3333 Washington in Grand Center. The new cohort for the program will also be announced.
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“This is Year 5, and honestly, it’s gone better than we could have ever really hoped,” says Tom Ridgely, producing artistic director of the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, which hosts the program and the festival. Of the 16 plays commissioned over the years, five have gone on to full productions, and many others are still under development. “That’s an incredibly high rate for a new program,” he says.
The program, with Deanna Jent as program drector and Nancy Bell as founding program director, is open to emerging playwrights in Missouri and Illinois, with an emphasis on diversity—racial, sexual or gender identity, geographic, and more. These are voices, Ridgely says, it’s critical to amplify.
“Typically, what happens in St. Louis—and really almost everywhere else—is plays get imported from…mostly New York and California,” says Ridgely. “That’s great—they’re wonderful plays, but they’re leaving out the perspective of a whole lot of the country. That’s an issue, we feel. Important voices are being left out.”
The cohort spends a year with support and mentorship as they write, with the festival as the culmination of their work. They meet monthly for workshops and writing sessions, meet for a retreat in the city one weekend, and complete a full-length play.
“It’s so special,” Ridgely says. “They get a nice stipend—essentially a commission. They get mentorship. They get fellowship with other playwrights. They’re meeting every month with people in the same place as them.”
A participant from the 2021 had great success with her work from the program, for example. “Courtney Bailey’s Bronte Sister House Party cleaned up at the St. Louis Theatre Circle Awards,” says Ridgely. It notched four awards: outstanding new play, outstanding production of a comedy, outstanding ensemble in a comedy, and outstanding supporting performance in a comedy.
The program and festival, Ridgely explains, tend to touch every corner of the St. Louis theater community, because folks from the city’s multitude of companies are tapped to act, support, and direct. And that’s not just good for the folks on the creative side, he adds.
“We’re trying to develop the writers, but we’re trying to develop the audiences as well,” he says. “This can be just as interesting or exciting as whatever was on Broadway last year.”
Friday’s play, Saving Grace by Charlie Meyers, visits with a young widow mourning her wife in both novel and ancient ways. “Charlie is St. Louis-based,” says Ridgely. “If you’re really interested in what the hometown writer is up to, that’s the one to come to.”
On Saturday, Maiya Corral’s American Spirit/American Spiral is set against an inquiry into a mysterious death, that uncovers more than the investigating niece had bargained for. “Maiya is based in Chicago,” says Ridgely. “There’s even some Chicago artists in the reading,” fostering even more networking and cross-pollination opportunities.
On Sunday, the festival closes with Cameron S. Noel’s The Black Paradox. Protagonist Shemar arrives late for a museum outing and gets trapped within a revealing exhibit. “Cameron is in the graduate playwriting program at SIU Carbondale—it’s the closest one by far; you have to go to Chicago for the next closest one,” says Ridgely.
The program, says Ridgely, gives talented artists outside the usual pipeline the chance to develop their craft and enter the national conversation. “For an artist to get a chance to do something, you have to pay them,” he says. “Exposure does not pay the rent. We know that if we invest it will pay dividends, but we know we have to invest.”
