About Epiphanies
The Epiphanies New Works Festival was founded in 2020, seeking to explore new and innovative work. Growing exponentially year to year, the unique feedback process that we are committed to providing for our participating playwrights has become one of the things we are most known for.
The top 8 submissions each year receive a developmental table reading, and 4 of those go on to receive directed staged readings at our in-person festival. Perhaps most excitingly, the winner is given a full production of their play the following year.
So bookmark this page! Mark your calendar! We are always ready to read the next exciting piece of theatre, and we are committed to providing a meaningful platform to emerging artists.
Support Epiphanies
Wild Imaginings is dedicated to promoting the development of new work, as it is the work of artists which serves to shape the identity of a place—
Are we a community which values authenticity, diversity, and charitable listening?
Are we a community in which important, albeit difficult, stories are not only heard but celebrated?
Are we a community in which artists are given permission to try new things and push the boundaries of what we expect?
Epiphanies New Works Festival hopes to further Waco’s ability to answer a resounding YES to each of these questions.
And we want you to help us do it!
Meet the 2024
Winner!
Vampire Panic!
By Kate Mickere
In 1890’s New England, a wave of consumption is wreaking havoc in a small town. The local doctor is using the epidemic to sell his fraudulent elixirs and tonics, young women are actively trying to catch the disease to achieve their dream figures and a preacher woman has everyone convinced that consumption is caused by vampires. (That’s right, blood sucking undead VAMPIRES.) When the logical Lucy Greene returns home to care for her orphaned niece, she takes it upon herself to teach her neighbors about germ theory but will her recent encounter in Europe dilute her message? Inspired by true historical events, Vampire Panic! is a gothic pandemic comedy that reminds us that medical misinformation, conspiracy theories and general hysteria aren’t just byproducts of the Covid era.
Kate Mickere is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her play, NURSE CADDEN, won First Place in the inaugural A is For Playwriting Contest. The script, chosen by a panel led by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, received a virtual reading that starred Ann Dowd. NURSE CADDEN is published by Next Stage Press. Kate’s playwriting has also been developed/produced by The Vagrancy, The Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Ugly Rhino and Meet Cute - LA. Her screenplay, CAPTURING THE STARS, won the Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Award and received an Honorable Mention for the Sloan/Tribeca Grand Jury Prize. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the recipient of the Steven Bochco Fellowship. Kate is an alumna of The University of Pittsburgh and The British American Drama Academy’s “Midsummer in Oxford” Program.
