UTNT (UT New Theatre) presents newly developed works from playwrights of Texas Theatre and Dance and Michener Center for Writers. Now celebrating its 19th season, the festival exists as an incubator for new work, with many plays continuing on to be professionally produced across the country. UTNT (UT New Theatre) 2026 will feature four new plays by graduate playwrights, as well as a play reading.

Plays will include (go to the festival website for a full schedule of events):

• Ordinary Time
  When a member of their community disappears, an order of Benedictine monks is forced to reckon with their conceptions of loyalty, identity, justice and Godliness. Ordinary Time is a durational, experiential performance that asks us to weigh the costs and benefits of silence. Taking place in Oscar G. Brockett Theatre.
• Diet of Worms
  Gentlemen. This Emergency Session of The United States Congress has begun. FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS: WE HAVE TO pass a budget for the next fiscal year by midnight tonight. We currently have a 487 quadrillion dollar deficit. Everyone in this room tonight needs to look inside their hearts and collectively find or raise 487 quadrillion dollars by midnight, which AGAIN is within the next… 82 minutes or we’ll all be executed gangland style in the back alley. Ok? (A play about why we’re the greatest country in the world.) Taking place in Oscar G. Brockett Theatre.
• Vulturine
  When a prickly Old man demands a sky burial – an ancient ritual in which vultures consume the dead – his estranged son Small Fry accompanies him to a faraway land to see it through. But when they discover that only two vultures remain on Earth, the funeral arrangements spiral into a visceral, personal, diabolical reckoning with extinction. Vulturine is a father-son Home Depot trip from hell, dripping with entrails, climate guilt and dark comedy. Taking place in Laboratory Theatre.
• A Tale for Home
  We’re on an island far from America, where complicated realities take root and uproot one another: An immortal rabbit speaks from the past. A girl digs beneath a mulberry tree. A returning American brings a gift that unsettles the ground. Through myth, memory and migration, the island remembers—and refuses to forget.
  We ask: What does it mean to call a place “home”? And when those who once lived here remember it differently—whose version becomes the story we carry forward? Taking place in Laboratory Theatre.
• The Jans (Play Reading)
  Do you, or have you ever: Carried a carabiner? Worn flannel? Gifted or been given a bouquet of violets? Had an undercut? Driven a U-haul? If you said yes to any of the above, meet us at 11:00 a.m. on March 8, 2026. Bring a "friend." Combat boots optional. Taking place in Laboratory Theatre.