(UNION, NJ) -- Premiere Stages at Kean University has announced its 20th anniversary season, celebrating 20 years of new plays and New Jersey premieres. The 2025 season will feature two full productions, the 2024 Play Festival winner and a New Jersey Premiere; as well as the 2025 Premiere Play Festival Reading Series and developmental readings of two new plays, including the 2025-26 Liberty Live Commission recipient.
The season will kick off in July with The Mallard by Vincent Delaney, directed by Premiere Stages Producing Artistic Director John J. Wooten (July 17-August 3, Bauer Boucher Theatre Center). The Mallard was the winner of the 2024 Premiere Play Festival, the theatre’s annual competition for unproduced scripts written by playwrights affiliated with the greater metropolitan area. In this compelling new play, Freya and Gillian are teachers who have offended their school board and lost their jobs. Davis and Reagan are yard sale fanatics in search of a priceless antique duck decoy, the Horace Crandall Mallard. What follows is a fierce, funny and escalating battle over a symbol that has wildly different meanings - intersecting the couples in a journey that far surpasses the quest for treasure.
Vincent Delaney returns to Premiere Stages after his play Las Cruces premiered in 2016. His plays have been produced, commissioned and developed at the Guthrie, Humana Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, LAByrinth, New Harmony Project, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Palm Beach Dramaworks, the Children’s Theatre Company, the Magic, Woolly Mammoth, Premiere Stages, Shakespeare and Company, Pittsburgh Public, B Street Theatre, PlayLabs, Capital Rep and Orlando Shakes, among many others.
The second full production in the 2025 season is Walden by Amy Berryman, directed by Charlotte Cohn (September 4-21, Bauer Boucher Theatre Center). In this topical New Jersey premiere, we travel to the near future, where Stella and her fiancé, Bryan, are waiting at their remote cabin for Stella’s estranged twin sister, Cassie. Raised by their astronaut father to be NASA scientists, the twins have taken different paths: Cassie has just returned from a successful moon mission, while Stella left NASA behind. When Cassie arrives, old conflicts reignite, forcing the sisters to choose between life on Earth or pursuing a future in space, as humanity’s fate hangs in the balance. Walden is a thrilling and engrossing play that wrestles between the gravitational pulls of duty and desire.
Walden was a finalist of the 2019 Premiere Play Festival and had a developmental workshop in June 2019. An Off-Broadway production at Second Stage Theater was recently nominated for Outstanding Production of a Play at the 2025 Drama League Awards. Walden is presented through special arrangement with TRW plays.
Amy Berryman is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, and teaching artist originally from Seattle by way of West Texas. Her play Walden had its world premiere on London’s West End in May 2021 at the Harold Pinter Theatre, produced by Sonia Friedman and directed by Ian Rickson. Walden was also produced at TheaterWorks Hartford in August 2021 (NYT Critic’s Pick), directed by Mei Ann Teo, and most recently premiered off-Broadway in November 2024 at Second Stage, directed by Whitney White.
“As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we are so pleased to welcome back two playwrights who have been instrumental in our growth and success. Vincent’s play, Las Cruces, that premiered with us in 2016 was recently named one of New Jersey Stage's all-time favorite productions and we are so excited to explore Amy's Walden again, after a successful run in London and off-Broadway at Second Stage,” stated John J. Wooten.
The Premiere Play Festival Reading Series will be held from June 19 through June 22 in the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center. Selected from 805 submissions, four promising plays will have one-day professional readings. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to see up to four plays in four days, meet the playwrights, and provide feedback at post-show question-and-answer sessions to help Premiere select two of the four scripts for expanded development in the fall of 2025 and summer of 2026. The four finalists will be announced in early June.
Premiere Stages continues its commitment to new play development with multiple free readings of new plays, including the staged reading of a 2025 Play Festival Finalist. One finalist of the 2025 Play Festival will receive extended development with three staged readings in the Fall at the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center.
The final staged reading of the season is Effa Loves Baseball, a new play about Effa Manley, the first and only woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, by Pia Wilson, recipient of the 2025-26 Liberty Live Commission. Effa Loves Baseball is a compelling story about Effa Manley, the manager of the Newark Eagles, a team she wants to take all the way to the Negro League World Series. Effa battles the press, coaching staff, segregation, and sometimes herself to win at the business of the game she loves most of all, even if it costs her everything.
Tickets for Premiere Stages’ two mainstage productions are now on sale. Prices range from $15-$100, with discounts available for season packages, groups, seniors, and students. To purchase tickets or inquire about opening night or season packages, call the box office at 908-737-7469 or visit premierestagesatkean.com.
Premiere Stages also offers summer camp programs for middle school and high school students and a musical performance series for the young and young-at-heart. For more information about educational programs, click here.
Premiere Stages offers affordable prices, air-conditioned facilities and free parking close to the theatre. A series of free interactive lobby talks and post-show discussions are scheduled in conjunction with select performances. All Premiere Stages facilities are fully accessible spaces, and companion seating is available for patrons with disabilities. Premiere Stages also provides free or discounted tickets to patrons with disabilities. Assistive listening devices and large print programs are available at all times; publications in alternate formats are available with advance notice. Sign-interpreted and audio described performances are available by request, at least three weeks in advance. Please call 908-737-4077 or email premiere@kean.edu to request these services.
Premiere Stages is committed to producing topical plays and interactive programs that reflect people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, national origins, nationalities, ancestry, religious groups, gender expression or identities, sexual orientation, political beliefs, ages, abilities and disabilities.
Premiere Stages is made possible in part through funding from W. John Bauer and Nancy Boucher, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Shubert Foundation, Carole Shaffer-Koros and Robert Koros and ExxonMobil Foundation, The Northfield Bank Foundation, Blue Foundry Charitable Foundation, Union County Savings Bank Charitable Foundation, The Hyde and Watson Foundation, The Union Foundation, E.J. Grassmann Trust, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, The Union County HEART Grant and through the generous support of individual patrons and local organizations. Discover Jersey Arts is our marketing partner. Visit JerseyArts.com for more information about other arts programming happening around the Garden State.
Created in 2004, Premiere Stages is the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University. Through its unique partnership with Kean, Premiere’s play development programs, educational initiatives, and professional development opportunities actively embrace the university's academic curriculum while expanding the scope, accessibility, and prestige of the professional programming on campus.
Kean University, New Jersey’s urban research university, is a national institution of higher education recognized for its diversity, innovation and the social mobility of its graduates. Designated an R2 research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Kean ranks among the top eight percent of U.S. universities for research and doctorate production. Founded in 1855 as a teachers college, Kean has evolved into a thriving research university that supports students as they persist to graduation, give back to their communities and launch successful careers. Kean’s six colleges offer more than 50 undergraduate programs, six doctoral degree programs and more than 70 options leading to master’s degrees, professional diplomas or certifications, across a full range of academic subjects. With campuses in Union, Toms River and Manahawkin, New Jersey, and Wenzhou, China, as well as Kean Online, the University provides students of all backgrounds an affordable and accessible world-class education.
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