Playwrights in the Newsroom

Photo by Kim Leeson

Please join us for the fiction, meets nonfiction, meets dramatization, meets reality, category-obliterating play, “Playwrights in the Newsroom.”

Dallas playwrights Brigham Mosley and Janielle Kastner are fairly literate people, or so they thought. Until recently, they got their news from Buzzfeed or Twitter, but when given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the newsroom at The Dallas Morning News, these fiction-writing story-embellishers are faced with a new mandate: to seek the truth and report it. Their theatrical mission is to figure out what journalism is, why it matters, and who we trust to tell us the news. Along the way, they might be tasked to save democracy. No sweat!

The initial idea for this project began in the fall of 2017, when Kastner and Mosley were commissioned by The Dallas Morning News and Ignite/Arts Dallas to write a play about journalism. After two years of hard work—spending 100+ hours in the newsroom, shadowing journalists, interviewing professionals, and workshopping a first draft in a public forum in partnership with PEN America—”Playwrights in the Newsroom” will open on March 5 and run for two weeks at the Wyly Studio Theatre.

To find a show time and purchase tickets, click here. We’re excited to offer a 20% limited discount for ticket purchases. Just type in promo code ” PenAmerica ” at the top of the page. 

Brigham Mosley was a 2013 Performing Beyond Limits resident at New York City’s The New Museum, as well as a member of the 2015 Dallas Theater Center Playwrights Workshop.  He is a founding member of Dallas’s The Tribe (winner of the 2016 Dallas Observer Mastermind Award) and was named a 2016 Queer Local of the Year by The Dallas Voice.

Janielle Kastner is a 2016 Mastermind (Dallas Observer) and was recently named best new playwright in Dallas Best Of 2016 (Dallas Observer). She is working on a new play commission from Dallas Theater Center, where she was an inaugural member of the Dallas Playwrights’ Workshop with Will Power. Her play, “OPHELIA UNDERWATER,” was selected as one of TheaterJones’ best new plays by Local Writers.