Schedule of Events/Tickets

The annual ANPF Fall Festival is an opportunity for playwrights to workshop their scripts with professional actors and directors, often for the first time. It is also a chance to connect with audience members during talk-backs following each reading, where patrons can share their thoughts directly with the artists to help continue the growth of their work.
These talk-backs are led by ANPF’s Host Playwrights.

Each year, the winning scripts are selected through ANPF's distinctive community-based reading process, which involves a passionate group of theatre lovers volunteering their time to read each script, without knowing the author's identity. Over the course of 6 months, all 350 plays are read, debated, and narrowed down based on the scripts’ content, originality, impact, and more. The four winners are then selected by ANPF’s artistic director, Jackie Apodaca. 

“Our 2025 winners were chosen from an exceptional pool of submissions,” shares Apodaca. “By the time a play becomes a finalist, it has been championed through our months-long reading process and deeply appreciated by all of our dedicated readers, making the choice of the four winners extremely challenging. This year’s winning plays share a common perspective, one of empathy and compassion. From feuding meat factory coworkers to hungry children playing games in the woods, these stories blend the familiar with the existential. I am eager to welcome our four winning playwrights to Ashland this October and to see their compelling stories brought to life.”