New York Playwright Jack Angelo Cummings Wins Kirk New Play Prize at Baylor New Play Initiative Festival
Judge’s panel taps Cummings’ “& Sons” as best new original play at Texas festival celebrating the creation of bold new American theatre by emerging playwrights
(L to R) - New York City playwright Jack Angelo Cummings accepts the $15,000 Kirk New Play Prize from Preston Kirk for his winning new work "& Sons." Preston and Ronda Dale Kirk's generous support and vision helped create the Baylor New Play Initiative Festival in conjunction with the Baylor Department of Theatre Arts.
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Jack Angelo Cummings, a New Jersey/New York City-based playwright, has won the $15,000 Kirk New Play Prize for his new work “& Sons,” announced during an awards ceremony concluding the inaugural Baylor University New Play Initiative Festival in Waco, Texas. The Baylor New Play Festival is the signature program of the Baylor New Play Initiative (BNPI), which champions new and established artists in the creation of new works through artistic and financial support.
In collaboration with 13 of Texas’ top professional theatres, the Baylor New Play Initiative Festival featured four new plays by emerging and established artists from Dallas, Los Angeles, Brooklyn and New York City. Forty professional actors, directors and stage managers from across the U.S. came to Waco Sept. 26-28 to develop and stage the four new plays, each competing for the Kirk Prize, won by Cummings.
“I am so thankful for this experience at Baylor,” Cummings said. “The BNPI helped bring my play to its fullest expression with the help of an incredibly talented, kind and intelligent Texas theater community. From here, I look forward to finding ‘& Sons’ its first professional production. I cannot overstate the value of this communal experience. My play could not have evolved without the many resources the BNPI provides, from its thoughtful audience members to its bold artists and educators. This was truly a dream of a collaborative experience.”
Based in New Jersey and New York and raised around where The Sopranos was filmed, Cummings writes plays about working American people surviving failure and gracefully accepting their place in the universe. Cummings’ “& Sons” tells the story of three young men living in New Jersey, who attempt to salvage a boutique construction company after the business’s former patriarch, Bob DiSanti, dies suddenly of a heart attack.
“It was a difficult process for the judges to choose a winner amongst four incredibly strong plays,” said Carla Neuss, Ph.D., assistant professor of theatre at Baylor and co-chair of the BNPI. “But Jack Cumming’s ‘& Sons’ is a worthy winner of the Kirk New Play Prize, as an incredibly moving and timely consideration of the themes of generational trauma, addiction and working-class America. I couldn’t be more pleased with the response to the inaugural BNPI Festival from Baylor students and we’re already beginning the process of planning the next Festival.”
Cummings’ play follows the DiSanti construction crew that includes Bob’s second son, Dom DiSanti, a hapless, highly amicable stoner; Bob’s protégé, Juan Alvarez, a handsome, type A, natural born leader; and Bob’s first son, Anthony, a physically imposing stoic who has just returned to Jersey after a mysterious seven-year hiatus inspired by Bob’s heavy-handed parenting style. Tensions increase as Anthony and Juan fight for control of the company, tearing lovable, ill-starred Dom in half by forcing him to choose between his biological brother and his best friend. The three men stifle their own emotional needs, all while trying to enjoy sub sandwiches, burritos, pizza, etc., on their well-deserved lunch break. Ultimately, this play is a meditation on masculinity and how (particularly, blue collar) young men use degrees of touch to process their feelings.
The staged reading of Cummings’ “& Sons” was directed by Christopher Llewyn Ramirez, an actor, director and playwright from Dallas now in Chicago, and featured a three-member professional cast.
In addition to being Baylor New Play Initiative Festival finalist and now winner, Cummings is a 2024 Sewanee Writers Conference Tennessee Williams Scholarship Winner, Judith Royer Award Finalist and Austin Film Festival Second-Rounder. His work has been developed by The Luna Stage, Sewanee, New Jersey Play Labs, Drew University, The Barrow Group, Primary Stages and City Lit Theater. Cumming is an alumnus of the William Esper Acting Studio in New York City and has performed at various improv venues in Chicago.
Texas theatre collaboration
“& Sons” was one of the festival’s four new plays selected from dozens of works submitted and recommended by BNPI’s collaborating theatres, including Houston’s 4th Wall Theatre Company, Alley Theatre, Stages and A.D. Players Theater; Dallas’s Dallas Theater Center, Second Thought Theatre, WaterTower Theatre and Theatre Three; Fort Worth’s Amphibian Stage, Stage West Theatre and Circle Theatre; Austin’s Zach Theater; and Round Rock’s Penfold Theatre.
The other plays competing for the Kirk Prize were “Under the Bridge,” by Dallas creative writer, scholar and educator Janelle Gray, “I, Will” by Los Angeles-based playwright Scott Carter and “Here Kitty Kitty” by Brooklyn-based, Dallas-native playwright Janielle Kastner. Each playwright had a director, a dramaturge (literary editor) and a cast with whom to work for their staged readings in Baylor’s Mabee Theatre over the festival’s three days.
The BNPI was made possible by the visionary leadership and generous support of Baylor alumni Preston and Ronda Dale Kirk and in conjunction with the Baylor University Department of Theatre Arts. The Kirks conceived a U.S. playwrights’ competition more than 10 years ago, proposing it to the Department of Theatre Arts and underwriting several years of research into playwriting festivals. In its first year, the resulting Baylor New Play Initiative offered the $15,000 Kirk New Play Prize and funding to support the biennial festival for decades to come.
“We are deeply grateful to Preston and Ronda Dale Kirk for their incredible vision and generosity in studying, planning and bringing to life this legacy project – a premier U.S. playwrights festival – at their alma mater, Baylor University,” said JoJo Jones, M.F.A., professor of lighting design at Baylor and BNPI committee member. “The Kirks’ objectives are clear and enduring, not only for Baylor and our Theatre Arts Department, but for our students to have fresh opportunities in the academic and artistic fields of theatre study, for the City of Waco as a significant metropolitan center for the theatrical arts and for emerging playwrights to generate engaging, entertaining, profitable and successful original plays for stages worldwide.”
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The Baylor University Department of Theatre Arts is an elite program combining an excellent liberal arts education with rigorous training in both academic and artistic fields of theatre study. Accredited by the National Association of Schools of Theatre, Baylor Theatre Arts has been named among the top undergraduate theatre programs in the United States and the Top 4 in Texas.