New Visions, New Voices 2018 is a festival of staged readings including four original plays written by women undergraduate seniors in the B.F.A./Theatre Studies program at Southern Methodist University.

Dates: March 22-25
Place: Greer Garson Theatre, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU, Dallas, Texas
Tickets: Free

AIN’T NOBODY’S BUSINESS IF I DO by Caroline Hamilton (75 minutes)
Patrick Lynston is dead–somebody stabbed him to death. Why would anyone murder this small town hero? As Detective Wanda Major investigates, she discovers disturbing secrets about Lynston, his wife Sylvia, his girlfriend Carla Wynne, and what the town knew when. Hamilton’s play explores the sometimes thin line between law and justice. Original play, staged reading.

bang bang, or at the end of this play I am going to kill myself, a comedy of the depressed by Katie Ibrahim
(135 minutes)
It’s New Year’s Eve 2017, and El is having a bad day. Her friends are coming over to celebrate the holiday, and she institutes “The Rules” so that wecanallhaveagoodnightnomatterwhatdammit! This meta-theatrical play explores the mechanics of anxiety, depression, love, friendship, and addiction within the Einsteinian looping of time and space. What happens when the voice of your anxiety comes out of the mouths of your BFF, roommate, and ex-lover?

WOLF MOTHER by Blaze Hubbell (125 minutes)
Out in the desert, Rhonda, Louise, Camellia, and Spike try to escape a violent biker gang. They are protected by the Wolf Mother, a ghost-spectre. Only by trusting each other and joining with the Wolf Mother can the women escape and, more, build a new safe place for victims of violence.

water from the river is also in the seas/LITTLELAMB by Bella O’Brien (95 minutes)
These two short plays consider what happens to innocent people when authoritarian governments and war sweep over them. In water from the river is also in the sea, Halo returns from a trip to find her lover Luka missing. Where did he go? As Halo searches, government reps start to watch her and erase her life. In LITTLELAMB, littlelamb, moderatelysizedlamb, and shepherdess Betty flee the bombs and death or war… how far will they have to go?

In each of these original plays, the main characters are female, the playwrights are female, and the topics are domestic violence, anxiety & depression, government oppression, and survival. Perhaps surprisingly, there is also laughter, friendship, agency, and, yes, joy.