TheatreWorks festival provides feedback loop for playwrights

Vichet Chum’s ‘Liebling’ is among four new works featured.

Playwright Vichet Chum’s abilities as a creator of stories has its limits. Once his work reaches the initial conclusion, he needs outside voices to develop his work further, which provides necessary inflection and context for both his ears and vision.

“Often, you’re writing by yourself in a silo for so long, so when you get the opportunity to be in a room with other collaborators, you are taking in pieces of the play from a different vantage point, those collaborators offering feedback on very specific areas,” Chum said. “You want to hear and listen to all of it, because it’s so vital to know how each part of the ecosystem is working.”

That opportunity is coming in the form of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s 21st annual New Works Festival,” which is debuting stage readings of four brand-new plays. Chum, who resides in New York City, is returning to the Bay Area for the festival after his play, “Bald Sisters,” made its West Coast debut at San Jose Stage in late 2023.

The festival’s artistic producer Jeffrey Lo, a Campbell resident who succeeded the previous producer and present artistic director Giovanna Sardelli, is passionate about what audiences will get to view, positively thrilled with this year’s offerings. In addition to Chum’s play “Liebling,” which will get staged readings Aug. 13 and 17,  there is the play “A Driving Beat,” by Jordan Ramirez Puckett, a new play with music, “Hysterical” by Molly Bell, and the musical “5 & Dime” by Ashley Robinson, with lyrics by Shakina and music by Dan Gillespie Sells.

“The festival is super great in a way because we are helping audiences learn how much they actually do love being a little bit more adventurous,” said Lo, who is also directing Chum’s piece. “A lot of our new works are going to feel new, fresh and will be different stories from communities who desperately want their stories to be told. Sometimes the plays mess with format and structure, and the audiences will sometimes love it and other times won’t necessarily respond to it. Those are things that are valuable for us to learn.”

The festival’s history boasts some critical hits in the American theater canon, including one of its earliest entries, “Memphis,” which went on to win four Tony Awards, including best musical, in 2010. Another notable festival entry, “Describe the Night,” went on to garner an Obie award for best new American play in 2018 for playwright Rajiv Joseph.

These opportunities to get a work developed in a professional setting, especially a festival sponsored by one of the largest regional theaters in the Bay Area, is critical to a play’s lifespan. As incubators of new works nationwide have fallen off, the opportunity to work with theater makers and a talent pool as deep as what the Bay Area offers is an opportunity to get a play ready for its natural destination – a full production somewhere.

“We are not writing books, but we are writing living productions,” Chum said. “Once you go through a couple of processes, you hear how it lands, and then make changes here and there. But at the end of the day, a production is when you are offered the opportunity to actually see your play, which is when the big changes actually happen.”

While the aim isn’t necessarily to have TheatreWorks become the ultimate beneficiary of a work produced at the festival, it does happen often. Lo, who has been a part of the festival in some capacity since the late 2000s, has leaned in deeply to what the festival means for new works, whether it’s for the TheatreWorks mainstage or for another landing spot around the country. What TheatreWorks and their audiences offer in development opportunities is second to none.

“So often, you’ll do a staged reading and get 50 people if you’re lucky. But for our festival, we’ll have 300 people in the audience who are excited to see a work in progress, which is really special,” Lo said. “A lot of people respond to how this is the biggest audience a piece that’s still in progress is going to get, and there will be a true reaction from these audience members, which is really exciting.”

The New Works Festival runs Aug. 9-18 at the Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $16.25-$65 at theatreworks.org.

David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2022-23).