2024 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival

The annual Festival begins with a university-wide solicitation of new, unproduced plays. Several plays are selected, through an anonymized screening process, to be developed in a two-week event in September. During those two weeks, each play will be workshopped with a professional dramaturg, a faculty director and a student cast. The Festival culminates in a public staged reading of each play. Assistant Professor Zachariah Ezer will serve as Festival dramaturg in September 2024. 

Hotch Fest is generously supported by the Office of the Dean of Arts & Sciences and the Newman’s Own Foundation.

All Readings take place in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre 
Admission is free. 

Friday, September 20, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. 

Escape  
By Zach Berger 
Directed by Jeffery Matthews

Chuck just wants to find love, but when his personal ad draws some unwanted visitors from his past, he must decide whether to run or find “the one” in this comedy of errors. 

Zach Berger Hotch Headshot.png

Zach Berger (class of ’25) is a Major in Political Science and Minor in Film & Media Studies at the School of Arts and Sciences. He worked as a theater director at a children’s summer camp for 5 years and performs stand-up comedy. This will be his second time participating in the Hotch Fest, having acted in the 2021 Festival. His prior written works include short film screenplays (Terrazzo, Parachute) and unfunny movie reviews. 

Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. 

Follow the....  
By Frauke Thielecke 
Directed by Annamaria Pileggi 

Mark has unexpectedly turned into a giant white rabbit. Soon, he learns that it is not all about carrots.

Frauke Hotch Headshot.png

Frauke Thielecke is a German filmmaker and theater director. Her short film Dunkelrot (Dark Red) was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize in 2008, and her graduation film Abendlied (Evening Song) won the Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award in 2009. She directed numerous TV series and features, e.g., four romantic comedies set in Massachusetts, USA, and two thrillers in Poland. She also staged theater plays and worked as an instructor at acting schools in Germany. Since the fall of 2023, she pursues her Ph.D. in the International Writers Track in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, focusing on screen- and playwriting. Follow the… is her first play as a playwright.
 

Meet our Dramaturg

Zachariah Ezer is a playwright whose work animates theoretical quandaries through theatrical forms. His plays include The Freedom Industry (Playwrights Horizons’ New Works Lab, The Playwrights Center, New York Stage & Film), Address the Body! (The University of Texas at Austin’s UTNT Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival, Echo Theater Company’s National Young Playwrights in Residence), The Single Raindrop (The Civilians’ R&D Group), Legitime (Fault Line Theatre’s Irons in the Fire), and Black Women in Tech (The Fire This Time Festival, PBS), among others.

He is a Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Fellow, the winner of Kumu Kahua Theatre’s Hawai’i Prize, and is currently under commission from Theater J. He is an alumnus of The University of Texas’s James A. Michener Fellowship, The Civilians’ R&D Group, The Playwrights Center’s Core Apprenticeship, American Conservatory Theatre’s Make-A-Thing Commission, Hi-ARTS’ Critical Breaks Residency, Echo Theater Company’s National Young Playwrights in Residence, Town Stages’ Sokoloff Arts Creative Fellowship, BUFU’s EYEDREAM Residency, and Wesleyan University’s Olin Fellowship. His work has been published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French, Smith & Kraus, American Blues Theater, and New World Theatre.

Zachariah is also a dramaturg (who has worked with The National Black Theatre, Breaking the Binary, WP Theater, Keen Company, The Workshop Theater, Merde, and foolsFURY), an essayist (published by the University of Texas’ E3W, Gizmodo/io9, HuffPost, and elsewhere), and a performer (in alternative rock band Harper's Landing).