Austin Playhouse Festival Showcases Three New Stories by Texas Writers

The 2026 Festival of New Texas Plays runs Aug. 15-16 at Austin Playhouse’s West Campus space, presenting staged readings of three new plays by Texas writers: “ACES” by Emilie Budjaja, “Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service” by Kleo James Ryan and “Mom and Pop” by Carl Gonzales.

This year, the three featured plays could hardly look more different: One is performed partly in Mandarin without subtitles; one relies largely on puppets; and one unfolds in a family-owned Mexican restaurant chasing its first Michelin star. But they circle the same question: How far will people go to understand and be understood by the people closest to them?

Here’s a closer look at each play, in the words of the writers behind them.

“ACES” by Emilie Budjaja: two generations, two languages

Emilie Budjaja, a native Austinite who recently graduated from UT Austin with a degree in Radio-Television-Film, has spent her early career circling questions of identity, serving as showrunner of the student television comedy “The Austen Exchange” and writing for the station’s first Mandarin-language serialized drama.

Budjaja’s “ACES” originated from a rigorous Chinese cultural summer camp she attended as a kid. “I had so many mixed feelings of alienation, guilt, detachment to my own community, and I just didn’t know how to articulate them as a child,” she said. Years later, in college, she started writing her way toward them.

What began as the story of one girl at Chinese camp grew a second spine. Budjaja added a parallel storyline set 20 years earlier, following the girl’s aunt in China as she prepares to immigrate to the U.S. to attend university. “Both storylines contextualize each other just like how our parents’ stories contextualize ours,” she explained. The two threads, separated by decades, turn out to want the same thing: “to be understood by the people around them.”

The play’s most distinctive choice is what it refuses to explain. Budjaja went back and forth on whether to include English translations or subtitles for the Mandarin and ultimately decided against them. The version that exists now “uses language and place in an incredibly intentional way that creates discussion about identity,” she said.

“Language is a big system in the play,” she continued. “More specifically, being outside of a language. I wanted to invite audience members to participate in that feeling. I wanted to invite them to not understand everything, and see how much they do.”

It’s a risk that doubles as a thesis and the element she says she’s most looking forward to seeing audiences experience. “I find it very moving when people try to understand something or someone who speaks in a different language,” Budjaja said. “Just the act of trying, knowing that it is impossible, but still trying anyway. That is very moving to me. I think I am most looking forward to seeing that.”

“Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service” by Kleo James Ryan: grief, comedy and puppets

Kleo James Ryan, an Austin-based writer and performer, has built a reputation on the local new-play circuit, earning back-to-back “Best of Week” honors at FronteraFest and five B. Iden Payne Award nominations for her short play “Last Dance.” She is currently adapting Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” for the stage.

Ryan is a lifelong Jim Henson devotee. While reading Brian Jay Jones’ “Jim Henson: A Biography,” she was stopped cold by a detail: Five days after Henson’s death in May 1990, a memorial was held that was open to the public, allowing fans of all ages to grieve alongside his family and colleagues. Ryan wept while reading about it and started imagining what it would mean to attend an event like that for a childhood hero. Then a puppet showed up in her mind — a little girl named Louise, “Lulu” for short — and the world grew outward from her.

The first version had Lulu and her parents, Paul and Geri, spending a week in New York in the lead-up to the memorial. Then Ryan rewatched “The Muppet Movie,” and a flood of family road trip memories — “the joy-slash-nightmare that experience can be” — rerouted the whole play. Instead of waiting around for the service, the family now drives across the country. “It’s about a family doing whatever it takes to support their daughter and her love for Jim Henson’s work,” Ryan said.

Puppetry is the play’s engine, and Ryan reaches for it whenever she can. “If I have a chance to incorporate puppetry into anything I write, I’m going to take it … I’ve always believed that puppetry is one of those art forms that has an inherent magic to it,” she said. In “Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service,” it does more than provide novelty: Nearly everyone is a puppet except Lulu’s two human parents. That visual mismatch of two adults sharing a car with a small puppet, Ryan said, “immediately signals the emotional disconnect that is happening within the family,” while allowing the audience to see the world through both Lulu’s perspective and that of her parents. “There’s a reason why there has been this resurgence of puppetry,” she said. “It immediately disarms our defenses and we become more willing to accept that this puppet has a soul.”

“Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service” is also the first play Ryan has written about characters who are explicitly Texan, making it a fitting entry for the festival. “Texas is home,” she said. “No matter how weird or out of place I felt growing up in rural neighborhoods and small towns — and I felt that often — Texas and the people in it shaped the person I am today.”

It’s also, by design, very funny. Ryan has spent recent years writing drama and gothic retellings but comes from comedy — improv, sketch and a childhood spent trying to keep up with very funny sisters — and “Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service” let her write something that made her laugh out loud alone at her desk. The mix of grief and humor is intentional and central to the story Ryan is trying to tell. “Life is sadness and joy sitting next to each other, speaking over each other, holding space for each other,” Ryan said. Archival footage of the real Henson memorial — songs, jokes and tears in the same room — bears that out. “In those moments where I felt like I was drowning in grief, laughter reminded me to breathe.”

“Mom and Pop” by Carl Gonzales: family, food and a Michelin dream

Carl Gonzales, a Mexican and Indigenous director, playwright and actor, is active in Austin’s theater community. He serves as board chair of Ground Floor Theatre and president of the B. Iden Payne Awards Council, and his directing credits include “Pueblo Revolt,” “Dulce,” “Clyde’s” and “Anna in the Tropics.” His plays have also earned recognition, most recently with “La Planchada,” which was selected for the Teatrx Short Play Festival.

He got the idea for “Mom and Pop” at a bar in Ireland while sitting across the street from a Michelin-starred restaurant. The question that struck him: Why aren’t there any Mexican restaurants with Michelin stars in Texas? He started writing about a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant chasing its first star.

The world caught up with the premise — Texas now has Michelin-recognized Mexican restaurants — and Gonzales let the play evolve with it. “The story has evolved into more of a journey than simply pursuing the star itself,” he said, adding that he believes the change made the play stronger.

The play’s family-owned restaurant provides a natural setting for that exploration. “A lot of times, small family-owned restaurants are run by — spoiler alert — the entire family!” Gonzales said. “Community is at the heart of everything they do, and that’s something I really wanted to capture in this story.”

A born-and-raised Austinite, Gonzales is working with Austin Playhouse for the first time, and the festival marks only the second time “Mom and Pop” has been presented to an audience. Its only previous public reading was held before this year’s festival.

“I’m excited to see how a different audience and a different demographic connect with the play and what resonates with them,” he said.

The play has been called a love letter to the Latine community, a description Gonzales pushes back on. “I view this play as less of a love letter and more of a universal story that happens to be Latin,” Gonzales said. As more Black, Brown and queer stories reach stages like Austin Playhouse’s, he said, “the less they’re viewed as ‘love letters’ and the more they’re recognized as staples of the American theatre.”

Showtimes

The 2026 Festival of New Texas Plays runs Aug. 15-16 at Austin Playhouse, with staged readings of all three selected plays. Each reading will be followed by a talkback with the playwright. An opening mixer with light refreshments will take place between Saturday’s two readings. Guests can stay after the 4 p.m. reading, arrive early for the 7:30 p.m. reading or attend both. Sunday’s reading will conclude with a closing reception.

“ACES” by Emilie Budjaja will be read at 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, followed by “Lulu Goes to the Jim Henson Memorial Service” by Kleo James Ryan at 7:30 p.m. “Mom and Pop” by Carl Gonzales will close the festival at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16.

Tickets are pick-your-price, with a limited number of free tickets available for each reading. Tickets are available through Austin Playhouse.

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