Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Syracuse Stage’s Cold Read Festival wants to leave attendees with the idea that behind every great play, there is a great playwright.

The Cold Read Festival provides a platform for playwrights to showcase new work, some of whom are in the Syracuse area. The festival also allows viewers to get an insight into what the playwriting process looks like and to engage in conversation with creatives in the industry.

The festival is almost a week long and begins on Tuesday. Unlike in past years where playwrights and professional actors would travel from all over the country to come to Syracuse Stage, this year’s event will be entirely virtual.

People who tune into the festival can watch prerecorded read-throughs of the three playwrights’ work within a 24-hour window on Syracuse Stage’s website. Attendees are then able to talk with the writers live to give them feedback and discuss their scripts.

Despite the technical inconvenience of streaming a festival on Zoom, Syracuse Stage’s Artistic Director Robert Hupp is confident in a prominent turnout for this year’s festival.

“While the Zoom experience doesn’t really replicate coming together, it does give more people access to the work and so that’s a positive,” Hupp said.

Unlike many other festivals, Cold Read Festival does not focus on the production side, but instead entirely revolves around the writing process. For almost a week, the spotlight is turned onto the playwright as they showcase their work and engage with audience members about their process and how they reach the end result.

Syracuse Stage’s associate director and Cold Read Festival curator Kyle Bass said that the event is similar to a home run in baseball, where the game stops and everyone can cheer on the player and their accomplishments.

“We don’t stop, but we take our focus out of just producing, producing, producing and for just one week, we just say let’s focus on the playwright and the process,” Bass said. “In this way, it feels honorific, and it also feels celebratory,” Bass said.

The festival chooses three playwrights to present their work on a panel. This year, one of those playwrights is Evan Starling-Davis. The Syracuse University doctoral student will be presenting his work on Friday in the festival’s “Write Here” portion, which highlights an up-and-coming local playwright.

As someone who has been working as a playwright for a large portion of his life and is part of the Syracuse community, this is a really proud moment for him.

“For me as a Black playwright and working in regional theater for a good portion of my life, we don’t necessarily always get a chance to see those stories,” Starling-Davis said. “This is just a really great opportunity that’s developed in the Syracuse community to share with the Syracuse community.”

Despite the online format this year, Bass is excited for this year’s festival and the panelists that were chosen, which include Starling-Davis, Kate Hamill and Chesney Snow. Bass is in charge of creating the panel, which is a year-long process, and he is eager for each of the playwrights to share their work.

He said that Hamill, who is the playwright-in-residence for the event, has been at Syracuse Stage as an actor and before the pandemic was one of the most produced playwrights in the regional theater world.

---

More Cold Read Festival Coverage:

• Syracuse Stage announces 2020-21 season lineup
• Syracuse Stage launches first ‘COLD READ SHORTs’ series
• Syracuse Stage postpones performances, annual Cold Read Festival

---

This year’s solo-artist-in-residence is Snow, who is a three-time artist in residence at Harvard University and Drama Desk award winner. Snow has also appeared in off-Broadway and Broadway productions.

Those who do decide to tune in to Cold Read Festival can expect to see a very diverse range of work and engage in conversations with varying opinions and perspectives.

“I hope people come away with an understanding of the writer’s process in making a play and getting that play onto the page and then maybe down the road when we come back to produce one of these plays the audience will have a little bit of ownership,” Bass said.

“I hope people come away with an understanding of the writer’s process in making a play and getting that play onto the page,” Bass said. “Then maybe down the road when we come back to produce one of these plays, the audience will have a little bit of ownership.”

Published on March 22, 2021 at 9:37 pm