By Ilana Jael Rothman
It’s hard to think of a more appropriate opening image for Theatre Lab’s Second Annual Owl New Play Festival than a contemporary playwright hard at work on a new script.
No, Joanna Castle Miller, the playwright in question, isn’t actually polishing up the pages of her new play Inferna with only a few minutes to curtain — but, doing double duty as its leading actress, she sells the moment well enough to keep audiences guessing.
Throughout, her playful irreverence towards theatrical conventions creates a compelling tension between her meta-role as this story’s all-powerful playwright and her in-show role as vulnerable protagonist. Instead of resolving it, her interrogation of her evangelical upbringing eventually collapses the distance between church and theatre altogether by casting the audience as witnesses to her confessions.
After she’s done taking us through hell, she shares a vision of heaven that elevates the playwright into a deity. And I wonder, not for the first time, whether the only real difference between paradise and damnation is who’s in charge of what script.
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There was always going to be something bittersweet about this particular opening — Inferna being the last production slated to take place in the repurposed cafeteria that has been Theatre Lab’s main performance space for a decade.
But given the company’s growing ambitions, it was only a matter of time before a corresponding increase in capacity was in order. This temporary move from a former dormitory on Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus into their Marleen Forkas Studio One Theatre is set to double that capacity, which will eventually increase even further as new facilities are developed.
“So obviously my main hope is that means we’re doubling our audience,” comments Matt Stabile, Theatre Lab’s artistic director.
But close followers may already have noticed signs of intentional growth in the company’s operations — most obviously with the rebrand of their long-running New Play Festival into the expanded Owl New Play Festival version.
This year, the festival’s lineup will include six readings of original theatrical work, three discussion-based “themes and threads” events, and a workshop-style presentation of another new play’s Act 1. The “owl new” part of it all is the pairing of this developmental work with two fully staged anchor productions, which, this year, Inferna happens to be one of.
The other — a Shakespeare-inspired musical titled By Any Other Name — is a partnership with FAU’s Department of Theatre and Dance, set to premiere the following weekend.
Rather than allow these more traditional theatrical presentations to replace readings and workshops, the “Owl New” model seeks to increase audience interest in these events by combining both modes under the umbrella of one experience.
For Stabile, the new label was a way to signal this expansion, and the beginning of his ongoing efforts to turn the festival into more than a respected local mainstay.
Instead, he envisions Owl New evolving into a destination event with appeal beyond South Florida. And his efforts to attract out-of-town audiences have already been successful enough for the company to parlay into a second hotel partnership in the festival’s second year.
In conceptualizing what that further expansion might look like, he takes inspiration from models like West Virginia’s Contemporary American Theater Festival and Louisville’s now-defunct Humana Festival. If Owl New were to develop a similar national presence, the increased visibility for Theatre Lab is something Stabile hopes will highlight the groundbreaking work the company has already been doing to take new plays to the next level.
“We’ve done over 100 developmental readings at this point,” he said. “And while we haven’t produced every play, we can track well into the 100, 200 range of productions that those plays got around the country.”
But 70 percent of Theatre Lab’s own mainstage shows do spring directly from these readings, which are specifically curated to feature works that do not yet feel performance-ready.
“We’re here to make sure the playwright has the ability to do a deep dive … they’re constantly rewriting during our process so they can hear different things,” he explains.
In other words, for plays in this stage of development, the image of a desperate playwright frenetically chipping away at a script until the 11th hour may not actually be so far off.
For mainstage pieces like Inferna, though, he’s typically looking for scripts that do feel a little more like finished products.
Something else that Stabile takes pride in about Theatre Lab is the company’s ability to form lasting relationships with individual playwrights and support them through various stages of a work’s development.
“This year’s slate of professional readings are all actually South Florida-based playwrights. We wanted to be intentional about that,” he reflects about a line-up that includes several returning artists.
“These are shows that have been worked on and developed and we’ve worked on for quite a while, so we expect it to be to the levels of what Theatre Lab patrons are accustomed to,” he explains.
Within the festival, he also looks for pieces that can exist in conversation with one another through a shared theme.
“In this year’s festival, Inferna and By Any Other Name, both very much deal with the stories which are in the classic theater canon, and particularly in how young women are treated in a lot of these stories.”
In a program note from playwright Castle Miller, she describes the piece in similar terms.
“Inferna is a true story about all the other stories that made mine inevitable: the stories we tell and the ones we allow others to tell about us,” she writes.
More practically speaking, Inferna can perhaps be most accurately described as a dramatization of Castle Miller’s efforts to reckon with the stories and “scripts” that shaped her coming-of-age.
The scripts set forth for her in the Bible and by the leaders of the evangelical church she grew up in; the literal scripts she was cast in as an earnest teenage actress; and, most hauntingly, the cultural scripts that made it easier for her to condemn female sexuality than to hold a predator accountable.
Along with herself, Castle Miller’s script calls for one additional male actor — in Theatre Lab’s production, Jeff Burleson. He’s the perfect bumbling clown for only as long as her script calls for it — but proves surprisingly chilling when Miller’s narratives force him into a more sinister role.
As the primary storyteller, though, Castle Miller is a charismatic, dynamic presence who maintains impeccable command of the stage and of herself even as her material’s emotional weight intensifies.
In her hands, Inferna becomes something more than a ruthlessly raw look at her own experience and becomes something even thought-provoking — an interrogation of the power and limits of storytelling itself.
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Opening a week ahead of the rest of the festival, it’s also the only part of it I’ve had the chance to check out for myself so far. But as an intelligent piece that speaks directly to modern-day dilemmas, it seems to encapsulate the Owl New ethos perfectly.
“The reason that more people should be engaging with new plays is that… the playwrights crafting them are living and existing in the same time as you are,” Stabile notes.
What he’s describing, in part, is the unique ability of new work to facilitate a real-time sense of connection to a given piece. To offer audiences stories it’s easier for them to see themselves in — and to offer living playwrights a chance to see their stories heard.
“To an audience and to me that’s the real purpose of theater, is to create conversation, to create dialogue, and to do the thing that no other curriculum can do, which is to teach empathy. And I think that is the most important thing we can do right now,” he reflects.
At Inferna’s opening night this past weekend, I saw several of these principles at work in real time — conversations sparked between seatmates, lively post-show debates. It was an exciting kick-off for Owl New, but it was also a more bittersweet moment for Theatre Lab than anyone could’ve anticipated. Earlier that day, Stabile had reached out to the company’s supporters to share some sad news about the death of their founding director Louis Tyrrell, who had been the initial founder of the Lab and continued to exert an essential artistic influence.
“Lou has always said that the classics of tomorrow are the new plays of today, and every play and musical somebody loves and adores,” Stabile said of his colleague.
In a later email, he made a point of acknowledging the enduring impact of Tyrrell’s efforts as a champion of new work and reflects on the enormity of the loss:
“Lou’s incredible passion for the Theatre was not fueled by the accolades or applause that came with it. What enchanted him about this artform was the people. The people who make it. The people who love it as he did. And, most of all, the people who it brings together. And it is with those people where Lou’s greatest legacy can be found.”
That the rest of this year’s festival will be formally dedicated to Tyrrell’s legacy feels like a fitting tribute. Personally, I’d only known him in passing, but enjoyed the sense of warmth he exuded as a fixture at the Lab — and in the room this past Saturday, my visceral sense of that legacy was almost as profound as the palpable sense of loss.
After the show, I’m among the audience members Stabile leads in a heartfelt toast to Lou, and something feels genuinely sacred about joining in to raise a glass. As someone who’s long abandoned any churchgoing, I contemplate the extent to which I’ve embraced theater-going as a kind of substitute religion. How much I rely on these shared rituals and stories as a way of feeling connected to something — and how much Tyrrell has left to the writers of scripts to come.
If you go
What: Owl New Play Festival @ FAU Theatre Lab (Parliament Hall, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Mainstage Shows: Inferna, April 11-26 (Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 pm)
By Any Other Name, April 17-26 (Friday and Saturday, 7 pm; Sunday 2 pm, “Industry Night” Tuesday, April 21, 7 pm; Friday, April 24, 7 pm; Saturday, April 25, 2 pm; Sunday, April 26, 2 pm)
Readings and Workshops
Elephant In the Room, by Jeff Bower; Saturday, April 18, 2 pm
The Saga of Peaches and the Black King, by Gretchen Suárez Peña; Sunday, April 19, 12 pm
Plain Sight, by Michael McKeever; Saturday, April 25, 2 pm
The Last Queen of San Domino, by Chandler Hubbard; Saturday, April 25, 7pm
Baker Street Beginnings, by Gina Montét; Saturday, 4/26, 12 pm
Tickets: Ticket prices vary by event, from free (student readings) to $35-45 (mainstage shows), with discounts available for FAU faculty/staff. For exact prices and more information about these individual events, or to purchase tickets visit https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/theatrelab/owlnewplayfestival/. Tickets can also be purchased at www.fauevents.com or by calling 561-297-6124