Fresh Acts: A Festival of New Plays

The Theatre Program of the University at Albany’s Department of Music and Theatre is pleased to announce its upcoming Fresh Acts: A Festival of New Plays, now in its sixth year. This year’s festival is a collaboration involving more than 40 students, with five performances from April 10 through 13, 2024 at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center on the uptown University at Albany campus.

Fresh Acts presents readings of six one-act plays written, directed, stage managed and performed by students under the mentorship of Fresh Acts artistic director Kate Walat, associate professor and playwright-in-residence in the Theatre Program. The plays were chosen from a competitive, blind submission process. The final selections were made by Brooklyn-based playwright Amina Henry, whose own play Little Rapes will be presented in the Authors Theatre reading series in collaboration with the New York State Writers Institute on Tuesday, April 2.

“Fresh Acts provides UAlbany playwrights with the opportunity to be in rehearsal with their new plays, as actors become the first to give voice to their characters and directors begin to envision the plays’ theatrical potential,” says Walat. “This year’s plays showcase the incredible range of creative voices and perspectives of UAlbany’s community of writers and theatre-makers.” The playwrights in the festival include Theatre majors as well as students studying English/Creative Writing, Music, Business and Political Science.

One of this year’s plays, Hiatus by Donnie-Lee Frazier, was previously selected by a national search to appear in the New South Young Playwrights Festival at Horizon Theater in Atlanta. Twice in the past five years plays that appeared in Fresh Acts have gone on to be selected for Capital Repertory Theatre’s NEXT ACT! festival, offering students professional opportunities. In the fall of 2020, two plays that were previously part of the festival went on to be fully produced with a faculty director in the Theatre Program’s NEW WORKS/NEW WAYS.

This year’s Fresh Acts festival includes two different programs of plays presented by two ensembles of student performers. The Friday 3pm performance will debut “fresh bites”: a showcase of excerpts of works-in-progress by students currently in UAlbany’s Advanced Playwriting class.

The schedule includes shows on Wednesday & Thursday, April 10 & 11 at 8pm; Friday, April 12 at 3pm and Saturday, April 13 at 2pm & 8pm.

Advance tickets are $8 for the general public and $5 for students, senior citizens and UAlbany faculty-staff.  Tickets purchased on the day of the show are $13 for the general public and $10 for students, seniors and UAlbany faculty-staff.  All tickets must be purchased on-line from the UAlbany Performing Arts Center’s site at www.albany.edu/pac/tickets. Information and assistance can be obtained by contacting the UAlbany Performing Arts Center’s main office at (518) 442-3995 or pac@albany.edu.