Urbanite Theatre's Modern Works Festival focuses on plays being developed by female playwrights.
“We're still not at a place in the theatrical landscape or on Broadway where women are being produced within the same percentage,” Artistic Director Summer Dawn Wallace explained. “The festival for us is just a way to try to uplift more women, to develop work by female playwrights in the hope of getting more women's work produced because we're just not quite there yet.”
This year’s festival kicks off with “Tea Time” by Erika MacDonald.
“She's been taking the play around the country,” Wallace noted. “It's won several Fringe awards and it is about tea — making tea, kind of the ritual of tea — and also dives into depression and mental health.”
From the 315 submissions it received this year, Urbanite chose plays that explore PTSD and the invisible scars carried by those who serve (“The Longest Walk,” by Stacey Isom Campbell); grief and growing up in a nontraditional family (“Conversations by the Beach,” by Mantra Radhakrishnan) ; and fear and the unspoken truths haunting two friends (“Spectres,” by Joz Vammer).
Each play will receive two staged readings.
“Patrons have a little bit of a part in shaping what that play might be [by] how they respond [and the] questions that they have. For us, it's really been a funnel of new work for Urbanite’s other seasons."
For example, this year’s mainstage productions, “Ahoy Hoy” by Jenny Stafford and Stacey Isom Campbell’s “1999,” were workshopped in last year’s Modern Works Festival.
The festival, which runs through Sept. 27, includes a kickoff party, lecture by playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger and roundtable discussion.
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Back for its seventh year at Urbanite Theatre, the 2026 Modern Works Festival is a two-week celebration of new play development and women in theatre. With a festival pass, attendees gain all-access entry to works in progress, including staged readings of finalist plays, a kickoff party, guest speaker events, artist performances, and post-show conversations that bring audiences and creators into direct dialogue.
The 2026 festival lineup
Thursday, Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m. Festival headliner “Tea Time” by Erika MacDonald.
Friday, Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m. “Tea Time” Erika MacDonald.
Saturday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. “Tea Time,” Erika MacDonald.
Sunday, Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. “Tea Time,” Erika MacDonald.
Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m. Kick Off Party-All Festival Artists & Pass Holders (light bites and cocktails provided)
Friday, Sept. 25
- 2 p.m. staged reading of “The Longest Walk”
- 5 p.m. staged reading of “Conversations by the Beach”
- 7:30 p.m. lecture by guest speaker, Jacqueline Goldfinger
Saturday, Sept. 26
- 2 p.m. staged reading of “Spectres”
- 5 p.m. staged reading of “The Longest Walk”
- 7:30 p.m. staged reading of “Conversations by the Beach”
Sunday, Sept. 27
- 2:00 p.m. staged reading of “Spectres”
- 4 p.m. Audience Roundtable & Festival Closing Celebration*
The developmental process
Urbanite has provided Campbell, Radhakrishnan and Vammer with travel expenses, housing and a daily per diem along with a $1,500 stipend to produce the play along with a female director, actors and a reader.
“They get about 15 hours of rehearsals, which isn't a lot,” noted Wallace, “But one of the things that makes our festival different is we really try to use that to focus on the text and the content of the play.”
Wallace said that every playwright approaches this workshop format differently.
“We've had playwrights in the past who have made sweeping changes, like written whole new scenes with 30 new pages. Other playwrights might change something here and there and still others don't change anything and wait till we have the talkbacks so they hear what audience thinks. It’s their baby, so to speak. We want the festival to be useful to helping [in the development] of the play.”
Once the playwrights arrive, the pace becomes frenetic. Wallace jokes that during the festival, there are bodies everywhere.
“We've got people rehearsing in our administrative offices. We have people rehearsing in the theater. I usually rent space from either Sarasota Contemporary Dance or The Players so that we have another rehearsal going on over there,” said Wallace. “Everybody gets time in the theater, but it's a little bit of a jungle gym trying to put all the puzzle pieces together.”
Women playwrights still underrepresented
When it comes to equal representation between male and female playwrights, Wallace said that while progress has been made, the theater industry “still has some work to do.”
The numbers suggest that the industry has a whole lot more work to do.
The split in 2002, according to an industry-wife study, was 80/20 in favor of male playwrights. The gap narrowed to 60/40 a decade ago. And last season (2025-26), out of 176 new plays produced at theaters with budgets of more than $10 million, 89 or 51 percent were written by cis men, 78 or 44 percent by cis women and eight were written by trans or nonbinary playwright.
But those statistics are somewhat misleading.
When all plays were taken into consideration, the percentage by cis men rose to 63 percent, the percentage by women dropped to 33 percent, with trans and nonbinary playwrights accounting for the other 3 percent. And many of the plays written by female playwrights were relegated to smaller theaters.
Then came this year’s season announcements.
In March of 2026, Cara Joy David reported in BroadwayWorld that “[a]fter years of inching toward parity, last summer there was a series of season announcements that were light on representation of female playwrights.” For example, Playwrights Horizons only included one play by a female playwright (and at that, she had a male co-writer) in its six- play season. The Roundabout Theatre gave just one slot out of four to a female playwright, while several other Off Broadway theaters included zero plays in their seasons.
Industry experts and theater critics find these results hard to square with the fact that women comprise two-thirds of the graduates from degree programs in the arts or the realization that women buy the majority of theater tickets.
“The Playwrights Horizons lineup shows a thrilling range of race, gender expression, sexuality, and artistic approach, and yet still ignore half the population,” wrote Ravi Desai for The New Yorker. “What is it that makes women so invisible?”
Wallace is careful to point out that Urbanite is not anti-male.
It is pro new works.
With so much work remaining to be done in the industry as a whole, it’s only right and just that its Modern Works Festival places an emphasis on female playwrights.
Not just on exposing them to Urbanite audiences, but fostering their work for development by Urbanite and other theaters.
For example, not only will Urbanite produce “Ahoy Hoy” in October, but also inclusion of the play in last year’s festival helped it secure a spot in Florida Repertory Theatre’s PlayLab this past May.
Last year’s mainstage production, “Apiary” by Kate Douglas, also evolved from the Modern Works Festival, as did the world premiere of 2023 festival winner “Westminster,” a screwball romp that digs into “acceptable” social prejudices—and the consequences of leaving those biases unchecked.
“It's exciting to have a play go from a stage reading, early drafts of the script, to now we get to finally mount the full production of it,” Wallace added.
In this way, Urbanite is doing its part to advance women in theater and the work and careers of evolving female playwrights.
About guest speaker Jacqueline Goldfinger
Jacqueline Goldfinger (she/they) is a playwright, dramaturg, librettist, and poet whose work has been produced both in the U.S. and around the world.
Her book, “Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for Playwrights,” is taught at colleges and universities around the country. Her plays have been produced by The Kennedy Center, United Solo (Off-Broadway), Court Theatre (New Zealand), École nationale de théâtre (Canada), Urbanite Theatre (which produced “Backwards Forwards Back”), Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Theatre Exile, Vortex Rep, Perseverance Theatre, among others.
Her work has been developed at Maryland Opera Studio, the National Theater (UK), New Georges, La Mama, Disquiet (Portugal), Drama League, Lark Playwrights Week, National New Play Network, among others. Her work has been supported by organizations including Yaddo, National Endowment for the Arts, Millay Colony, Sloan Foundation, and the Orchard Project.
Her opera, choral and art song libretti have been performed at Sydney Opera House (Australia), Opera Columbus, Resonance Works, BBC Radio 3 (UK), Voces8 (UK), Oberlin Opera, Chor Leoni (Canada), Chiesa di Ognissanti (Italy), San Diego Opera/Without Walls Festival, and others. The filmed version of her short opera, Letter to Our Children, with Composer Justine F. Chen, has screened at film festivals around the world.
Her plays have won the Yale Prize, Generations Award, Smith Prize, Best One Man Show Off-Broadway at United Solo, among others. Her opera Alice Tierney won the Opera America Discovery Award with composer Melissa Dunphy. Her short opera film “Letter to Our Children” with composer Justine F. Chen won Best Music Video at the Paris Short Film Awards.
Her plays and libretti have been published by Yale Press, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Concord Theatricals, Dramatists Play Service, Edition Peters, and others. Her poetry has been published by literary magazines including American Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, and Beyond Queer Words Poetry Anthology. She’s been commissioned by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Oberlin Opera, Maryland Opera Studio, Wilma Theater, Urbanite Theatre, National New Play Network, and others.
As a dramaturg, she specializes in new work and has worked with La Jolla Playhouse, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Arden Theatre, and others. As an educator, she has taught playwriting and dramaturgy at University of Pennsylvania, UC Davis, and others. Her academic writing includes two books, “Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for Playwrights” and “Writing Adaptations and Translations for the Stage” published by Routledge.
She was the guest editor for the special issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre themed “Revolutions in New Work Development.” Learn more at: www.jacquelinegoldfinger.com
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
