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.
Meet the 2025
Semifinalists!
I'll Be Your Villain
by Chelsea Sutton
Bennett wants to tell you a story. A story about how she became a villain. No. How they cast her as the bad guy without her consent. The story really begins with a mask of a bird and a friendship betrayed, but it ends today, when Bennett’s aunt dies in the garden of a haunted house, where every night you can hear the fireworks from the theme park down the road. Bennett didn’t audition for the villain, but if the costume fits...
Chelsea Sutton is an LA-based writer and theatre maker of what she likes to call gothic whimsy. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Humanitas PlayLA award-winner, a graduate of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. Her macabre steampunk adaptation of Pinocchio written with Rogue Artists Ensemble, Wood Boy Dog Fish, appeared in the inaugural season at the Garry Marshall Theatre. She co-wrote the Emmy-nominated Welcome to the Blumhouse Live, an interactive film event for Blumhouse/Amazon. Also a fiction writer, her first flash fiction chapbook Only Animals is now available through Wrong Publishing, and her first novella is forthcoming February 2026 from Split/Lip Press.
Pieta
by Brynn Hambley
The Figlie Del Coro was comprised of musicians who were mostly disabled women, all abandoned by their parents to the convent as infants. Anna Maria, Sophie, Bettina, and Cattina face the pressures of being disabled women in a world which honors neither. Further, they live in a strict, Catholic environment under the tutelage of one of the most famous Italian composers of all time: Antonio Vivaldi. But while some of them recognize the privilege of their position, what if others of them want a different kind of life?
Brynn Hambley (she/they) is a queer and disabled playwright, theatre artist, devising artist, theatre educator, and freelance writer. Her work is ephemeral and speculative, focusing on the stories of queer and disabled people across time with an emphasis on how hope permeates grief.In the past, she was a Winner of the Bensen Disability Plays 2024 (House Call); Semi-Finalist for the O'Neill National Playwright's Conference 2024 (PIETA); Semi-Finalist for the New Roots Residency; Finalist for Experimental Heals with Experimental Bitch NYC (Antidotal); Resident Artist with First Kiss Theatre (PIETA); Featured Artist for Theatre Viscera, 2022 (The Eleventh Star); and a Finalist for The Independent International Award for Improper Dramaturgy, 2019/2020 (Antidotal). Brynn's plays have been developed with many companies including: The Tank (Antidotal); The Brick (Antidotal); New Jersey Play Lab; First Kiss Theatre Company (PIETA); Cut Edge Collective (The Eleventh Star ; Somebody Was Here); Vibrating Body (Antidotal); Waterhouse Collective (Antidotal); Sarah Lawrence College (Paradise Lost and Found); and more. Her poetry, essays, and short plays have been published in The Mercury; Best Emerging Poets in America; The Perch (It is July); The Coachella Review (Somebody Was Here); and The Ponder Review (Saturday's Child). MFA: Sarah Lawrence College. Member of The Dramatists Guild.
Winter's End
by J.S. Puller
An absurdist retelling of the Persephone myth from Greek legend, examining and questioning the fact that in most tellings of the story, Persephone has no voice and makes no active choices of her own. Paralleling Persephone's helplessness is the current debate raging over reproductive rights. Cassie, a young college student, runs away from anti-abortion activists to find herself in the house of the underworld where she must navigate the absurdities of "the way things have always been done" to try to
help Persephone make a choice of her own.
J. S. Puller is a playwright and author from the Windy City, Chicago. She has a master's degree in elementary education and a bachelor's degree in theatre from Northwestern University. She is an award-winning member of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and has written about the social-emotional benefits of arts education with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. When not writing, she can usually be found in the theatre. She is the author of two novels, CAPTAIN SUPERLATIVE and THE LOST THINGS CLUB, both published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She also has several published plays, including: WOMEN WHO WEAVE (Playscripts, Inc.), PERSEUS AND MEDUSA - IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME! (Lazybee Scripts), THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD (Stage Rights), and five titles with Plays for New Audiences.
[the inner universe]
by Samuel Heyman
A former child prodigy, Jackson Pomona, enters college and is enticed back into the world of abstract theory he abandoned years ago, after the death of his professor mother, Cheryl. Jackson’s renewed engagement with the theoretical exacerbates his dormant mental illness, and when he stops taking his medication and cuts off communication with his father, his mind begins spiraling out of control. After being pulled back from the brink of despair, Jackson reunites with his father and begins treatment for his bipolar disorder, eventually returning to college a year later, where he takes ownership of his previous actions, and attempts to move forward.
Sam Heyman (he/they) is a queer, Jewish playwright based in Nashville, TN. He is active in his writing community, both locally as an instructor for The Porch Writers Collective and virtually as producer of the Playwrights Thriving Reading Series. Their plays have been developed with support from the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, the Valdez Theatre Conference, the Desert Playwrights Retreat, and the Midwest Dramatists Conference, among other organizations. In 2024, his full length play, Three Damned Letters, was a semi-finalist in the Title Wave New Works Festival, and his ten-minute play, Sexiled, was featured in the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival. In 2025, Sam was selected as part of Atlanta Jewish Artists' Chametz-Off playwright cohort, and will be attending the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat as part of the Screen/play/writing cohort. With plays produced and presented on physical and virtual stages across the country, Sam's plays can be found on New Play Exchange.
Lumin
by Emma Gibson
The pigs are stressed, Liv won’t eat, and Ma wants everyone to follow the Constitutions. Set in a modern-day cult on the outskirts of the Chihuahuan desert in Texas, this new play about our need for community, asks why the line between delusion and what the rest of us believe, is getting blurrier than ever.
Emma is a British playwright, now living in Philadelphia. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing and was the founding producing artistic director of Tiny Dynamite for which she was a winner of the Knight Arts Challenge and received a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage award for her production of Perfect Blue.
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Her plays have been selected, developed, read or performed at The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, PlayPenn Conference, People's Light & Theatre, Gloucester Stage, Refracted Theatre Co., Laboratory Theatre of Florida, PCPA, Purple Rose Theatre, Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival, Spooky Action Theatre Company, Miranda Theatre Company, Wordsmyth Theater, Vivid Stage, Panndora Productions, and Pomona College. She is the winner of The Louise Wigglesworth Award 2025, the winner of The Pittsburgh Public Theater’s inaugural new play competition in 2021. She was a runner up for the Ambassador Theatre Group Playwriting Prize with Platform Presents and a finalist for the Women's Prize for Playwriting. She has been a finalist for The O'Neill New Play Conference, Seven Devils Playwright conference, Headwaters at Creede Rep, Kitchen Dog’s New Works Festival, Henley Rose New Play Competition, Blue Ink Award with the American Blues Theater, The Princess Grace Award, and The Normal Ave Nap Series (2023). She was in the top 100 for the Verity Bargate Award at The Soho Theatre, UK, and on the short list for The International Playwriting Award with Theatre 503, UK and The Papatango New Writing Award. She was commissioned by Climate Change Action Theatre in 2024 for her play The Returning.
Another Reason Not To Go
by Jessica Fisher
Gabby grew up with her mom, her stepdad, and her stepbrothers in Colorado Springs. When she moves to New York, her family becomes religious, and eventually abusive to
her mother. She moves her mom out. Her stepbrothers stop talking to her. Her stepfather dies. Years go by, she becomes engaged to a woman, and one day she receives an invitation to her younger stepbrother’s wedding.
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She must decide whether or not to face her old life, and confront what she's been
missing...needless to say, she goes.
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Jessica Marie Fisher (She/They) is a Los Angeles-based playwright and voice actor originally from New Jersey. Jess graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2019 after studying musical theatre at The New Studio on Broadway as well as playwriting and devising at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. Their first play, Rules for Coming Out…,was a finalist at the Strawberry One Act Festival 2019 and was published by Original Works. It has since been performed at Muhlenberg College’s Fish Project Play Festival. More recently, Jess created the full-length Scrambled Eggs, a play about Doctor Walter Freeman and the Transorbital Lobotomy. Scrambled Eggs won best new script at the AriZoni Awards 2022 and has had production at B3 Theatre Company in Phoenix AZ, Firefly Theatre Company in North Hollywood CA, MT Pockets Theatre Company in Morgantown WV, and has an upcoming reading at Nutley Little Theatre in Nutley NJ. Eggs was also a quarterfinalist for the ScreenCraft Stage Play Awards 2023. Jess’s other plays are The Best Babysitter (Imaginarium Theatre Company 2020), Imagined Dialogs (Broadwater Black Box 2023), Another Reason Not to Go (Finalist - Lanford Wilson New Play Festival 2025), and Complicated Syndication(Workshop at Silver Lake Library Summer 2025). Jess is a proud member of Dramatists Guild.
Gloria, Jean, and the Sexy Ghost Show
by Matt Henderson
It’s the near future, and a nasty virus has shut everything down. Gloria and Jean have no life whatsoever and never leave the house. In a world plagued by isolation, these two middle- aged women living on opposite ends of the country embark on an epic journey – constant watch parties bingeing a CW TV show about sexy teen ghosts in love. The farther in they go, season after season, an unsettling question emerges more and more clearly – what does it take to get off the couch?
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Matt Henderson’s plays have been seen throughout the U.S. and internationally. His plays include Summer Solstice, Trauma Response, Existence and the Single Girl, A Love Story, Strutting and Fretting, The Ghosts in Aisle 30, Candy Likes Your Status, A Long Walk on the Beach, The Roar of the Crowd, and The Most Epic Awesomest Superhero Movie Ever. His work has been published by Smith & Kraus and Original Works Publishing.
Let Light Like Blood
by Steven San Luis
In a world without sun, stars, or moon, the only way we have light is through fireflies. And the only person who can herd the fireflies is the Firefly Cowboy. And she has had enough.
In a Dark World, Reader dies in a tragic Polaroid accident, so Lola must follow a firefly to a lighthouse to save her. Lola and her firefly first encounter two miners who force Lola to face her grief head on, so Lola decides to ditch her firefly and walk the Dark World alone. She quickly learns this was a mistake when fireworks saleswomen almost trick her into giving up her only match. Lola eventually reaches the lighthouse, only to learn that the light inside has spoiled. She strikes her match for one last look at her long, lost Reader.
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Steven San Luis (all pronouns) is a Brooklyn-based Queer playwright, director, and theater professional originally from southern Georgia. They earned a Masters in Dramatic Writing from New York University Tisch School School of the Arts. San Luis’ work has been featured in the Stage It! book and produced at various festivals through Local Theater Company, The Road Theater Company, Boxfest Detroit, the Gene Frankel Theater, Pocket Theater VR, and Ghostlight Ensemble. In their work as a director, the production Disordered won the Best Encore Award at the United Solo Festival (NY). Steven is an intersectional, mixed Filipino American and Queer theater maker. Their work uses drag, clowning, and absurdism to examine the intersection of identity and sustainability. Their play The Rope Trick will premiere at Anaconda Ensemble Theatre in October, 2025.
And our short list represents less than the top 8% of the plays submitted, which is no small feat.
Two-Man Rule by Collin Van Son
Captain Sandaker and First Lieutenant Wallace, two-man crew of a remote missile silo, hold the literal keys to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Locked away in an underground control room, the two missileers wait at their consoles, aware that any moment they could receive the order to end the world.
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And You Will Be Ashes Too by Baylee Shlichtman
After a mysterious camping accident, two sisters come together to bury their Mom and maybe repair their relationship. Here, memory is flammable. And there's a ghost in the house.
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We’d Rather Know If You Weren’t Coming Back by Dave Osmundsen
In a seaside town called Crichton-by-the-Sea, a young Autistic woman named Tina becomes a tour guide for Crichton-by-the-Sea Ghost Tours, run by Ethel. Along with her fellow tour guides (horror writer Vlad and the grieving Moira), she confronts the literal and metaphorical ghosts that haunt her.
Confessions (or The Secret Play for Secretly Liberal Muslims) by Nabra Nelson
Fatima, Layla, and Farah are old friends from high school in Cairo who recently met Salima, an African-American Muslim student, who quickly becomes part of the group. They soon, however, come face-to- face with the skeletons in their closets, such as a secret girlfriend, a secret fiancé, moving out of the country, being too conservative, being too liberal, drinking alcohol, and literally being in thecloset (figuratively of course).
The President of Ohio by Philip J Kaplan
The President of Ohio is coming to dinner and Brenda expects her to offer her husband a job. But the cook just died, there’s no food, her son is sick, her stepdaughter is an addict, and the homeowners association is on her case. Life in post climate change Cincinnati in the year 2070 is hard.
Bionic by Jenna Jane
In a future where everyone is swapping out their body parts with the latest tech, this full-length sci-fi anthology for the stage explores what it means to be human. Will these “upgrades” bring people closer to their authentic selves or push them farther away?
Magical Girl Play by Emmy Kuperschmid
Dakota is 28 years old, working a desk job in a city when she finds out her magical destiny: she's the Warrior of Light and Justice chosen to save this world from darkness — a discovery she was supposed to make 14 years ago. Discovering you're a hero may be thrilling, but can you fight evil by moonlight while still making it to the office by 8am?
People Should Talk About What’s Real by Alli Hartley-Kong
Irreverent livestream comedian Natalie and her husband Josh struggle to conceive, while across the city historian Katherine and her husband Rathanak “Ryan” debate whether or not to adopt, all against the background of the isolating global pandemic. They don't realize their connection, however, until their fates come together in a fertility clinic waiting room.
The Memory Leak by Rick Bingen
David is a talented computer programmer who has lost some of his most precious memories.But a sudden worsening of David's condition forces his sister Jenna and her fiancee Margot to race against the clock to create a device to save David's leaked memories before he loses himself completely.
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Stumbling Toward Paradise by Chris Shaw Swanson
Harper is radically fasting, a sacrifice she’s making in the hope that God will heal fifteen-year-old Charlie and her roommate Mara, both wounded in a car accident with Mara at the wheel. But when logical argument, the intervention of a Catholic priest, and a tragic event fail to persuade Harper to abandon her fast, her agnostic best friend Ellen makes a decision that may lose Harper’s friendship but save Harper’s life.
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They Have Become the Forest by Aly Kantor
Many Greek myths begin and end in the forest of Arcadia. Most end with the death or transformation of the women involved. In this campfire story, the naiads Daphne and Sy grapple with consumption, identity, and courage, fall in love, and leave audiences with a powerful call to action to support their queer loved ones in a dynamic, often unsafe world.
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You Should Be So Lucky by Alyssa Haddad-Chin
Poh Poh teaches her granddaughter, Jenny, to make dumplings for the Lunar New Year in her Chinatown apartment. As Jenny learns more about her culture, history, and family, she discovers that there are some secrets Poh Poh won't share, and the changing neighborhood isn't leaving space for them.
Small Town Icons by SMJ
The night before the opening night of a barely legal adaptation of OUR TOWN. the production’s “Emily,” Sabrina, is stuck at home, trying to rehearse. A mob sits outside of her house, demanding an answer for the disappearance of Mr. K, a popular science teacher... who burned Sabrina during a class experiment.
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The Final Verses of the Prophet and Wiz by Cris Eli Blak
What if the story of Jesus and Judas took place today, in an abandoned apartment, with two young Black men from the hood, one that is in hiding after committing a murder, and the other a private school pariah with the brains to lift him out of his low income life?
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The Good Name by Sopan Deb
Vikas Choudhury is a thoughtful but aimless young man living with his aunt and uncle in the New Jersey suburbs as he grieves the death of his parents. But when a mysterious bag appears at the door, it sparks revelations that force them to face ignored truths and a quietly buried past. As each family member wraps their hopes and fears up in the bag’s contents, they find themselves unraveling their relationships.
The Bad Shepherd by Daniel Prillaman
Petey Shepard has a problem. Now, sneaking out in the middle of the night to shave the wool off other people’s sheep is a mostly harmless problem. But it needs to stop. And it will, because early this morning, the rest of the family has gathered for an intervention, and it will either go well, or tear apart the fabric holding them all together.
Provenance by Ethan Mathias
When a theatre puts together an exhibit honoring the contributions of a local family to the legacy and success of the area, pressures mount as museum funding is called into question, and it all falls apart when certain secrets about the exhibited family come to light.
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In Time by Kyle A Smith
A husband grappling with the loss of his wife thinks he can travel through time and is convinced that he can save her if he makes different choices. His two adult children are grieving as well but feel abandoned by their father escaping into the past while they're left to handle the present.
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How to Write the Perfect Eulogy by Steven Gallagher
Dylan is getting married, and Dylan is dying. In the hours leading up to his wedding, Dylan reflects on his life as he desperately tries to write his own eulogy. With the help of his sister, Ruth, and his partner, Trevor, Dylan tries to come to terms with a life cut short.
Tesseract by Scott C. Sickles
Militant far-right extremists have overthrown a regional government. During an airlift evacuation, a 9-year-old trans boy becomes separated from his mother and vanishes. His parents (a married lesbian couple) enlist every resource at their disposal in the search, including federal and international agencies, but their son could be anywhere on the planet and has left no trace.
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A Perfect Love by Darcy H. Sternberg
A wife with a caretaker complex and her Parkinson’s riddled husband navigate love and loss as their lives are torn apart.
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The Earliest Star Charters by David Ramón Zayas
When 16-year-old Quinn takes a DNA test for a school science project, his family's world is turned upside down. What are our inheritances, and what happens when we feel like we've lost them? Who do we hurt when we question where we come from? And is shielding a loved one from that hurt more important than knowing our own truth?
