Current Festival
Current Festival
November 11-12, 2025
The Fall 2025 Director’s Festival explores the scorching hot, seemingly untraversable distances that age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social status wedge between people. Through radical trust and raw vulnerability, these stories peel back the complex layers of humanity and reveal what arises when the internal drive to protect oneself clashes with the human craving for connection. Whether this is through an adopted boy’s hunt for identity, a rekindling of two exes, or a cross-generational connection of contrasting women, we see the way interpersonal conflict is a cycle of destruction and rebirth, revealing something much bigger about the true nature of humanity. With a range of works spanning from the real to the absurd, the comedic to the dramatic, the present to the past, this festival promises a fiery variety and is sure to keep its audience curious about their own distance from others and the ways relationships impact their futures.
“What if we loved just as fiercely as we hate?”, “How does one moment live in our bones for the rest of our lives?”, “Can one person’s faith be enough to save us?”.
Festival Information
Creative
- Faculty Advisor: Michael Alvarez (He/Him) and John Langs (He/Him)
- Producer: Gabe Pettener (He/Him)
- Dramaturgy: Eryn Lemmert (She/Her)
- Marketing: Gianna Marullo (She/Her) and Breylyn Brown (She/Her)
- Deck Stage Manager: Gabby Laatz (They/She)
- Sound Operator: Amira Miller-Muro (She/Her)
- Lighting: Emily Stanton (She/They), Tom McVeety (He/Him)
- Photographer: Amita Devotta (She/Her)
"No Exit"
By Jean-Paul Sartre
- Director: Gianna Marullo (She/Her)
- Valet: Liam Lavery (They/Them)
- Garcin: Rex Koern (He/Him)
- Inez: Jasmine Lin (She/Her)
- Estelle: Santina Traficante (She/Her)
"Third and Oak: The Laundromat"
By Marsha Norman
- Director: Breylyn Brown (She/Her)
- Alberta: Kara Sparks (She/Her)
- Deedee: Laylah Cooper-Holman (She/Her)
- Shooter: Blake Robinson (He/Him)
"Wolf Play"
By Hansol Jung
- Director: Eryn Lemmert (She/Her)
- Wolf: Helena Engberg (She/Her)
- Ash: Chloe Vuong (She/Her)
- Robin: Gracie Bryant (She/Her)
- Ryan: Aidan Armstrong (He/Him)
- Peter: Dillon Hanna (He/Him)
"The Bear"
By Anton Chekhov
- Director: Gabriele J Pettener (He/Him)
- Elena Ivanovna Popova: Elinor Ott (She/Her)
- Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov: Julian G. Landestoy (He/Him)
- Luka: Brennan Mitchell (He/Him)
A selection from "Five Times in One Night"
By Chiara Atik
- Director: Gabby Laatz (He/Him)
- Stephen: Andy Wu (He/Him)
- Casey: Hazel Thompson (She/Her)
A selection from "Oleanna"
By David Mamet
- Director: Amira Miller-Muro (She/Her)
- Carol: Cecilia Carrasco (She/Her)
- John: Daniel Adams (He/Him)
Schedule and Details
Performances
- November 11, 2025 7:30 p.m.
- November 12, 2025 7:30 p.m.
Location
UNCSA Performance Place - Patrons Theatre
1533 South Main Street, Winston-Salem, NC