Lift Every Voice

Lift Every Voice: New Play Festival, hosted at The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art

March 3-5, 2023

Be the first to experience new plays by the country’s leading playwrights.

For the first time American Stage is partnering with the James Museum in Downtown St. Petersburg to bring the theatre’s new play festival to a new home.

The Festival will include five readings of new plays currently in development, conversations and forums with working artists, and a keynote address from an established playwright.

As a part of American Stage's and the James Museum's commitment to diverse voices each year at least one playwright featured in the festival will be an indigenous artist.

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Pueblo Revolt

Written by Dillon Chitto

The year is 1680 in what we now know as New Mexico. The Indigenous population is living under Colonial Spanish rule, and the Pueblo Revolt will soon begin. Two brothers, one a budding revolutionary, and the other, a gay idealist, are bracing for a battle of survival, morality, and what it means to be human in this historical comedy.

Mestiza, or Mixed

Written by Melissa Leilani Larson

Lark Timon is no stranger to failure; it loomed large throughout her filmmaking career. Plagued by debt and professional disappointment, Lark chances upon a potentially career-changing opportunity only to be confronted by questions about her art, her relationships and her identity as a mixed race queer woman.

Decolonizing Your Mind with Walter Mercado ‍

Written by Jayne Deely

Zee, a bartender struggling through her mid 20’s in New York is visited by the three ghosts of Christmas past. But instead of the Christmas Carol narrative, the three ghosts are her Puerto Rican ancestors, confronting her with a long-forgotten truth. Decolonizing Your Mind with Walter Mercado is a uniquely Puerto Rican, uniquely New York, and uniquely queer story.

The Figs

Written by Doug Robinson

How much would you sacrifice for love? The Figs is a fairytale-like play about what-ifs, desires, and obsession. Follow a mad king obsessed with figs, a star-crossed princess infatuated with an inn-keeper, a boy whose only friend is a swan, and a wiley storyteller. The Figs pushes for audiences to remember the wonder held inside a good story.

Lati-No!

Written by Miguel Muñoz

Popular student John Flowers is “living the dream” at Americaland High School and hiding his Latin roots while pretending to be the all-American boy. Everyone is in love with him, he can do no wrong, that is until, a new student, Macho, with maracas in hand, blows his façade. What happens when the dream starts to crumble and who is John without his false reality?

After Orlando

Written by Madeline Sayet

Written in response to the Pulse Nightclub tragedy, After Orlando is a short play that shares a first person account of what goes through your mind during this terrifying moment. But who is speaking? Is it the shooter, the bystander or the victim? Three actors, three directors, three perspectives, and one play.