NEW WORKS FESTIVAL 2025 -

PUP (Playwrights Under Progress) Fest!

Now in its 24th year, PUP (Playwrights Under Progress) Fest features six staged readings of jury-selected scripts written by high school students. Theater professionals lead acting classes, mentor student playwrights and direct student actors during the week-long rehearsal process leading up to the performances. A vital New Works Festival component, PUP Fest has become an eagerly anticipated event, playing to near capacity crowds.

Each year, the winning plays are featured in a professionally designed and printed anthology.

Stay tuned for more information about PUP Fest 2025!

HISTORY:

In 2001,  Kitchen Dog Theater partnered with the award-winning Dallas arts education organization Junior Players to create PUP Fest, a locally lauded (DFW Critics’ Forum Award) and nationally recognized (NEA) program dedicated to the cultivation of student playwrights. In 2017 the two organizations forged a new partnership with the Dallas Independent School District called D-PAC. By leveraging organizational assets, the new partnership allowed for expanded services and additional performance opportunities. D-PAC activities include three interrelated components: multiple in-school masterclasses led by local professional playwrights at 20 DISD high schools, a districtwide competition of fifteen-minute plays written, directed, and performed by students, and PUP Fest.

Founded in 1955, Junior Players is the oldest performing arts education nonprofit in North Texas, Kitchen Dog Theater’s annual New Works Festival is the longest running new play festival in the state of Texas, and Dallas Independent School District is the fourteenth-largest school district in the United States. Together, D-PAC is one of the most innovative student playwriting programs in the country and one of the largest in terms of reach, scope, and diversity of activities.”