Edmonds Driftwood Players is committed to fostering new plays and supporting playwrights in our community. New Works strives to create spaces for playwrights to collaborate with actors, directors, and each other to develop original full-length plays, forged of individual creativity and group camaraderie. The New Works program has two interconnected components: the Driftwood After Dark playwrights group and the First Draft staged reading series.
In New Works there are no restrictions on style, genre, language, or content (with the exception of we do not currently accept musical submissions). Playwrights are encouraged to explore the full gamut of human experience with curiosity, authenticity, grace, and grit. While we hope to engage audiences with the work, we are willing to take them to dark and uncomfortable places in the process. Plays have ranged from macabre dramas to witty comedies, and the hope is that both our repertoire and membership will continue to grow and diversify.
Driftwood After Dark is a group of local playwrights who meet to share and develop new work. Each meeting involves a presentation of a script, read cold by group members and invited actors. Readings are followed by Liz Lerman style feedback sessions, where all who are present can give impressions, ask questions, and offer suggestions, aiming to help playwrights with future drafts. One play can receive multiple readings as it moves though different stages of development. These readings typically just involve the playwrights and actors in an intimate setting.
First Draft, which is curated by the members of Driftwood After Dark, presents six to eight staged and directed readings of nearly production-ready scripts for an audience each year. Although the majority of these public readings are sourced from the development pipeline of Driftwood After Dark, one or two plays each year are selected from scripts submitted by local writers who are not part of the group. Writers receive help in recruiting a director and actors and must commit to being part of the rehearsal process and to attending the reading and receiving feedback from the audience.
With a few rehearsals and minimal staging elements, First Draft readings give audiences an opportunity to experience the sorts of plays not usually included in the Mainstage Season, and to be a part of the development process by participating in post-reading feedback sessions to help playwrights further polish their work.
Click HERE to be taken to the bottom of the page if you are interested in applying to be a member of Driftwood After Dark OR you’d like to submit a play for First Draft consideration.
Another opportunity for playwrights to become involved in New Works is through submission to our annual Festival of Shorts. Click HERE to read more!
In 1815 a British navy ship encounters an alien spaceship in the South Pacific. Its captain, Pandora, demands a dialog with both the “highest” and the “lowest”—meaning the British ship’s captain, James Arkwright, and its chicken-keeper, a freedman called Jemmy Ducks. Pandora intends to negotiate the surrender of Earth in order to establish an age of liberty and equality among humans. Meanwhile, in an altered present day, the same Pandora meets with Jemison Arkwright, captain of a spacefaring vessel on the planet Jupiter. Pandora wants this Arkwright to capture the leader of an underground movement seeking to free Earth from the aliens’ dominion. The action moves between time periods, as two generations of humans test the limits of freedom and resistance.
Expected Run Time: 75 minutes, with no intermission. A Playwright Feedback session will be held after the reading and is encouraged but optional to stay and participate.
Content Warning(s): adult language, discussion of colonialism, slavery, and political violence.
We ask that you reserve seats in advance, however, online ticket reservations for this reading close at 4pm on Friday, June 6, 2025.
If you are seeing this after that day/time, please feel free to arrive without a reservation and join us for the reading.
2024/2025 Season First Draft readings:
If you are a playwright local to Puget Sound and are interested in being considered for First Draft and/or membership in Driftwood After Dark, please submit your full-length play (as a Word or pdf attachment). Plays for First Draft should not exceed 100 pages. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept musical submissions at this time. Please send your play, along with a brief note about yourself and the program you are interested in, to: [email protected]
First Draft response time is 8-12 weeks.
Driftwood After Dark response time is 8 weeks.