Developed at T2, "FLEX" by Candrice Jones, moves to Lincoln Center Theater

After World Premiere at TheatreSquared,

FLEX, BY CANDRICE JONES, MOVES TO LINCOLN CENTER THEATER THIS YEAR

NWA’s Theatre Carves Path for Playwrights from NWA to National Stage

Playwright Candrice Jones’ powerful and thought-provoking play, FLEX, developed in part at TheatreSquared’s Arkansas New Play Festival in 2021 before its 2022 World Premiere on the West Theater Stage, will receive a new production at Lincoln Center Theater in New York in late June of this year just a year after its T2 debut.

The play follows a similar path to Bryna Turner’s At The Wedding, an eventual New York Times Critics’ Pick developed at T2’s Arkansas New Play Festival and produced at TheatreSquared in the run-up to its premiere at LCT in 2022.

Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm was also developed and co-premiered by TheatreSquared in 2020 to national acclaim, including a Best of the Year listing in The New York Times.

“Historically, theatre marketing in the middle of the country has been driven by, ‘straight from New York’” said Artistic Director Robert Ford. “We’re thrilled that audiences and critics in New York are seeing the value of ‘straight from Northwest Arkansas.’”

By turns tender, tart, and hilarious, FLEX was inspired by Jones’ own adolescence. The play, a beautiful testament to female friendship, tells the story of five young women for whom basketball isn’t just a sport—it’s a potential escape from the rural Arkansas town where they’ve lived their whole lives. The Lady Train team members are leaving the last vestiges of childhood behind and stepping into adulthood, and the path is anything but smooth.

“When I started writing FLEX, I simply wanted to write about my high school basketball experience,” said Jones. “The more I dove into the stories, I found myself understanding my hometown and the issues that live in it more deeply. As a writer who lives in Arkansas, others often expect me to write about my experiences from a place of sorrow or disdain. FLEX is not that. It celebrates the silliness, fun, and immaturity of girlhood in the American South. So, regardless of the flaws the characters may have in the play, I want folks to know this show is a celebration of Black women and girls in the American South.”

Jones’ play was workshopped at T2’s Arkansas New Play Festival, a two-week program that invites playwrights from all over the country to develop a work-in-progress. There are a limited number of such programs in the country, and competition for spots can be fierce. Over the past two years, prestigious programs like the Lark Play Development Center, the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, and the Humana Festival of New American Plays have closed their doors, making programs like the ANPF more vital to the theater world.

“New play development is absolutely important since it provides a multitude of opportunities for not only playwrights, but also directors, actors, designers, and producers,” said Jones. “If there are no theaters and programs that push new work, then those voices, the playwrights, will not get heard.”

“Writing a new play is like developing a recipe,” said Bryna Turner, playwright of At the Wedding. “You can fiddle with it on paper as much as you want, but you won’t know what you’re making until you put the ingredients together. Development opportunities allow you to taste your creation as you work on it. This is how you discover what the play is, how the play works, and what the play needs to get better. Without development opportunities like ANPF, we would only have bland plays in the world. Artists need time and space to try out bigger and bolder ideas—time to make a real mess before finding something that works.”

T2’s Director of New Works, Dexter J. Singleton, has high hopes that T2’s involvement in fostering and premiering new works will strengthen a pipeline that begins in Fayetteville, Arkansas and reaches all over the country—including its theater capital, New York City.

“We are always looking at ways TheatreSquared can be even more of a centralized hub for new work— not only for the South and Midwest but for the entire nation,” says Singleton. “Our audiences have always been open to it because they enjoy seeing a new play developed and being the first to get a look. So that one day, they can say, ‘Remember when this premiered at T2, and now it’s in New York?’”