By Alexandra Brewer | Arts & Life Writer
For the first time, Baylor’s theatre department shone a spotlight on up-and-coming playwrights and actors this past weekend through its bi-annual New Play Initiative, a program dedicated to showcasing and providing feedback to rising playwrights.
The event ran from Friday to Sunday, with events such as script readings, receptions, dinners and a final awards ceremony at the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center, the Baylor Club, Helberg Barbecue and Art Center Waco. The event will be held again in the spring of 2027.
The initiative was made possible by Preston and Ronda Kirk, alumni from the class of ’68. It is designed to provide playwrights with the ability to workshop their scripts as previous and current students bring their works to life, according to Jack Angelo Cummings. Cummings, a New York-based playwright, wrote “& Sons,” one of the plays read during the event and the winner of the initiative’s Kirk New Play Prize: a $15,000 award to aid in script production.
“It’s a privilege and an honor,” Cummings said. “To watch the actors play has been a total treat because you write your words and it’s just a word, but an actor can make a word so much more.”
Cummings said he was dumbfounded at the announcement of his win.
“I really don’t have the words,” he said. “I’m so appreciative and grateful for this experience.”
For theatre students and alumni, the initiative is more than a performance opportunity — it’s a hands-on learning experience that gives them a look into the developmental process of professional theatre. Unlike performing a finalized work, actors must bring to life a show that has nothing more than a script that’s working through revisions.
“Having to surrender to the page is really scary, and it can be really vulnerable to just use your voice,” Dallas senior Lyla Meece said.
Meece, a theatre performance major, played a leading role in Brooklyn-based playwright Janielle Kastner’s play, “Here Kitty Kitty.”
“I hope our playwright feels proud of the work that she’s put in because she’s seriously a genius the way she has written the script and given us all the tools to make it successful,” Meece said. “It’s really just up to us to deliver that for her, and I hope she gets a good sense of what she wants it to look like in the future.”
Behind the initiative were the organizers who worked to coordinate partnerships with playwrights, ensuring students were gaining a meaningful experience from each portion of the process and planning details down to food and travel accommodations for those whose plays were selected.
“The first half is kind of the creative [part] … and the second half is just a lot of event planning,” said Dr. Carla Neuss, an assistant professor in the theatre department and organizer for the initiative.
Neuss said the planning took about a year, from reading script submissions to selecting the four playwrights who would attend the initiative. In the future, she said, the initiative hopes to expand to allow more playwrights this opportunity.
