Kentucky Playwrights Find Their Voice at FbTC’s Festival of New Plays 2025

Flashback Theater Co. (FbTC) is excited to announce the return of its New Play Development program with a special twist: This year, for the first time ever, Flashback’s New Play Development workshop will culminate in a Festival of New Plays staged reading event on June 13th! One full length play was selected for the workshop, with three selections from full length plays being chosen for a “mini workshop.” One of the “mini workshop” selections will be chosen to receive a full length workshop next year.

Audiences interested in attending the final reading should mark their calendars for June 13th at 7:30 p.m. The festival will be held at Flashback Theater’s Administrative Offices at 209A East Mt. Vernon St. Admissions is free, but a suggested donation of $5-15 is encouraged. An Assistive Listening Device System for hearing enhancement will be provided for audience members to use as needed, with generous support from South Arts.

Schedule 

New Play Workshop

June 9th – 13th, 2025
11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. daily – Get in The Game Workshop
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. daily – Mini Workshops (one play each day, Monday – Wednesday, updates on Thursday)

Actors are invited to attend and participate as their schedule allows, please RSVP to the Education Coordinator at bailey@flashbacktheater.co

New Play Festival

June 13th, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.
Flashback Theater Co.
Suggseted Donation: $5-15

Selections from Joshua Pennwrite: Ghostwriter, Another Time, and Clara De Lune, and a full staged reading: Get in the Game 

2025 Play Selections

Get in the Game
by Amber Frangos, FbTC Resident Playwright
Full Length Selection
In this family story, it is the patriarch, and not the matriarch whose life is threatened with a breast cancer diagnosis. Ultra-macho football coach Leo’s world is turned upside down as he struggles to find strength amongst pink-ribbons and unsympathetic female breast cancer patients. The prognosis is grim, but Leo loves his wife, his son, and his life; this is a game he cannot afford to lose. Amber Frangos’ bold new play dares to ask how outdated ideals of gender bar us from connection, even in our most vulnerable times of need.

Joshua Pennwrite: Ghostwriter
by Michele L. Hinton
Mini Workshop Selection
Justine Hawkins is in the middle of writing a sequel to her novel. While writing a scene, she has a heart attack and dies. However, instead of moving on to the afterlife, she is allowed to continue on as a ghost to try and recruit someone to finish her series of novels. At her memorial, she comes across Joshua Pennwrite, an avid fan who came to pay his respects. She discovers that he is able to hear her, so she haunts him trying to convince him to help her complete her work. But Joshua has some personal issues. He is recovering from a split-personality disorder and believes Justine might be a set back to his recovery. But eventually, he agrees to help her, and needs to convince Justine’s nieces to aid in developing her novels.   

Another Time
by Thomas Alvey
Mini Workshop Selection
Another Time is a searing Southern drama about Adam, a young gay man haunted by an absent mother, a devout grandmother, and the quiet violence of internalized shame. Set in a decaying home later turned Bed & Breakfast, fractured memories collide as love curdles into betrayal in a world that won’t let him belong.

 

Clara De Lune
by Chris Harris
Mini Workshop Selection
“Clara de Lune” is inspired by local ghost stories involving the old Somerset High School football field. It’s about a young woman with a gift for music and a troubled family life who makes an unexpected lifelong connection with a little girl that can’t be explained.

About the Artists

Amber Frangos is the resident playwright at Flashback Theater. Her work as a playwright is extensive: her play Rosies: The Women Who Riveted The Nation received a grant from The Kentucky Foundation For Women for development that lead to its world premiere at Flashback Theater in May 2018, and a second production with the Carrollwood Players in Tampa, FL in 2024. Her screenplay (short), Take It For A Spin, launched at the Autumn Shorts Film Festival at Somerset Community College in the fall of 2018. Her musical collaboration with Maria McNeil Phelps, Mary: Her Story premiered at Flashback in 2022.

Michele L. Hinton is a small, independent publisher and a self-published author of several novels, children’s books, poetry, and short stories. She has performed in Somerset Community College’s production of Almost, Maine and Flashback Theater’s productions of Shakespeare’s, As You Like It and Comedy of Errors, Brother Wolf, Uncle Vanya, and The House of Blue Leaves. Her short play, Forever and a Day, was included in Somerset Community College’s short play series. She also had a cameo appearance on America’s Got Talent, Season 13.

Thomas Alvey is the Fine Arts Coordinator at Somerset Community College in Somerset, Kentucky. They have worked with Flashback Theater Co. since 2019 as an actor, designer, director, and Playwright. While Alvey is mainly an educator, they also hold special interests in New Play Development and Applied Theatre, as well as making theatre available and affordable to everyone. They hold a BA in Theatre Arts and a BA in Media Studies from Lindsey Wilson College, and an MFA in Writing for the Screen in Stage from Point Park University.

Chris Harris has been known in Pulaski County as a community journalist for the past 20 years but his original aim was to be a Hollywood screenwriter. Harris received a BFA in Writing for Film and Television in 2002 from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Harris also interned at MTV Animation while in college and assisted in script evaluations as part of his duties. Harris has flexed his creative writing muscles by writing for the local stage. Most notably, his work Waiting for Bardot was a Kentucky New Play Series Selection in 2016 and was performed in a Louisville showcase, as well as at Stoner Little Theater at Somerset Community College and by Flashback Theater Co. in Somerset as part of a set of locally-produced short plays in connection with the 2019 production of “American Hero.” He also wrote for FbTC’s “Quarentens” series in 2020 and annually composes and performs an original comedic monologue for the FbTC Season Announcement Cabaret. As a journalist, Harris has won over two dozen Kentucky Press Association awards for his work covering news and feature stories in this community.