What is Madison New Works Lab?
Madison New Works Laboratory (MNWL) is an incubator for the development of new plays. Each selected playwright is provided an opportunity to develop their work with a community of artists through conversations, rehearsals, and a festival of public readings. MNWL aspires to the following goals:
- Develop new works by and for various ages, cultures, and populations
- Foster theatrical innovation in the development process in an artist-friendly environment
- Identify new work for eventual production in the JMU Mainstage and Studio Season
- Support professional playwrights in the development of their work
- Provide opportunities for JMU faculty, students and local artists to work with professional artists on new work
Madison New Works Lab 2025 Season
MNWL started at JMU seven years ago and creates an opportunity for students to work as actors, stage managers and assistant directors on new work. Development happens through conversations, rehearsals, and public readings. This year, two plays will be workshopped from 8/14/25 to 8/23/25. For ten days students/faculty/guest artists work with the invited professional playwright developing their play and culminating in public readings.
THE SPARKLE WARS by Brendan Bourque-Sheil
In a major city of the American South lies the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Memorial, where just about every type of American life is crammed into fifteen chaotic miles. When a group of Memorial High School Theatre students get the their production of The Laramie Project shut down by a book-banning school board, they decide to make their own piece of documentary theatre about the fight to get the play back, which takes them to the front lines of a culture war guaranteed to change their neighborhood and all of them with it. The Sparkle Wars is a mockumentary about how communities create and tell the stories that define them.
Sarai's Knife by John Minigan
When a vandal cuts the face of a Black student at Boston's Classical Academy out of a photographic self-portrait on display in the school lobby, mixed-race collage artist and first-year teacher Sarai is asked to capitalize on the strong rapport she has with the student victim to investigate the incident. Pressure from the white Assistant Headmaster and troubling discoveries about the victim make Sarai question her effectiveness as a teacher and artist. When she discovers the truth behind the subsequent destruction of a portrait of the school's founder, Sarai makes an unexpected choice that changes not only her future but the path the institution must take.
THE SPARKLE WARS Playwright: Brendan Bourque-Sheil
Brendan Bourque-Sheil's plays include DOGROSE PATROL (O'Neill Finalist, written with Madison Smith), SUNRISE COVEN (Stages Theatre, Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Penny Seats Theatre), BETWEEN TWO CAVES (Landing Theatre, Garden of Voices), and THE BOOK OF MAGGIE (Finalist, Reva Shiner Comedy Award, Stages Theatre, Death and Pretzels Theatre Company). He has participated in the Stillwright Retreat and won the Writer's Colony's Real People Fellowship. For Alley Theatre's Department of Education and Community Engagement he's been a principal writer of 12 devised theatre plays for teens. He worked as Playwright in Residence and Literary Associate for The Landing Theatre where he hosted and produced The Landing Theatre New Works Podcast. For ten years, he has worked as a teaching artist for Alley Theatre, and a consultant in Creative Writing for the Kinder High School of Performing and Visual Arts. He also tells personal narrative stories for a live audience at shows including Grown-Up Storytime, City Cast Houston and World Channel's "Stories From the Stage." He enjoys learning American Sign Language and long walks in graveyards.
Sarai's Knife Playwright: John Minigan
John Minigan is a recent Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing. Tall Tales from Blackburn Tavern, commissioned by Gloucester Stage Company, premiered there in 2023. (re)Dressing Miss Havisham, a commission from Hey Jont Productions, is in development after preliminary readings at the Dramatists Guild. The Clara Cipher, commissioned by Concert Theatre Works, is in development for a 2026 premiere.
In the Scorpion's Nest (formerly Queen of Sad Mischance) won the 2022 Judith Royer Award from The Kennedy Center/ATHE, the 2022 Wigglesworth Award from Florida's Lab Theater, Gold Prize in the Clauder Competition for New England plays, and was an ONeill finalist. In 2024, it was given a series of industry readings at Manhattan Theatre Club and is in pre-production for a 2025 premiere in NYC. John's Elliot Norton Award-nominated and BroadwayWorld.com Best Play-winning solo adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow premiered in Boston in 2022 and has been produced in multiple venues around the country since.
Noir Hamlet was an EDGE Media Best of Boston Theater 2018 selection, a Boston Globe Critics' Pick, an 2019 Elliot Norton nominee, and was produced at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. He has developed new work with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, and elsewhere. John lives near Boston with his wife, the dance scholar, teacher, and choreographer Lynn E. Frederiksen. He is affiliate faculty at Emerson College and serves as Dramatists Guild Ambassador for the Boston region.
Our Vision
Madison New Works Lab is an incubator for new plays; as much writer’s retreat as development process (thanks in large part to the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley and an itinerary of social activities)
In the words of our Dean, Rubén Graciani “I believe MNWL has the potential to become a model for holistically and empathically supporting the risk-taking necessary to engage with new ideas, demonstrate intersectional and collaborative thinking, and translate some of our initial projects into future production.”
Following her development on the play, Lightning Girl!, 2022 playwright-in-residence, Rita Anderson, wrote: “I have had artistic residencies and development opportunities at many theatres and foundations, and I found the experience at Madison New Works Lab to be the BEST of these, hands down. I simply had an incredible time from start to finish. I have told everyone who will listen how wonderful MNWL was, and how grateful I am to have participated.” Brandi N. Carie, playwright-in-residence from 2023, noted, “It is rare to find a development opportunity so thoughtfully calibrated to support writers both creatively and on a more personal level.”
Together with JMU faculty and student actors and stage managers, we seek to create a development process tailored to meet the needs of each individual project and playwright. We look forward to the upcoming season and the opportunity to welcome two new playwrights to campus--meet their plays, support them in their development process and share their plays with our community.
In solidarity,
Ingrid De Sanctis
Associate Professor of Playwriting
Highlights Since 2019
Amanda Andrei
MNWL playwright named one of three Rising Leaders of Color by Theatre Communications Group in 2023
Alan Stewart
MNWL playwright named Dramatist Guild National Fellow for 2024-25
Brandy N. Carie
MNWL playwright awarded 3-year core writer residency at Playwright’s Center
MNWL Playwrights: Where are they now?
Briandaniel Oglesby
Basement Demons and Trailer Saints, MNWL 2018
Briandaniel is now the Director of Theatre Arts in Austin, Texas, where he makes new work with and for teens, focusing on applying devising techniques to script-making. He has an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas, Austin and an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from University California, Riverside.
Kristen Lee Rosenfeld
Divided, MNWL Musical 2018
Kristen Lee Rosenfeld is a New York based composer and music director. She served as music director on the first National Tour of Spring Awakening and Band of Angels with collaborator Colman Domingo. Her music has been commissioned by Sprouts Children's Theatre, Red Fern Theatre, The Atlantic Acting School, American University and the Wooden O Theatre.
Luanne Aronen Rosenfeld
Divided, MNWL Musical 2018
Luanne Aronen Rosenfeld is a South Carolina-based playwright and lyricist. She has written the book and lyrics for Equal Time, Holly and Ivy, The Queen of Valleluna, Cardboard Castles, and Divided. She is drawn to stories that reflect the complexity and depth of human experience. She and Kristen are currently developing Chasing Gold Dust, a new musical that celebrates the women who conquered the Klondike.
Amanda Andrei
Black Sky, MNWL 2019
Amanda L. Andrei was named one of three 2023 Rising Leaders of Color by the Theatre Communications Group. Her play Mama, I Wish I Were Silver, won the Jane Chambers Award in 2022 for Feminist Playwriting and was a Blue Ink Award Finalist in 2023. She writes epic, irreverent plays from the perspectives of diasporic Filipina women, and she co-translates from Romanian into English with her father, Codin Andrei. Her plays have been produced by and developed by Boston Court, La MaMa, Echo Theatre, Circle X, The Vagrancy, and Pasadena Playhouse.
Mark Evan Chimsky
The Pledge, MNWL Musical 2019
Mark Evan Chimsky is the head of his own editorial consultancy. He has taught at NYU and Emerson College and is a contributor to The Huffington Post, The Good Men Project, and Thrive Global.
Dr. Alan Stewart
Of a Feather, MNWL 2022
Dr. Alan Steward, a veterinary internal medicine specialist, was named a National Fellow to the Dramatist Guild in 2024-2025. Of A Feather, one of the two plays he submitted for his application, was developed through madison new works lab.
Rita Anderson
Lightning Girl, MNWL 2022
Rita Anderson’s plays, including Early Liberty, Final Conversations, The 27 Club, and Woman Hollering Creek, have received hundreds of productions across the country. Rita won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award, served as a Dramatists Guild Regional Representative, and worked on the writing faculty at Interlochen.
Brandy N. Carie
How to Live Forever, MNWL 2023
Brandy N. Carie is a writer and director based in L.A. Her work explores Americana, apocalypse, and what happens when nice girls get mad. Carie received the 2019 KCACTF Steinberg Playwriting Award for her post-apocalyptic play Tomorrow Game, which will be published by Samuel French. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her short immersive opera The Beginning of Everything; A Love Story, was produced by The Off-Book Club in 2019 and released as an animated short film with New Opera West in 2022.
Anya Martin
The President's Pants, MNWL 2023
Anya Martin’s play, The President’s Pants, was developed at madison new works lab and went on to receive a semi-finalist nomination at the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Festival in 2024. In May 2023, Martin’s Buoyant Sea premiered at the Pittsburgh International Children’s Theatre Festival. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon and her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Maddie Kovach
Grief Tour, MNWL 2024
Maddie Kovach received her MFA in Writing for the Stage & Screen from Northwestern University in 2022. She wrote her first play in Professor Ingrid De Sanctis’ playwriting class at JMU. Her play Study Group was produced her senior year and was a national finalist for the Gary Garrison Playwriting Award at KCACTF in 2018.
Alica Daine Benning
Grief Tour, MNWL 2024
Alica Daine Benning holds a BFA in Acting from USC and an MFA in Writing for the Screen & Stage from Northwestern University. She is passionate about telling stories that center mental health, trauma, dysmorphia, and nontraditional experiences of gender. She is currently based out of Phoenix, Arizona, where she teaches arts courses in local high schools with the help of her chihuahua, Wesley.
Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm
Summer Hours:
Mon - Thu 9am - 5pm
Fri 9am - 12pm
