2025 A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival

For nearly 30 years, the WashU Performing Arts Department has produced the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival as a vehicle to develop and support new work written by WashU students. The annual Festival begins with a university-wide solicitation of new, unproduced plays. Winners are then selected, through an anonymized screening process and workshopped in a two-week event in September. During those two weeks, each play is developed with a professional dramaturg, a faculty director, and a student cast.

The Festival culminates in a staged reading of each play that is open to the public. Brooklyn-based, multidisciplinary writer and actor Brittany K. Allen will serve as festival dramaturg. Talkbacks will take place after each show with the playwrights, producer, and dramaturg.

All readings take place in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. Admission is free.

Full Fathom Five by Heather Elaine Anderson
Unwelcome Truths by Anna Schwartz
Cold Feet by Rebecca Yang
Directed by Jeffery Matthews
Friday, September 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Eating Crow by Kit Hoffmann
Directed by Annamaria Pileggi
Saturday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m.