KAYENTA NEW PLAY LAB
Central Standard Time
by Maddox Pennington (Los Angeles, CA)
Friday, August 22, 7:30pm
Saturday, August 23, 3:00pm
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
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.
About Maddox Pennington
Maddox Pennington (he/they) is a nonbinary performer, professor, director, and playwright; a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University, and their debut bibliomemoir, ‘A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me About Life, Love, and Women’s Work’ was published by Hachette Books in 2017. Their work for the stage has been developed with LA’s Native Voices, The Moving Arts MADLab, the 2024 Creative Nations First Storytellers Festival in Boulder, CO. He’s performed as an actor in The Fountain Theater’s White Rabbit Red Rabbit (Nassim Soleimanpoor) and Native Voices’ Antikoni (Beth Piatote, Colville Confederated Tribes).
With his production company Gaybones, Pennington has written, directed and produced award-winning plays with majority nonbinary/trans casts. He recently co-produced THE JOY WHO LIVED Festival with LaserVision productions, facilitating acting and writing workshops and directing a debut presentation of LOVE CHICKEN: The Musical, with songs by Laser Webber and Tony Gonzalez. You can find them online at MaddoxKPennington.com and @MKPinLA.
KAYENTA NEW PLAY LAB
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.
The 2025 Kayenta New Play Lab is generously sponsored by Douglas Caputo and Desert Dweller Real Estate.
