In March 2015, Urban Stages launched our development expansion with a 36-Hour Play Festival, engaging six playwrights, six directors, and 18 actors, under the direction of Creative Consultant, Bara Swain, providing a theatre experience in 36 hours. To date, our “Urban Stages New Pages” program presented 63 World Premieres of short plays to full houses in our 76-seat theatre. At the height of the pandemic, we published 32 new plays from 178 submissions on our website for a playwriting challenge, "The Acronym Plays,” and presented 6 selected shorts for a “live” staged reading in March 2022. Another expansion, our award-winning monologue challenge, “The Heroes and Villains Monologues,” was streamed virtually, attracting more than 500 viewers. Urban Stages New Pages expands our artistic community, providing visibility to novice, mid-career and accomplished playwrights, offers free or low-cost public programming, and broadens the networking base for theatre artists engaged in program activities.

Below are links to recent short play festivals. Click to discover the playwrights, directors and actors involved. There are more festivals on the way. Want to attend? Want to be a part? Keep an eye out for info.