2021 New Works Festival

The Stanford Asian American Theater Project puts on their New Works Festival every year where student playwrights get to have their short plays performed in a series of staged readings. The goal of this festival is to decentralize mainstream narratives in favor of validating and evaluating the experiences of any person who wants to live in a world that is not defined by white, cisheterosexual, able-bodied patriarchy, etc. However, due to the  COVID-19 pandemic, the company had to move its 2021 production online. 

In order to adjust to the online environment, the New Works Festival turned into a 7-week playwriting workshop where student playwrights would collaborate together to work on their individual pieces and develop scenes. Three visiting playwrights (Young Jean Lee, Kari Barclay, and Jeffrey Lo) came in as guest speakers to workshop the plays with the students as well. At the end of the process, the three short plays were performed over the course of two weekends in the form of Zoom staged readings.