10 FEBRUARY 5-11, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Turning Twenty THE PLAY’S STILL THE THING AT THE DCPA’S COLORADO NEW PLAY SUMMIT. BY TONI TRESCA Twenty years in, the Colorado New Play Sum- mit has become one of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s most reliable engines for generating hits. Since its founding, the Summit has introduced 74 new plays, and more than half have later returned as full productions at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The festival’s track record includes titles that have become genuine calling cards for the DCPA’s commitment to new work: Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale, Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride and Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will, among others. “As we celebrate the twentieth anniver- sary of the Colorado New Play Summit, we’re honoring two decades of bold storytelling and boundary-pushing voices,” says Chris Coleman, artistic director of the Denver Cen- ter Theatre Company. “This year’s selected readings refl ect the Summit’s enduring com- mitment to new work, and we can’t wait to share them with our audiences.” The twentieth annual Colorado New Play Summit, set for February 14-15, will feature staged readings of new plays by Bonnie An- tosh, DCPA-commissioned playwright Isaac Gómez, Alyssa Haddad-Chin and Tony Men- eses, as well as world premiere productions of Cowboys and East Indians by Nina McCo- nigley and Matthew Spangler, and Godspeed by Terence Anthony, both of which were fi rst introduced as readings at the 2024 Summit. Summit writers spend a week rehearsing with directors, actors and dramaturgs before presenting readings to the public twice over the weekend, using the room as a kind of live diagnostic to determine what’s working and what needs work. All four playwrights emphasize that this model of new play de- velopment is even more important now that the larger ecosystem that once incubated new work has thinned. “Since the pandemic, so many theater companies have closed, and those who haven’t closed have lost new play develop- ment,” Gómez says. “So the existence of the Summit — thank God it’s still around — means that new plays have a chance at a world beyond. Denver’s commitment to new work is so necessary, and I hope it continues to thrive and fl ourish.” In advance of the Summit,Westword spoke with all four of the playwrights in- volved with the 2026 Colorado New Play Summit. Here, in alphabetical order, is a closer look at the writers bringing new work to Denver, as well as what they hope to gain from their participation in the Summit: Lemuria by Bonnie Antosh Based out of Asheville, North Carolina, Bonnie Antosh describes Lemuria as “matri- archal King Lear.” Her starting point was an inheritance drama set in the contemporary South, centered on women fi ghting to suc- ceed an outgoing leader. She just needed the right framework, something “based strongly in science or technology,” that could justify a matriarchy as more than a metaphor. Then, as Antosh tells it, a long-ago under- graduate class on primate evolution came roaring back: She remembered learning that lemurs, like orcas and honeybees, ex- ist in natural matriarchies. When a “queen lemur dies,” Antosh says, “younger females battle to claim her spot, so that was sort of the click – fi nding a parallel between this sort of inheritance drama I wanted to tell in the human world and its analog in nature.” The result is a deliberately odd cocktail. “It’s a crazy fl avor combination,” Antosh says. She wrote the pitch in three hours, fueled by “delight and passion,” even as she wondered if anyone would ever pro- duce it. Antosh calls Lemuria her “COVID play,” commissioned in the fi rst month of lockdown and developed across years of workshops and readings. That origin story shapes its emotional frequency. “In many ways, it’s a comedy about grief. I wrote it during the pandemic, and I thought, ‘Oh, this play will be produced in a more opti- mistic cultural moment, in a more optimistic world,’ and that has not necessarily proven to be true,” she says. “So I think audiences are still trying to fi nd a sense of wonder amidst experiences of grief.” Antosh is excited by the chance to experi- ment at the Summit. She’s even considering different openings or closings across the weekend, imagining that Saturday and Sun- day audiences “may see alternate beginnings and/or endings of the play.” Infl uent by Isaac Gómez Chicago-based playwright Isaac Gómez returns to the Colorado New Play Summit with Infl uent, a commissioned work that has been quietly gestating with the Denver Center for nearly a decade. Gómez previ- ously participated in the 2019 Colorado New Play Summit with a reading of Wally World, and coming-of-age adaptation I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter received a full production at the DCPA in 2024, mak- ing Infl uent both a homecoming and a next chapter in an ongoing artistic relationship. Infl uent began life under a very differ- ent title, The Social Infl uence of Paris and Britney, as a millennial reconsideration of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as proto- infl uencers. Over time, Gómez says the play shifted inward, forcing a confrontation with the playwright’s own discomfort with “how vulnerability has been turned into currency.” At its core, Infl uent examines the friction between public and private selves and the way infl uencer culture offers “belonging and redemption and meaning, but not always reckoning or accountability.” That thematic inquiry is matched by a formal challenge. Gómez structures the play to mirror the experience of scrolling online. “What you think you see” versus “what is really, really happening” becomes not just subject matter, but a theatrical engine, raising questions about how to stage a screen-driven experience live. The Summit is where Gómez hopes to fi nally “crack” that problem. “To be really honest, I don’t know if it works,” Gómez says. “We’re going to fi nd out.” For a playwright whose career has been shaped in close collaboration with the Denver Center, beginning with early ad- vocacy from the late Douglas Langworthy, the DCPA’s onetime director of new play development, uncertainty is part of the ap- peal. The play, Gómez adds, is dedicated to Langworthy, “one of the greatest new play infl uencers of all time.” You Should Be So Lucky by Alyssa Haddad-Chin Alyssa Haddad-Chin’s You Should Be So Lucky began with a moment of recognition in an art gallery. The Brooklyn-based Lebanese American playwright was participating in a writers group tasked with creating a one-act inspired by pieces in the gallery when she came across an artwork depicting a market that seemed familiar. She photographed it and showed it to her husband, who is Chinese-American and grew up in New York City. He recognized it right away; he had visited that market with his grandmother, and it no longer existed. That disappearance became the play’s catalyst. Haddad-Chin traces its origins to the period coming out of COVID, when Chinatown communities were deeply im- pacted by economic loss and a rise in anti- Asian violence. At the same time, she was personally grappling with the impending loss of her grandmother-in-law, a woman she admired for her tenacity, including her resistance to gentrifi cation as her Chinatown apartment building moved toward conver- sion into co-ops. The play began as a short, thirty-page one- act “that was a place to put this energy,” but it quickly became clear that it needed more space. Since 2022, the script has evolved into a full-length work shaped by Haddad-Chin’s recurring interest in “generations of women trying to fi nd ways to come together and pass on tradition.” As the play expanded, it earned recogni- tion, including the Blue Ink Award for Play- writing, along with development support. Now, Haddad-Chin is eager for what the Summit offers: fresh collaborators, a new audience and the chance to hear the play in a city encountering it for the fi rst time. She’s also clear-eyed about why festivals like the Summit matter right now. “Opportunities like the New Play Summit are priceless for playwrights,” she says. “In an industry that is shrinking, these new play festivals are so important to the cultural fabric of the theater industry. Also, as playwrights, we cannot make work without an audience. That’s impossible, and the Summit and festi- vals like it -- although this one is particularly special, giving folks a chance to interact with new plays.” CULTURE continued on page 12 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Kyle Cameron, Sasha Roiz, Jacob Dresch and Arielle Goldman in the 2025 Colorado New Play Summit. PHOTO BY JAMIE KRAUS PHOTOGRAPHY
