Playwright D.W. Gregory, author of Radium Girls, will be a featured keynote speaker at The Virginia Thespian Festival, Jan. 4 – 6, 2024.

The theme of the conference is “Find Your Light.”

“That’s a topic I know well,” Gregory said. “Anyone working in theatre has to be well-practiced at finding the upside, all the time. Do this long enough and you’ll meet with a lot of frustration — but there is always an upside to every experience.”

Thespian troupes representing more than 70 middle schools and high schools across Virginia are expected to attend the three-day conference,  which will take place at the Capitol One Hall and Hilton Conference Center in McLean, Va.

Festival events will include theatre competitions, workshops, college auditions, and mainstage performances, including the presentation of a new Broadway-bound musical, SuperYou, by Lourds Lane.

Gregory is scheduled to deliver the keynote address on Friday,  Jan. 5, before the mainstage presentation at Capitol One Hall. She is also scheduled to conduct two playwriting workshops: Writing the Dramatic Action and Moving from Situation to Story. 

Gregory is the author of more than a dozen full-length plays, including Radium Girls, Memoirs of a Forgotten Man, and Salvation Road. Memoirs of a Forgotten Man received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere (Contemporary American Theater Festival, New Jersey Repertory Co., and Shadowland Stages). It is schedule for production in Seattle in February.

Radium Girls is among the ten most produced plays in U.S. high schools, with more than 1,800 productions throughout the United States and abroad. Radium Girls and Salvation Road are published by Dramatic Publishing.

Gregory is currently working on a musical adaptation of Radium with composer Steven M. Alper and lyricist Sarah Knapp. The same creative team won Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical for The Yellow Stocking Play at CreateTheater’s New Works Festival on Theatre Row.