Kitchen Dog Theater will present its 20th annual New Works Festival, offering an expanded series of nine staged readings over three weekends. Showcasing some of the newest and most exciting voices and visions in contemporary theater, the winning plays are selected from almost 850 annual submissions from around the globe and will feature a strong cadre of Dallas-Fort Worth's most accomplished actors and directors.

This year's Staged Reading Series includes:

• June 1: Catherine or the Girl From T-Mobile by Jenny Ledel - Fresh out of community college, and on break from her job at T-Mobile, Cathy heads to the big apple to stay with a family friend. With few to zero friends at home and poor self-confidence, Cathy meets new peers in New York and struggles to do what it takes to be a good friend and survive the city with the ease and fun a young person is supposed to have.
• June 2: Lipstick by Alice Stanley - Lipstick is a love letter of a play to the queer community, in the shape of a silly, sweet farce. High levels of hijinks ensue when Anna attempts to determine if her dinner with Kelly is actually a date - with "help" and hindrance from a cavalcade of uninvited visitors (and the appearance of a dildo or two... or twelve).
• June 3: Things That Are Round by Callie Kimball - Tetherly, a dentist specializing in existential terror, and Nina, an opera singer who just might be the worst babysitter ever, square off in a strange ballet of truth or dare. But is this a game anyone can even win? Thelma and Louise meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on steroids.
• June 8: Channel by John Jiler - A volatile white actor and an erudite black doctor come together, in an explosive way, over the illness of a child….and provoke deep questions about the power and limits of medicine and art.
• June 9: What We Were by Blake Hackler - What We Were is set in East Texas over a span of two decades, tracing the lives of three sisters: Nell, Tessa, and Carlin, whose adult lives have been impacted by a childhood of abuse. Weaving scenes from the past and present, this story is a meditation on responsibility, on what we do to cope, and on the very difficult work of healing.
• ​June 10: Rastus and Hattie by Lisa Langford - Needra and Marlene enjoy a perfect post-racial friendship until two problematic Black robots make them confront their ideas about race.
• June 15: Welcome to Matteson! by Inda Craig-Galván - A suburban couple hosts a welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner party for their new neighbors — a couple recently (forcibly) relocated from Chicago's roughest housing project — and it's anything but welcoming. A dark intra-racial comedy about reverse gentrification and how we deal with the "other” when the other looks just like us.
• June 16: Playwrights Under Progress Fest - PUP Fest is a unique project, co-produced with D-PAC, a newly-minted alliance between KDT, Dallas ISD and local youth organization Junior Players. Written and performed by some of the Metroplex's finest high school talent, this year's PUP Fest will feature an afternoon of six world premiere staged readings developed through playwriting workshops with local celebrated playwrights David Goodwin, who’s also a Kitchen Dog Artistic Company Member, and Erin Burdette. This year’s fest will also feature an acting intensive workshop for all PUP student participants, led by PUP Fest alum Montgomery Sutton and KDT Artistic Company Member Tim Johnson. (1 pm and 4 pm)
• June 16: Gasper by Zayd Dohrn - Sarah's a gasper. Her boyfriend Benny's a breather. Her mom's a drunk, her sister's dead, and Sarah is slowly suffocating. A play about loss, love, and erotic asphyxiation. (8 pm)
• June 17: Reykjavík by Steve Yockey - In the city of Reykjavík, we eavesdrop on the intertwined lives of lovers, hospitality workers, partygoers, and even a really handsome bird or two. This frank exploration of honesty in relationships offers a glimpse into a cold, dark, magical, and sometimes violent world where everyone still hopes to find joy beneath the glow of the Northern Lights.