THEATRE SPOTLIGHT INGRAM NEW WORKS FESTIVAL
PHOTOS BY DANIEL CHANEY STYLING BY NATALIE RISK
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Works Festival has brought four extraordinar y play wrights from across the country to Nashville each year to share their new plays with local audiences. All of the plays have been developed for several months with local actors, directors, and artists as part of the Ingram New Works Lab, just one of the facets of Nashville Repertory Theatre’s Ingram New Works Project. The initiative was created with the support of cofounder Martha R. Ingram to provide an opportunity for national theatre artists to connect with Nashville audiences and to develop new works while in residency at Nashville Rep. The play wrights of the 2018 Ingram New Works Festival are tackling the same question from four different and dynamic points of view: How do we navigate a world that has changed so dramatically?
Each one of these stories is about trying to navigate a new world, whether that’s challenging yourself to be the kind of person that can nurture art in the most unlikely place, trying to keep your business open while you make sense of rapid gentrification and its cost on your community, trying to find a new life in extraordinarily bloody circumstances while escaping the old one, or literally trying to see yourself in a new country. “There’s no question about it, the world is in a state of extraordinary change,” says Nate Eppler, Nashville Rep’s award-winning playwright-inresidence. “I think the most necessary art helps us navigate that and tries to make sense of how we live in this world now, at this moment.” The Ingram New Works Festival takes place May 9–19, 2018. Visit ingramnew works.com for more information.