THEATER
Kayenta New Play Lab
August 6-31, 2025
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
Now in its third year, the Kayenta New Play Lab is where bold new voices in American theater come to life. Over three exhilarating weeks, six visionary playwrights—chosen by a panel of esteemed local and national theatermakers—dive into an intensive creative residency, shaping fresh, original works for the stage.
Audiences are invited to witness the magic unfold through staged readings of these brand-new plays—raw, real, and alive with possibility. Stay after each reading for an engaging dialogue with the artists, where your feedback helps shape the evolution of each piece.
Whether you’re a dedicated theatergoer, a curious creative, or someone who simply loves the thrill of live performance, the New Play Lab is your front-row seat to the next wave of theatrical storytelling. Come be part of the process. Come be inspired.
Due to system upgrades, ticketing is temporarily unavailable.
“Supporting the creation and development of new work is a vital piece of our vision at the Center for the Arts at Kayenta. Our New Play Lab aims to support artists – both locally and nationally – as they tell the stories of the past, present, and future, for the benefit of us all, as we continue to learn and grow into the ever changing world around us.”
Miranda Wright, Executive Director
2025 Selected Plays:
The Secret History of the Mahulley Monster
When Dr. Kam Vandermeer visits the Midland Paranormal Convention to present her research on the mysterious Mahulley Monster, C-List paranormal TV personality Peter McGillis seems determined to poke holes in her story. But as they delve deeper into Kam’s evidence, their bickering only unearths something stranger than either one of them can explain.
Vampire Panic!
In 1890s New England, during a deadly wave of consumption, Lucy returns home to care for her orphaned niece, Faith, just as rumors of vampires begin to take hold. While Lucy turns to science for answers, young Faith is drawn to a preacher who believes the disease is part of a supernatural threat. As fear and folklore spread through the town, the line between illness and myth becomes harder to define.
Spoiled
An honest family drama about a tense Nisei (second generation Japanese American) mother and the adult children she’s emotionally scarred. As buried trauma, cultural guilt, and generational wounds erupt, the siblings must confront whether survival means staying — or finally walking away.
Persuasion, a modern romance
Los Angeles, 2014. Anne’s father Elliot and sister Elizabeth, former television stars, have spent the last of the family’s fortune on their latest round of cosmetic surgeries. Anne tries to keep the family afloat by renting out their house and working as the in-house chef. One of the houseguests turns out to be the love of Anne’s life: Celia Wentworth. Unfortunately, it appears that Celia has never forgiven Anne for not having the courage to openly pursue their relationship twenty years ago.
Central Standard Time
Central Standard Time is a stand-alone installment in a trilogy of plays. It follows Jay, a thirty-something nonbinary/trans person, home to his family hometown in rural Oklahoma, where he intends to take over a family business that has been left to him and try to make a life among his Native family.
Mountain Meadows And The Little Schoolteacher
This play is based on the life of Juanita Brooks, particularly the years from 1918 to 1951. The central mystery of her life is this: She was a seemingly ordinary Mormon housewife. Widowed as a young mother, married a second time to a man 17 years her senior, she had five children of her own and helped raise her husband’s four sons. She held positions of authority in her Church. She worked at a job for almost her entire life. How did such a woman come to publish the first accurate account of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the full story of which had been actively suppressed by the LDS Church for nearly a hundred years? Where did she get the courage to tell the truth despite the opposition of her community and even family?