A&E Preview: Working in harmony

New Harmony Project isn’t taking a timid approach to its new event, PlayFest Indy.

Jenni Werner, New Harmony Project’s executive artistic director since 2023, said she’s hopeful that public readings of eight new plays in mid-September plant a seed for Indianapolis to become a prominent place where works are developed.

The city already has a wealth of professional theater companies, Werner said, and there’s a void to fill following the demise of the Humana Festival of New American Plays—a fixture of Louisville’s art scene from 1976 to 2022.

Although the New Harmony Project’s home office has been in Indianapolis since its founding in 1987, the organization hasn’t had a flashy presence in the city’s arts community.

“One of the things I was most excited about was figuring out how the New Harmony Project fit into the local arts ecosystem, and how we play a role in helping to develop new work and introduce writers to the Indianapolis theater companies,” said Werner, who served as director of literary and artistic development programs at Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York, before succeeding David Hudson and Lori Wolter Hudson in New Harmony’s leadership role.

New Harmony Project has a 37-year track record of hosting annual writing workshops in New Harmony, a town 25 miles west of Evansville known for past utopian experiments.

In 2002, “An Almost Holy Picture” became the first play developed at New Harmony to make it to Broadway. Kevin Bacon starred in the one-man show. North Central High School alum Jason Keller, known for co-writing the screenplay for 2019 film “Ford v. Ferrari,” worked on a play titled “Paris Moon” during the 1995 edition of the New Harmony workshop.

And “King James,” a play on the 2024-2025 Indiana Repertory Theatre schedule, was developed by Rajiv Joseph at the New Harmony workshop
in 2019.

The IRT is one of eight Indianapolis theater companies that will partner with New Harmony writing alumni during the first PlayFest Indy.

Public readings are scheduled at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center, Storefront Theatre, Fonseca Theatre and the IRT:

• “Port Isabel, Texas,” by New York-based playwright Lucy Thurber, will be hosted by American Lives Theatre Sept. 13 at the Phoenix.

• “Audubon,” by New Orleans-based playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza, will be hosted by Indianapolis Shakespeare Company Sept. 14 at the Phoenix.

•“Noa,” by Pittsburgh-based playwright A.K. Payne, will be hosted by Naptown African American Theatre Collective Sept. 14 at the Phoenix.

• “Sick Girl, Or Don’t Hate Me ’Cuz I’m Pretty,” by Los Angeles-based playwright Lina Patel, will be hosted by Summit Performance Indianapolis Sept. 14 at the Phoenix.

• “Wet,” by Chicago-based playwright Aurora Real de Asua, will be hosted by Phoenix Theatre on Sept. 14.

• “The Birth of the Pill,” by New York-based playwright Jessica Huang, will be hosted by IRT on Sept. 15.

•“Wad,” by Seattle-based playwright Keiko Green, will be hosted by Storefront Theatre on Sept. 15.

• “Huelga,” by San Francisco-based playwright Jordan Ramirez Puckett, will be hosted by Fonseca Theatre on Sept. 15.

Werner said she believes theater companies aspire to produce new works but can be hampered by a lack of resources and connections.

“I said, ‘Here’s a list of playwrights. Tell me which of these writers you think matches with your mission and your aesthetic. I’ll get their plays, and we’ll figure out which play to develop,’” Werner said. “It made it easy for them, I think, to enter into this.”

Authors, directors and actors will refine the PlayFest Indy plays at the Athenaeum, headquarters for New Harmony Project, in the days leading up to the public readings.

When discussing the appeal of attending public readings of plays, Werner said audiences have the chance to “get in on the ground floor” of a creative work.

“You can hear something that nobody else has heard before,” she said. “If you then see it produced at the IRT or at the Phoenix or at the Fonseca or one of these other theaters, you’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember when we saw the reading. These are the things that have changed.’ How fun is it to see how something is made?”

PlayFest Indy enters a local works-in-progress landscape that includes Discovering Broadway, an incubator for musicals; OnyxFest, which is dedicated to the stories of Black playwrights; and Div(x)Fest, which is dedicated to the stories of female authors as well as transgender and nonbinary playwrights.

Werner said New Harmony Project plans to make PlayFest Indy an annual event that grows to include more theater companies and showcase Indianapolis authors.•