Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF)

Let’s stop for a moment to consider how much of the grey matter we’ve got upstairs, between those infernal ears, is dedicated to memory. ...

by Allison Considine Ready for your next summer adventure or weekend getaway? Each July, the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, presents new...

Dystopias can be off-putting places, for those in search of more traditional fictional locales. Why would you want to begin your story in a...

Truth be known, there is much about Ronald Reagan that is eminently unlikeable: his shameless embrace of the southern, “State’s Rights” strategy, his contempt...

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” --William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun. Of the many great moments in the late August Wilson’s Twentieth...

The Contemporary American Theatre Festival is off to a rocking start, and with the local premiere of Bekah Brunstetter’s ripped-from-the-Supreme-Court-blotter comedy The Cake, the...

Fear City is the South Bronx in July 1977. There is nothing particularly unique about that July in that year in that place. Fear, it...

The Amish with their horse and buggy, 19th century culture; their simple, old world uniforms and habits; their infamous Rumspringa where the teenage Amish...

Eleanor Burgess' The Niceties is a political play that takes the gloves off. It's bare knuckled and it's bloody, though no bones are broken...

Evan Linder‘s Byhalia, Mississippi pulls theatre-goers into familiar territory: the "white trash" world of Laurel and Jim. Once there, however, the unfamiliar takes shape:...

David Meyers’ We Will Not Be Silent places American audiences within an interrogation room in Nazi Germany in 1943. Leaders of the White Rose,...

Last year there was Not Medea; this year there is Wild Horses, Allison Gregory’s rollicking one-woman ride through a 13-year-old’s adventures in horse country. Though...

Chisa Hutchinson' The Wedding Gift takes its audience into a fascinating world: an exotic "paradise" where matriarchy rules and the white / black power...

Ronan Noone’s The Second Girl received its second chance opening at the Contemporary American Theater Festival last weekend and, like its hardscrabble characters, it’s...

Bags and umbrella in hands, a young woman arrives late for the theater, apologizing profusely and comically all the while. She notices the “live” caged...

Susan Miller’s 20th Century Blues, which opened last weekend at Shepherdstown’s Contemporary American Festival, speaks right from the heart of successful, east coast boomer women. Four 60-something women...

The Contemporary American Theater Festival opened Friday, July 8, 2016, for the 26th time: five new plays with five new stories to tell. In Chistina Anderson’s pen/man/ship at the in-the-round...

Here is Part 5 of 5 in a series of interviews by Sharon J. Anderson, Contemporary American Theater Festival Trustee/Professional Story Listener and Creative...

The Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is approaching its second quarter of a century of new American plays....

Here is Part 3 of 5 interviews by Sharon J. Anderson, Contemporary American Theater Festival Trustee/Professional Story Listener and Creative Director. Meet Playwright Allison...