
Echo Reads is a Free Theater Experience. Directors lightly rehearse readings of plays with professional actors who carry their scripts as they perform for the audience. After the reading, the audience is invited to stay to discuss the play with the Actors, Director, and Echo Creatives in a casual conversation.
Echo Reads will take place in Fall of 2022.
With pandemic-related deaths surpassing one million in the United States alone, we have decided to wait until the Fall to gather for our Echo Reads New Play Festival because of an over-abundance of caution for our actors and our audiences.
Please joins us at 7:30pm Tuesday and Wednesday Evenings this coming Fall.
At this time, Masks will be required in the venues.
Duration will vary based on script length and audience discussion.
- Echo Reads is intended for mature audiences. Viewer discretion advised. -
All readings are presented live over 2 evenings at the
Bath House Cultural Center & at a Venue Partner in Dallas.
No Reservation Required.
Donations Accepted.
2022 Echo ReadS
FALL FESTIVAL
Finalist Honorees from the Big Shout Out 3 New Play Contest
READING DATES tbd:
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
FOR THE PEOPLE by Carol Mullen
directed by Gloria Vivica Benavides
Pittsburgh City Councilor Meg Cabot is the first openly lesbian elected official in Pennsylvania. She’s less than a month into her first term when a vicious hate crime targeting the city’s Lesbian and Gay Community Center puts Meg in the middle of a media maelstrom. But this tragedy leads to new national visibility and Meg’s rising star catches the attention of Democratic Party leaders. With her hard-driving chief of staff steering her toward a once-in-a-lifetime professional opportunity, Meg decides how far she’ll go to advance her career and whether it’s possible to be both a successful politician and a good person.
Winner, Plays in Progress Series, Athena Project, 2022
Winner, Detroit New Works Festival, Outvisible Theatre, 2019
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
THOSE HOLLOW BODIES by emma joy hill
directed by Hayley Shipley
In the jungle, K and Ann struggle to find what it means to be full. Meanwhile, the voyeuristic Man gorges himself in the audience, awaiting the impending danger he's bound to commit. A play that explores how bodies are taught to love.
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
SLEEP/WAKE by Yael Haskal
directed by Katie Ibrahim
Miriam’s husband is dead; stabbed to death. Did Miriam consciously kill her husband or was she sleep walking? Alice, a high school student struggling with her own dissociative episodes, becomes obsessed with Miriam’s case while studying it for her psychology project with a classmate, Henry. A feminist study in dissociation, portraiture, and the latent power of the supine woman.
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
DAISY VIOLET THE BITCH BEAST KING by Sam Collier
directed by Mikaela Brooks
Sisters Josephine and Henrietta use witchcraft to create a new sister for their family - Daisy Violet, who will take the blame for all of their misdeeds and dirty dresses. Gleeful, monstrous, and very hungry, Daisy Violet is rejected by the adults surrounding the sisters and becomes increasingly violent and ravenous. As adults, the sisters look back on their childhood and come to realize that their memories may not be as reliable as they once thought. A play about sisterhood, the malleability of memory, and an explosion of beauty products. Winner, Modern Works Festival, Urbanite Theatre, 2019
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
FROZEN FLUID: An Antarctic Gender Non-Conforming Creation Myth
by Fly Jamerson
directed by Chris Sanders
Somewhere in Mythic Antarctica, three scientists live and conduct research out on the ice, continuously becoming and unbecoming themselves as they play out the creation of the world. Through a series of fables, Frozen Fluid chronicles the arrival of phytoplankton scientist Tay and the unraveling of the fantastic Antarctic world in which they find themselves. Together, the scientists construct and deconstruct notions of gender, identity, religion, climate, and time itself.
finalist honoree
AT THE bATH HOUSE CULTURAL CENTER
TOMORROW GAME by Brandy N. Carie
directed by Eric Berg
Clean drinking water is not a thing anymore. Clean air is not a thing anymore. Infrastructure is gone, order is mythic, and no one believes that help is coming. Roe lives in isolation, with nothing but a collection of canned food and a solitary Bible. Until she meets Bell. Bell shows Roe a game: take off your mask and see if you can breathe. Try this vegetable, see if you wake up. Read a poem. Do more than just not-die. But friendship can prove more dangerous than isolation.
Winner, Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award 2019