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Along the I-35 corridor of Texas this spring, new and vital theater work in Austin and San Marcos has been as abundant as the fields flush with our resilient bluebonnets.

In San Marcos, where dynamic DG member Jim Price heads up the Graduate Playwriting program at Texas State University, another one of his playwrights won the Ken Ludwig Scholarship Award for best body of work. That’s four years in a row Jim’s had a student to distinguish her/himself. And if commandeering a successful Playwriting program isn’t enough, Jim is working to bring to TXSU’s campus a summer festival that celebrates new work and utilizes TXSU’s new performing arts center. Think Williamstown and you’ve got it.

Jim’s accomplished wife, Kaitlin Hopkins, heads TXSU’s Musical Theatre program and this spring brought in DG Member Larry Grossman and Greg Bolin (creators of the original musical SNOOPY). Grossman and Bolin workshopped with the students revising the beloved show. On March 19^th, they gave a workshop performance whose polish and perfection transported us to Broadway. Bravo!

Meanwhile in Austin, Kirk Lynn (another DG dynamo) and his UT Playwriting Department staged The University of Texas’ bi-annual David Cohen New Works Festival. Thirty-seven projects were presented in repertoire from morning till night April 13-17. Sponsored by Broadway Bank, it was free to the public. It is the largest festival of its kind, being run and organized entirely by a committee of graduate and undergraduate students, with the support of faculty co-producers. Watching these performances (some shorts; some full-lengths) is breath-taking. In cities with a higher-impacting theater presence (New York, LA, Chicago), some of these presentations would be head-line news for their daring, quality, and obvious talent. I’m talking about pieces like: Emma When You Need Her (the amazing Emma Goldman); and, Pirandello: a New Musical.

Also in Austin, the 17th Annual Out of Ink Festival of 10 Minute Plays by ScriptWorks Members happened at The Hyde Park Theatre April 23rd to May 2nd. This Festival is the result of a competition within the hefty ranks of ScriptWorks itself. Among the eight winning and produced scripts were those of DG Members Rita Anderson and Briandaniel Oglesby.

Last but not least, San Antonio keeps trying, through initiatives by the likes of talented DG Member Rick Stemm, to get new scripts produced. Rick is currently working with Mellissa Marlowe who heads the Theatre Department at Northwest Vista College. Mellissa knows that Rick is a playwright and a talented video game creator (he created Heroic Games with a team of local and national artists/programmers). Mellissa also knows her students love video games as much as theater and so she’s given Rick the venue at her campus to bring his video game to life where the audience, using computers, will interact with the show in game-like manners to change outcomes.

But besides mapping a path for theater’s future, Rick has been responding to our mayoral race where the economic impact of the arts usually gets overlooked. Organizing San Antonio artists into a cross-discipline coalition to make an advocacy group is Rick’s goal. He brought many of us together this spring at a mayoral arts forum held at The Tobin Center. It was a start. A great start. While most of the candidates’ sense of enriching the economy through art involved adding entertainers to after-school programs, we in Rick’s camp are more resolved than ever to change that outlook. A moderator told us that one of our questions to the candidates, while not read, had been next. Too bad it didn’t get read there, but here it is: “Currently there are no incentives in place for local theaters to develop/encourage/produce new work. Playwrights are leaving town to go where they can make their art. What would you candidates do to ensure funding to local theatres for the development of new theater work?”

srinear@dramatistsguild.com