What does the future hold for theatre and dance?

Audiences can get a glimpse April 2-7 at Frontier Fest, the annual week-long showcase of adventurous, new works by students in the Texas Tech University School of Theatre & Dance.

Frontier Fest mirrors other new work development workshop models from around the nation. Students participating in the festival are encouraged to take risks, innovate, and explore their artistry within an intentionally limited scope of resources, centering the work of the writer, the director, the choreographer, the actor, and the dancer, while striving for clear and imaginative storytelling.

Featuring three full length plays, eight 10-minute plays—some with American Sign Language interpretation—and one choreographed work, this year's festival also includes three post-show events that range from oral storytelling and devised theatre to a performance by the School's improv troupe, Humor Us!

The three graduate students presenting full-length plays this year—doctoral student Tamar Neumann and MFA playwriting students Jada Campbell and Ben Stanford—have all had 10-minute plays produced in prior festivals. Neumann, whose had plays produced in other development processes, has enjoyed being involved in the process from the beginning.

“I've felt like a big part of the process,” says Neumann.” In other cases where I've had scripts produced, my role has been mostly to show up and see what happens in the end. Being able to work with the cast throughout this process has been a true gift.”

Neumann's play, A Sacred Exchange, is a comedic drama that explores the complexities of open adoption and the challenges of expanding families in unexpected ways. She wrote the first draft of the play while in her MA program in 2019.  It was workshopped last summer in the School's WildWind Performance Lab before she produced a reading of it last fall to prepare for Frontier Fest. Next week will be the first time she sees the play “on its feet without scripts in hand.”

This year, the full-length plays and each set of 10-minute plays will have two performances, a change from prior festivals that Stanford welcomes:

Adding a second performance is a big deal—primarily for the actors and directors who work so hard to make these ​plays happen. As a playwright, though, it never hurts to be able to watch once with your audience-brain on--just to watch--and then watch another time with your playwright-brain on to track specific interests for future development of the play.

Stanford's Purple Car originated as a short story he wrote in high school.  He revisited the work in 2022, separating the idea into two acts inspired by plays, playwrights, and structures he's studied at Texas Tech.

“The basic bones of the short story's plot is now the play's Act II,” explains Stanford. “Since [revisiting the work], the play has had a reading and a workshop with Red Theatre Company," (a student-led company housed in the School of Theatre & Dance).

Campbell also workshopped her play, A Better Place in the DSA, with WildWind Performance Lab this past summer and with Red Theatre Company in the fall. DSA is an acronym for Divided States of America, and Campbell's socio-political play set during a second civil war originated with (although set 30 years prior to) her 10-minute play, Remember to Forget, produced last year in Frontier Fest.

There are more than 60 theatre and dance students and 8 students from the ASL program in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures involved in this year's festival, so audiences will experience a variety of new work.

Or, as Neumann explains, “Expect new work that may be surprising and different. Expect experimentation. Expect fun.”

Frontier Fest runs April 2-7 in the Theatre & Dance Complex located at 2812 18th Street on the Texas Tech campus.  Admission is free to all events, but advanced reservations are encouraged at the Maedgen Theatre Box Office by email or phone (806.742.3603). For a complete festival line-up, please visit the School of Theatre & Dance website.