If you walk into Boulder’s Nomad Playhouse during Local Lab 14, you won’t see finished sets or polished performances. You’ll see actors with scripts in hand, playwrights scribbling revisions in the margins and directors presenting scenes that may have changed just hours before.
This is what new-play development looks like. And for the nomadic Boulder-based Local Theater Company (LTC), it’s where the magic happens.
“We’re not necessarily looking for the best play or the one we could produce tomorrow,” says LTC Executive Director Misha S. Zimmerman. “We’re looking for something that could benefit from development — something that isn’t quite fully formed but has something in it that makes us want to work on it. Lab is our opportunity to take audiences behind the scenes of what it takes to get scripts ready for a full production.”
That philosophy has defined Local’s approach to theater since its founding in 2011. Every year, the company chooses three new plays for a week of rehearsal, reflection and revision, culminating in a series of staged readings and post-show discussions designed to help an early work reach its full potential.
“A Local play has to have a specific answer to the question: Why this play now?” says LTC Co-artistic Director Betty Hart. “That’s really the beginning. It has to be something resonant and relevant to this moment … something that’s going to continue speaking, because our goal is to put works out that will become new American classics.”
That spirit of urgency and artistic discovery animates this year’s Local Lab, running April 25–27 at the Nomad Playhouse. The 2025 lineup includes three stories by playwrights Steven J. Burge, Kori Alston and Amy Tofte. While their works differ in form, style and tone, each play is a window into a world in progress.
Three plays, one purpose
Local Lab 14 begins April 25 with Burge’s Bats#!t, a deeply personal solo show by the celebrated Colorado actor, playwright and marketing director for Littleton’s Town Hall Arts Center. Directed by LTC Co-artistic Director Nick Chase, the performance blends absurd humor and emotional insight to explore Burge’s experience with anxiety, addiction and queer identity.
“Steven has written a compelling, mostly one-person show,” Chase says. “There is another character, Siri, so there’s a little bit of a dialogue, but it’s really a conversation with the audience about mental health and substance abuse told with a lot of humor.”
The play’s message is especially timely, according to Hart. “It also addresses Steven’s journey of being at peace with being a gay Christian in America,” she says. “Local is committed to telling queer stories and being a safe place for queer people and their allies. We live in a country where the queer community is told they don’t belong here, and I love that Stephen has written a very vulnerable interior look at his journey of becoming that challenges assumptions.”
April 26 features A Bedtime Story for Black Boys on the Moon by Massachusetts playwright and poet Alston. Hart, who also directs the piece, describes it as a “glimpse into both the loneliness and despair and also the love and rage of a young Black man,” told with gospel music, poetic language and a Greek chorus. The play follows Saint, a young Black boy grieving the loss of his mother, finding companionship in a plant, a radio and a flock of pigeons.
Alston is no stranger to LTC. His A Case for Black Girls Setting Central Park on Fire was developed during a previous Pop-Up Lab in fall 2023, in conjunction with its world premiere of Topher Payne’s Phish-inspired play, You Enjoy Myself.
“Kori is a principal at a secondary school, so he has a remarkable knowledge of how teenagers speak and their concerns,” Chase says. “He treats them with sensitivity and sophistication, and doesn’t condescend.”
Closing the weekend on April 27 is BloodSuckingLeech, a sharp-edged comedy from Tofte that explores the complex role reversal between an aging parent and her adult daughter. Directed by longtime LTC collaborator Diana Dresser, the play draws humor from a serious topic: the vulnerability that comes with aging.
“There’s a lot of humor within a topic that can feel pretty serious,” Zimmerman says. “It looks at the issue of the mother being tricked by catfishers and con artists, some in person and some via the internet. It also asks how we treat our older people in our society — sometimes we underestimate them or we try to take away their independence. That ageism piece definitely comes in there in a complex way.”
‘A festival town’
While the three plays are the heart of Local Lab 14, the festival extends beyond the staged readings. Each day offers numerous opportunities for deeper engagement, including a playwrights’ panel, parties and the interactive workshop Radical Listening: Theater for Social Change, led by Indianapolis-based artist and activist Jim Walker.
“Local Lab is a festival,” Chase emphasizes. “It is an opportunity for people not to just hear one reading but to have a conversation, participate in a workshop, hear another reading, go to a party and then come back to see a totally different style of theater. So audience members are certainly welcome to come to an individual reading, but there’s benefit to coming for all three days.”
Events for this year’s Lab are largely taking place at Boulder’s historic Nomad Playhouse, which has housed community performances since its groundbreaking in 1952.
“We’ve sold out Lab at the Dairy for the last five years, and this is a slightly bigger venue,” Zimmerman says. “Nomad is the oldest theater in Boulder. It has a unique history, so it felt exciting to be in that space. NoBo has a sort of funkiness and experimentalness that is really energizing for Lab.”
Local has also partnered with Ruzo Coffee near the theater. The café will serve as an informal gathering spot for artists and audience members between events, and a portion of April sales will go toward supporting the company’s work.
“There’s something that happens when you see a play on Friday, sit next to the playwright at a workshop on Saturday, and catch them at the coffee shop on Sunday,” Hart says. “That’s the kind of connection Local Lab is built for.”
As Boulder’s cultural calendar gets national attention — thanks in part to Sundance’s recent announcement that it’s coming here in 2027 — Chase sees Lab as part of a growing ecosystem.
“We’re clearly a festival town now,” he says. “There are a lot of festivals that happen here, and there really is something that happens when the audience starts to mix and see one another at the next reading, and it’s like, ‘Oh, did you see that last one?’ It builds community in a way that seeing an individual show doesn’t necessarily do.”
ON STAGE: Local Lab 14. April 25–27, Nomad Playhouse, 1410 Quince Ave., Boulder. All-access pass: $99 | With workshop: $121.50 | Individual tickets: $30 | Full schedule:
localtheaterco.org/lab14