Vincent Delaney and Anthony T. Goss

(UNION, NJ) -- Premiere Stages at Kean University has selected The Mallard by Vincent Delaney as the winner of the 2024 Play Festival. A second Play Festival finalist, Castling by Anthony T. Goss, will receive a staged reading this fall at Premiere Stages, as directed by Jamil A.C. Mangan, from Friday, November 22 through Sunday, November 24 in Kean University's Liberty Hall Academic Center.

The Premiere Play Festival is an annual competition for unproduced scripts that offers developmental opportunities to playwrights with strong affiliations to the metropolitan area. Four finalists were selected in 2024, including The Mallard.

In The Mallard, Freya and Gillian are teachers who have offended their school board and lost their jobs. Davis and Reagan are yard sale fanatics in search of a priceless antique duck decoy, the Horace Crandall Mallard. What follows is a fierce, funny and escalating battle over a symbol that has wildly different meanings - intersecting the couple in a journey that far surpasses the quest for treasure. The Mallard will have a full production in Premiere Stages’ 2025 season.

Vincent Delaney’s plays have been produced, commissioned and developed at the Guthrie, Humana Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, LAByrinth, New Harmony Project, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Florida Stage, the Children’s Theatre Company, the Magic, Woolly Mammoth, Shakespeare and Company, Pittsburgh Public, the Lark, PlayLabs, Capital Rep and Orlando Shakes, among many others. His plays The Ansel Intimacy and Foreclosure were previous finalists in the Play Festival, and Las Cruces had its world premiere at Premiere Stages in 2016. Other awards include McKnight and Bush Fellowships, Core Membership at the Playwrights Center, the Heideman from Actors Theatre of Louisville, and a Jerome Commission. Vince is a proud alum of the Seattle Rep Writers Group and a two-time Gregory Award nominee.

A second Play Festival finalist, Castling by Anthony T. Goss, will receive a staged reading this fall at Premiere Stages, as directed by Jamil A.C. Mangan, from Friday, November 22 through Sunday, November 24, 2024 in Kean University’s Liberty Hall Academic Center. In the play, workers at a local tire shop in Newark play chess as part of their daily morning ritual. But when their long standing workplace becomes the target of a business takeover, they scramble to avoid being put into the ultimate checkmate. A play about the effects of gentrification and the castles being built all around us, Castling provides a powerful study of loyalty and perseverance.

Anthony T. Goss is an emerging playwright and actor from Boston, MA, based in NYC/NJ. He is the current resident playwright with the National Black Theatre I AM SOUL playwright residency in New York City. His 10 minute play Good Trouble was produced by the 48 Hours in Harlem Theatre Festival 2024. His play Out of Bounds was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference 2024.

To learn more about the events above, please visit premierestagesatkean.com. Please note that readings are by invitation only. To inquire about attending either reading, visit their website.

Created in 2004, Premiere Stages is the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University. Through its unique partnership with Kean, Premiere’s play development programs, educational initiatives, and professional development opportunities actively embrace the university's academic curriculum while expanding the scope, accessibility, and prestige of the professional programming on campus.

Premiere Stages is committed to producing topical plays and interactive programs that reflect people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, national origins, nationalities, ancestry, religious groups, gender expression or identities, sexual orientation, political beliefs, ages, abilities and disabilities. 

Premiere Stages is made possible in part through funding from W. John Bauer and Nancy Boucher, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Carole Shaffer-Koros and Robert Koros and ExxonMobil Foundation, The Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Foundation, The Northfield Bank Foundation,  Blue Foundry Charitable Foundation,The Hyde and Watson Foundation, The Union Foundation, E.J. Grassmann Trust, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, The Union County HEART Grant and through the generous support of individual patrons and local organizations. Discover Jersey Arts is our marketing partner. Visit JerseyArts.com for more information about other arts programming happening around the Garden State.

Kean University, New Jersey’s urban research university, is a national institution of higher education recognized for its diversity, innovation and the social mobility of its graduates. Founded in 1855 as a teachers college, Kean has evolved into a thriving research university that supports students as they persist to graduation, give back to their communities and launch successful careers. Kean’s six colleges offer more than 50 undergraduate programs, six doctoral degree programs and more than 70 options leading to master’s degrees, professional diplomas or certifications, across a full range of academic subjects. With campuses in Union, Toms River and Manahawkin, New Jersey, and Wenzhou, China, as well as Kean Online, the University provides students of all backgrounds an affordable and accessible world-class education.