PLAYS
PLAYWRIGHTS IN THE NEWSROOM
Playwrights in the Newsroom is an immersive, theatrical experience orchestrated by two playwrights who’ve spent hundreds of hours shadowing The Dallas Morning News. Playwrights Brigham Mosley and Janielle Kastner are fairly literate people (or so they thought) who, until recently, got their news from Buzzfeed and/or Twitter. When given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the newsroom at The Dallas Morning News to write a play about journalism, these fiction-writing story-embellishers are faced with a new mandate: seek the truth and report it. Their theatrical mission is simple: Figure out what journalism is, why it matters, who we trust to tell us What Happened, and also, along the way, maybe save democracy. No sweat!
Playwrights was commissioned by The Dallas Morning News and Ignite/Arts Dallas and premiered in ATTPAC’s Elevator Series, cancelled early due to Covid-19.
HEAVEN'S GATES, HELL'S FLAMES
Run lines. Test sound cues. Ask the Holy Spirit to move through the audience. The congregation of Living Way Church has devised an original new play that, if done well, will save souls for the Kingdom of God. From set-up, rehearsal, production, to strike, HEAVEN'S GATES... eavesdrops on a community discovering what it takes to bring heaven to earth. An intimate examination of a faith community behind closed doors, HEAVEN'S GATES... is a big-little play at the intersection of performance and faith, judgment and redemption, and the indignity and dignity of making new things.
SWEETPEA
A couple moves into the same apartment. Their pet birds move into separate cages. Pecking, nesting, and mating ensue. Sweet until it's dark, funny until it's sinister, cozy until it's incestuous, SWEETPEA explores the (im)possibility of intimacy and the absurdity of sharing space.
“SWEETPEA is powerful, compelling drama, and boy, is it painful.”
- Sharp Critic
“The play moves convincingly from the human to the avian point of view… Are our pets ourselves? …Can one bird (or human?) live in a cage with another?” - Onstage NTX
“Laudably, Kastner uncovers the excruciating detail that sends the well-intentioned into a tailspin. She explains almost nothing. But just enough to demonstrate the complicated, messy commitment that intense bonding requires.” - Sharp Critic
Download script at: New Play Exchange
OPHELIA UNDERWATER
Ophelia had everything: the boyfriend, the plan, the dress. Her life was a comedy. Until it really, really wasn’t. Set underwater in the mind of Hamlet’s forgotten, drowned heroine seconds after falling (or jumping?) into the water, Ophelia cross-examines her story, her existence, and most importantly - her ending. Janielle Kastner’s aggressively contemporary play explores the good news, the bad news, and the ultimate cost of being a very good girl. World-premiere in 2016 by The Tribe.
"Highlighting Kastner's talent for juxtaposing timeless concerns... A rich and exciting first play. We look forward to seeing what Kastner does next." - Dallas Observer
"[...] Kastner's timely and thought-provoking one-woman play."
- TheaterJones
Download script at: New Play Exchange